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Freedom251 › Blog › carrier-grade NAT

What to do when you run out of IPv4 addresses

By Freedom251 Team · · 8 min read

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Running out of public IPv4 space is a capacity and transition problem, not something a new consumer router can fix. First measure what you actually use, reclaim idle assignments, and separate internal addressing from services that must be globally reachable. Then request IPv6 space and make services and users reachable over IPv6, while checking your regional Internet registry (RIR) for any remaining allocation, waiting-list or special-purpose route. If growth cannot wait, evaluate a properly registered IPv4 transfer. Carrier-grade NAT (CGN) and related sharing designs can stretch a limited pool, but they add application, logging and security costs and do not remove the underlying shortage.

The correct combination depends on your RIR, network architecture, application dependencies and deadline. Treat IPv4 as a constrained legacy resource while IPv6 becomes the normal path for expansion.

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Prove what is actually scarce

Before requesting or buying addresses, build an inventory of every allocation and assignment. Record the prefix, customer or system using it, routing status, utilization, and whether the address must be reachable from the public Internet. Compare peak use with forecast demand rather than relying on a single-day snapshot.

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  • Recover addresses assigned to decommissioned servers, closed customer accounts, test environments and abandoned VPNs.
  • Remove duplicate assignments and correct inaccurate registry records.
  • Use private addressing and ordinary NAT for internal-only hosts where appropriate. This reduces public-address consumption inside a site but does not create additional public IPv4 space.
  • Separate a shortage of globally reachable addresses from a shortage of internal addresses. A web service, mail server or customer endpoint may need a public address; a printer or back-end database usually does not.
  • Forecast demand by service launch, subscriber growth, geographic expansion and high-availability requirements. Include addresses reserved for failover, maintenance and network infrastructure.

NAT and transfers are established responses to scarcity, but the IETF documents address-reuse complexity and the operational burden of multiple translation layers in RFC 9386. A clean inventory often postpones an emergency request and gives you a defensible number for any RIR application or transfer.

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Compare the available strategies

Strategy What it changes Main constraint Long-term effect
Reclaim and redesign Recovers unused addresses and saves public space through private addressing and NAT. Cannot increase the organization’s registered public pool. Useful immediately, but does not solve future public growth.
IPv6 deployment Adds a separate, abundant address family for new services and users. Legacy IPv4-only systems still need a compatibility plan. Reduces dependence on public IPv4 and is the durable growth path.
RIR allocation or waiting list May provide recovered or policy-limited IPv4 space under regional rules. Eligibility, block size and timing differ by RIR; recovered inventory is uncertain. Manages scarcity but does not end it.
Registered IPv4 transfer Moves address space from an organization with surplus to an eligible recipient. Requires policy compliance, a willing source, due diligence and registry approval. Provides capacity without creating new IPv4 addresses.
CGN or another sharing design Allows many customers or sites to share fewer public IPv4 addresses. Can break applications, complicate logging and create security issues. Bridge measure only; IPv6 planning remains necessary.

Make IPv6 the expansion path

Request an IPv6 allocation from your RIR or obtain IPv6 space through your provider. Build a dual-stack plan in which IPv4 remains available for legacy dependencies while IPv6 is enabled for new services, customer access and management systems. There is no single transition configuration that fits every network: the right design depends on applications, DNS, transport protocols, security controls, monitoring and upstream connectivity.

  1. Obtain address space and upstream support. Confirm that transit providers, data centers, cloud services and security appliances can route and filter IPv6.
  2. Inventory application dependencies. Test operating systems, load balancers, APIs, databases, identity systems, monitoring and logging for IPv6 support.
  3. Publish IPv6 reachability deliberately. Add IPv6 DNS records only when the service is tested, monitored and protected by equivalent firewall and abuse controls.
  4. Enable user and site connectivity. Coordinate with access providers so employees, customers and remote sites can reach the service over IPv6.
  5. Measure real traffic. Track IPv6 success rates, latency, error codes and support incidents separately from IPv4. Use the results to prioritize further migration.
  6. Preserve IPv4 selectively. Keep addresses for systems that genuinely require them, while preventing new projects from making IPv4 a hidden prerequisite.

