IPv4 exhaustion: what it means for your business in 2026

IPv4 ran out at the top in 2011 and at the registries that serve Europe, North America and Asia Pacific between 2011 and 2019. It is not coming back, and IPv6 has not made it unnecessary. So, outside the last small pools at APNIC and AFRINIC, an IPv4 address is no longer something a registry gives you. It is something you buy, lease or queue for, which makes it a procurement decision like any other: a price, a lead time and a contract.

When it ran out

The global pool and the regional pools ran dry one after another.

What the RIPE NCC and ARIN hand out now is recovered space: blocks returned, deregistered or reclaimed, in small pieces, to a queue. In the RIPE NCC service region that queue gives one /24 to a member after a wait of well over a year, and since September 2026 a member cannot, for now, open extra accounts to get more (is the waiting list worth it?). APNIC still delegates from its last /8 and the space it recovers, up to a /23 per account, and will start a waiting list only once that runs out (the three registries compared).

Why IPv6 has not ended it

IPv6 is real and growing: about half of the users reaching Google now do so over it. Adoption is uneven across Europe, though, from around three quarters of users in France to around a tenth in Spain, as the Internet Society reported in April 2026 (IPv4 and IPv6).

The arithmetic that matters is the other half. A service that has to be reachable by everyone still needs an IPv4 address, because a large share of the networks it will be reached from cannot speak IPv6 to it. A mail server, a VPN endpoint, a customer-facing API and a hosting platform all have to answer on IPv4. IPv6 lets you need fewer IPv4 addresses. It does not let you need none.

The large clouds have drawn the same conclusion and put a price on it. Since February 2024 AWS charges for every public IPv4 address it provides by the hour, and the other hyperscalers bill comparably (what that adds up to). A resource that is billed by the hour is a resource that has become scarce. Addresses you bring yourself are exempt from that charge at AWS, Azure and Google Cloud (bring your own IP).

What exhaustion turns IPv4 into

When a resource stops being allocated and starts being traded, the questions change. Not "how do I apply" but "how do I procure": what does it cost, how soon can I have it, and what am I committing to. There are three answers.

Queue. Join the RIPE NCC as a member and wait for one /24. The cheapest on paper and the slowest in practice, and only worth it if you would be a member anyway.

Buy. Take a block on the transfer market and keep it. Prices are well below their 2022 peak and turned upwards again in 2026. After payment we file a transfer with the RIPE NCC within 24 hours, and the RIPE NCC completes most "within one or two business days" once the documents are complete; ARIN and APNIC add steps of their own (transfer rules compared). What it costs to keep a bought block depends on its kind: PA needs a membership, PI a sponsoring LIR, and legacy no contract at all, though RPKI for it needs one (leasing or buying).

Lease. Use space registered to someone else, for as long as you need it. No capital, no membership, usually live within 24 hours of payment, and the price is published (pricing).

Which route, by horizon

The question that sorts most cases is how long you need the space and how sure you are.

• Within days, or for a project that may end: lease. Nothing else is fast enough, and a lease ends when the need does.
• For years, with a stable requirement: buy. For your own network PI is the cheapest to keep; if customers get addresses from the block, look at legacy or at PA with a membership.
• Already a RIPE NCC member: queue as well, if your LIR account has never had IPv4 from the RIPE NCC. The membership is a cost you carry anyway, so the /24 at the end of the list costs you nothing extra.

Two things help whichever route you take. Run dual stack wherever you can, so that every IPv4 address you hold does as much work as possible. And keep the addresses you have clean, because a block on a blocklist is worth less to you and to the next holder (keeping a block's reputation).

Where RTM Networks fits

We buy and sell IPv4 in the RIPE NCC, ARIN and APNIC regions, lease it from our own RIPE NCC address space, and act as sponsoring LIR for PI and legacy space. Exhaustion is the reason we exist, and the reason we take no side between the routes: tell us how many addresses you need, where, and for how long, and we will tell you which route fits and what it costs.