[ipv6-wg] 2009 IPv6 Address Use Report

[ (Non-cross)posted to NANOG, PPML, RIPE IPv6 wg, Dutch IPv6 TF. Web version for the monospace font impaired and with some links:
http://www.bgpexpert.com/addrspace-ipv6-2009.php ]

2009 IPv6 Address Use Report

Since 2005, I've been compiling an IPv4 address use report every year. With the start of the new decade, this is a good moment to start doing the same thing for IPv6.

http://www.bgpexpert.com/addrspace-ipv6.php shows the amount of IPv6 space given out by RIR and by year, while http://www.bgpexpert.com/ipv6addressespercountry.php shows the amount of IPv6 address space by country. Both these pages are updated weekly from the delegation data that the RIRs publish on their FTP servers.

2008 saw a huge increase in the amount of IPv6 space given out and then a big drop in 2009 (amounts of IPv6 address space in the equivalent of /32s):

1999     10.88 /32s in 17 blocks
2000     19.75 /32s in 32 blocks
2001     33.13 /32s in 61 blocks
2002    156.75 /32s in 271 blocks
2003    261.38 /32s in 290 blocks
2004  13340.63 /32s in 295 blocks
2005  26985.00 /32s in 245 blocks
2006   9798.00 /32s in 243 blocks
2007   6687.01 /32s in 491 blocks
2008  81012.02 /32s in 886 blocks
2009   1091.03 /32s in 1280 blocks

However, this is not the complete picture. The large number for 2008 is the result of two unusual events. The first one is LACNIC's delegation of the 2804::/16 block to the Brazilian national internet registry (NIR). At some point in the future, the delegation records will not show such blocks as "used" in their entirety anymore. Also, ARIN delegated 14 /22 blocks within the range 2608::/13 to the US Department of Defense. With these two artifacts removed, the amount of IPv6 space given out per year looks like this:

1999     11.00 /32s in 17 blocks
2000     20.00 /32s in 32 blocks
2001     33.00 /32s in 61 blocks
2002    157.00 /32s in 271 blocks
2003    261.00 /32s in 290 blocks
2004  13341.00 /32s in 295 blocks
2005  26985.00 /32s in 245 blocks
2006   9798.00 /32s in 243 blocks
2007   6687.00 /32s in 491 blocks
2008   1140.00 /32s in 871 blocks
2009   1091.00 /32s in 1280 blocks

So the number of blocks given out keeps increasing, but their size is going down. There are two reasons for this: roughly between 2004 and 2006, RIPE and APNIC gave out some very large blocks to some very large ISPs. They mostly stopped doing that. And provider independent blocks started to be allowed and are getting more and more popular. These are the /32 - /35 allocations. /32 is the minimum block size given out to ISPs, this used to be /35. So this view shows the numbers of small-to-medium sized ISPs obtaining IPv6 address space:

1999     11.00 /32s in 17 blocks
2000     20.00 /32s in 32 blocks
2001     33.00 /32s in 55 blocks
2002    157.00 /32s in 254 blocks
2003    223.00 /32s in 251 blocks
2004    235.00 /32s in 241 blocks
2005    217.00 /32s in 217 blocks
2006    186.00 /32s in 186 blocks
2007    351.00 /32s in 351 blocks
2008    734.00 /32s in 734 blocks
2009   1011.00 /32s in 1013 blocks

These are the blocks larger than /32 that go to large ISPs (excluding the BR NIR and DoD blocks):

2003     38.00 /32s in 3 blocks
2004  13106.00 /32s in 9 blocks
2005  26768.00 /32s in 13 blocks
2006   9612.00 /32s in 14 blocks
2007   6336.00 /32s in 8 blocks
2008    406.00 /32s in 7 blocks
2009     80.00 /32s in 4 blocks

And these are the blocks smaller than /35, which are now mostly provider independent blocks, but also "critical infrastructure", such as root servers get a /48 block:

2001      0.00 /32s in 6 blocks
2002      0.00 /32s in 17 blocks
2003      0.00 /32s in 36 blocks
2004      0.00 /32s in 45 blocks
2005      0.00 /32s in 15 blocks
2006      0.00 /32s in 43 blocks
2007      0.00 /32s in 132 blocks
2008      0.00 /32s in 130 blocks
2009      0.00 /32s in 263 blocks

So after a small dip in 2006, the number of small-to-medium sized ISPs obtaining IPv6 address space shows a steady upward trend, but apparently the very large ISPs either already got their IPv6 address space, are not focussing on IPv6 right now, are starting with a small block (or several small blocks), or a combination of all of these factors.

Even with the BR NIR and DoD blocks included, the (equivalent of) 39395.56 /32s given out in 4111 blocks is only 0.026% of the 536870912 possible /32s in the currently defined global unicast space (2000::/3). For comparison, the number of IPv4 blocks given out is 99562.