Every few days I look at ARIN’s home page to see how many addresses they have remaining, and to see if there have been any large allocations in the past few days. Sometimes they go for days with not change, then suddenly hand out a few thousand. Usually when I notice a big change, I’ll update my projection for ARIN runout.
Since ARIN publishes a list of all of their allocations, it’s pretty straightforward to get other information about what’s going on in the industry, too. For instance, I downloaded the allocation list, then looked at all assignments/allocations of /17 or larger so far in 2013. The /17 boundary was arbitrary.
| Organization | #IPv4 Addresses in 2013 |
| AT&T | 4194304 |
| Akamai | 3670016 |
| Nobis | 917504 |
| Time Warner Cable | 753644 |
| BrightHouse Networks | 524288 |
| Microsoft | 524288 |
| ColoCrossing | 458752 |
| Enzu | 360448 |
| Unified Layer | 327680 |
| Sonic | 294912 |
| CloudRadium | 229376 |
| Peg Tech | 229376 |
| Comcast | 196608 |
| EGI Hosting | 196608 |
| Hostwinds | 196608 |
| Viasat | 196608 |
| Rackspace | 163840 |
| CloudFlare | 131072 |
| Micfo | 131072 |
| Rogers | 131072 |
In no way do I mean to imply that any of these companies is doing anything improper. Quite the contrary, I would infer that these are successful, growing companies, who need more IPv4 address space to support their expanding customer base.
There’s broad representation there from Hosting/CDN/cloud companies and ISPs, and there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between IPv6 deployment and IPv4 consumption. Conspicuously missing are mobile operators (Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile; I can’t tell whether AT&T is wireless or wireline); it’s impossible to tell whether IPv6 LTE has relieved pressure or they are just fine with CGN. There are some interesting possible trends to watch, among companies who keep coming back for more address space:
| Organization | Allocation Size | Allocation Date |
| ATT | 1048576 | 20130301 |
| 1048576 | 20130521 | |
| 1048576 | 20130809 | |
| 1048576 | 20131023 | |
| Akamai | 524288 | 20130125 |
| 1048576 | 20130315 | |
| 2097152 | 20130712 | |
| ColoCrossing | 32768 | 20130129 |
| 32768 | 20130312 | |
| 65536 | 20130422 | |
| 65536 | 20130607 | |
| 131072 | 20130816 | |
| 131072 | 20131021 | |
| Nobis | 131072 | 20130408 |
| 262144 | 20130506 | |
| 524288 | 20130724 | |
| Enzu | 32768 | 20130325 |
| 65536 | 20130422 | |
| 131072 | 20130607 | |
| 131072 | 20130926 | |
| Hostwinds | 32768 | 20130130 |
| 32768 | 20130514 | |
| 32768 | 20130722 | |
| 32768 | 20130819 | |
| 32768 | 20131007 | |
| 32768 | 20131113 | |
| PegTech | 32768 | 20130614 |
| 65536 | 20130802 | |
| 131072 | 20131108 | |
| Sonic | 32768 | 20130131 |
| 65536 | 20130510 | |
| 65536 | 20130822 | |
| 131072 | 20131120 |
One might reasonably assume that an organization that is returning periodically for another allocation will continue to do so. I see no periodicity in the ISP allocations (except AT&T, possibly their wireless business) for 2013, but fairly regular visits to the well among these hosting companies. In particular, let’s pay attention to those growing allocations; if they continue to grow, this handful of companies could accelerate the runout date.