[council] Full allocation of the unicast IPv4 address space

[Glen de Saint Géry]

Dear GNSO Council,

We are writing to you to provide you information about the full allocation of the unicast IPv4 address space.

As you know, IP address policy is developed in a bottom-up fashion, through the RIR communities. When ICANN's IANA Department needs to perform an action, a single policy is developed and ratified by ICANN's Board of Directors. These policies are termed Global Policies. The RIR communities followed this process during 2008 and 2009 to develop such a policy for the allocation of the last unicast IPv4 blocks to the RIRs: the Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space. The ICANN Board of Directors ratified the policy on 6 March 2009.

A background report on the policy development process was published on the ICANN web site at:

	. http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-05feb09-en.htm
A summary of the ICANN Board of Director's action can be seen on ICANN's Community wiki at:

	. https://community.icann.org/display/ctap/2009-03-06+-+Global+Policy+Proposal+Regarding+IPv4+Address+Space
The actual policy is published on the ICANN web site at:

	. http://www.icann.org/en/general/allocation-remaining-ipv4-space.htm
The policy is triggered when just five IPv4 /8s remain unallocated.

On 18 January 2011, ICANN received a request from APNIC and after verifying that it met the requirements set out in the Policy For Allocation of IPv4 Blocks to Regional Internet Registries, which was also developed through the RIRs' bottom-up process and can be found on the ICANN web site at:

	. http://www.icann.org/en/general/allocation-IPv4-rirs.html

ICANN staff allocated two /8s to APNIC. This triggered the implementation of the Exhaustion Phase set out in the Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space, which occurred yesterday.

As a result of the implementation of this policy, each RIR has received a single /8 and there are no more unallocated IPv4 unicast /8s. The current status of the IPv4 address space can be seen in the IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry at:

	. http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xhtml
If you have any questions about this then please let us know.

Kind regards,

Leo Vegoda
Leo.vegoda at icann.org