Lease IPv4 address to solve the IPv4 exhaustion

Due to the rapid growth and the booming of the Internet industry, more and more devices are expected to require an active internet connection.

There was concern that came in as early as the 1990s that the IPv4 exhaustion is unavoidable. Therefore. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was established to explore any new opportunities in addressing the rapid exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. For the past few years, the IPv4 shortage has caused businesses in a critical situation to sustain the market need.

In response to the IPv4 exhaustion, the IETF debuted a redesigned Internet Protocol which is commercially known now as the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). The main difference between the IPv4 and IPv6 is the size, where the earlier mentioned is 32-bit (represented in a dotted-decimal-notation) whereas the latter is 128-bit (represented in a hexadecimal-notation).

How Leasing IP address can solve the IPv4 exhaustion?

IPv4 addresses are allocated/assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority(IANA) through its 5 Regional Internet Registries(RIR) that accounts for specific regions which the RIR are accounted for allocating the IPv4 address to the Local Internet Registries (LIR), such as the Internet Service Providers (ISP).

IPv4 addresses can be categorized into two, which are Provider-Independent address space(PI) and Provider-Aggregatable address space(PA). Entities who have purchased blocks of PI’s IP Addresses are allowed to lease the address to individuals or organizations. PI assignments are usually small; they cannot be aggregated into larger blocks. PI addresses can be shifted between ISP, the same position is not shared by the PA. It is a common practice by the RIR, that the RIR will allocate PI addresses for big corporations, whereas, the small entities will be assigned PA addresses. This is to meet their specific business model and needs.

Conclusion