2015 Year in Review [Archived]

By Nate Davis

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2015 was an exciting here at ARIN. While we are gearing up for 2016, I thought it would be interesting to recap this eventful year. I am fairly certain you heard that we ran out of IPv4 addresses in September. Even though we had been preparing (and informing the community) about this for years, it was a big deal for us when it happened. The day the our IPv4 address counter reached zero, was the day depletion really soaked in for many who have been tracking our inventory over the past decade.

In 2015 alone we issued .44 /8 equivalents of IPv4 address space that accounted for the last dredges in the free pool. We saw articles about IPv4 depletion and the need for IPv6 in everything from the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC News, CBS News, BBC, Fortune, USA Today, The Next Web, PC World, Network Computing, and many more. Furthermore you took to social media to discuss and share with your networks the latest news about IP addressing in the region. But what about IPv6? We distributed 575 blocks of IPv6 address space year to date so far, which represents a 23% increase over the 466 IPv6 blocks issued last year. We expect to see these numbers continue to rise in the years to come.

We continued our educational outreach efforts, including the launch of Get6 which is focused on encouraging companies to IPv6-enable their websites. We also put in appearances at numerous shows throughout the year including but not limited to: CES, Grenada ICT Week, North American IPv6 Summit, Caribbean Telecommunications Union 25th Anniversary, South School on Internet Governance, CaribNOG, CANTO, Campus Technology, WISPAPALOOZA, Caribbean Internet Governance Forum, Open Networking Users Group, and Canadian ISP Summit. We packed up ARIN on the Road and took our one-day event to Florida, Montana, Illinois, New Jersey, Dominica, Halifax, and Ottawa. We also held Public Policy and Members Meetings in San Francisco and Montreal where attendees came together to discuss and set policies that will guide this community forward. This year four policies were implemented and added into the latest version of the Number Resource Policy Manual (NRPM), and eight proposals remain on the docket to continue to discuss in 2016.

2015 has been a banner year for user functionality, with five major new releases of ARIN Online and a host of new features and streamlining for our customers. Major technical milestones include the development and deployment of crucial security features like two-factor authentication, the automation of Internet number resource transfers within ARIN Online, and the satisfactory closure of ten suggestions as part of the ARIN Consultation and Suggestion Process (ACSP).

Throughout the year we encouraged community members to follow and participate in Internet Governance discussions especially in relation to the IANA Stewardship Transition. We continue to support the ongoing work to transition the IANA function to the larger global Internet community through the multistakeholder process.

All in all, thanks for a great 2015. Thanks for sharing your ideas and opinions, attending meetings, contributing on mailing lists, volunteering for committees, serving as mentors, and voting in elections. Also thank you to our elected volunteer representatives on the Board, Advisory Council, and NRO Number Council. We depend on the work of many volunteers to fulfill our mission, and we are confident that we would not be where we are today without the continuing efforts of people like you. Here’s to a successful and productive year ahead as well!