RIPE NCC states that “Everyone has a part to play in supporting the deployment of IPv6, which is the best long-term solution to the problems created by IPv4 exhaustion.” The IETF reaches the same architectural conclusion in RFC 6269, saying that deploying IPv6 is the only perennial way to ease pressure on the public pool without relying on address sharing.

Check the rules of your regional registry

RIR policies are not interchangeable. Confirm the current eligibility, justification, documentation and request process with the registry serving your organization. Historical exhaustion dates explain why ordinary free-pool requests may fail, but they do not predict what inventory or special-purpose routes exist today.

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ARIN region

ARIN reports that its free IPv4 pool was depleted on 24 September 2015. Its current IPv4 Addressing Options include the Waiting List for Unmet Requests, transfers to specified recipients, and limited policy-reserved allocations, including an IPv6-transition allocation for organizations that meet the criteria. Returned or revoked resources can replenish inventory. Read the current Number Resource Policy Manual requirements before filing a request; being on a list is not a guarantee of a particular block or delivery date.

ARIN’s live waiting-list page showed one distribution completed on 7 October 2026 and another expected on or about 4 January 2027 when checked for this guide. That is a changing snapshot, not a service-level promise: queue order depends on the sizes and quantities of blocks returned to inventory. Follow the current status at ARIN’s IPv4 Waiting List.

RIPE NCC service region

RIPE NCC announced exhaustion of its remaining IPv4 pool in November 2019. Its waiting-list guidance is limited to eligible members that have not previously received an IPv4 allocation from RIPE NCC. If recovered addresses are available, an eligible Local Internet Registry can receive one /24, or 256 addresses. RIPE NCC says it cannot predict how many addresses will be recovered or how long a wait will last.

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Do not treat the /24 as an entitlement for every member, and do not schedule a launch around an estimated queue date. Verify eligibility and current announcements directly with RIPE NCC.

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APNIC region

APNIC’s current IPv4 exhaustion guidance describes a maximum allocation of /23, or 512 addresses, for new or existing members under its policy-limited path. Members needing more than that are directed to consider transfers, subject to policy and justification. APNIC explicitly identifies IPv6 as the long-term solution.

Other regions

Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific each have different policy environments and inventory conditions. Do not extrapolate the ARIN, RIPE NCC or APNIC examples to another region. Identify your RIR, read its current IPv4 and IPv6 policies, and ask whether your organization qualifies for a waiting list, recovered space, special-purpose allocation or transfer.

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Evaluate an IPv4 transfer without creating a new problem

A transfer can provide near-term capacity when a registered holder has surplus space, but it is not the same as obtaining newly created addresses. Use the RIR’s transfer process so the registry records the new holder and the policy requirements are met.

  • Eligibility and justification: Confirm that both parties and the proposed recipient satisfy the applicable RIR policy.
  • Provenance: Check the block’s registration history, custody, authorization and whether any dispute, merger or bankruptcy claim affects it.
  • Routing and reputation: Review route history, reverse DNS, abuse records and blocklist exposure. A previously misused range can damage email delivery or fraud controls after transfer.
  • Size and geography: Ensure the prefix is large enough for the design and acceptable to your RIR, transit providers and filtering policies.
  • Timing: Include negotiation, registry review, contracts, payment, routing changes and propagation in the project plan. A transfer source may disappear before approval.
  • Total cost: Obtain current quotes and legal advice. The registry pages establish transfer mechanisms but do not provide a comparable current market price.

Document why the space is needed, how it will be used and how IPv6 deployment will proceed. That record helps with policy review and prevents an expensive purchase from becoming a permanent substitute for migration.

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Use CGN and other sharing models deliberately

Carrier-grade NAT (CGN), NAT444, DS-Lite, NAT64 and related designs have different traffic flows and prerequisites. Select among them only after mapping your access network, customer equipment, application protocols and IPv6 capability. They are engineering architectures, not interchangeable products.

What sharing can achieve

Sharing lets multiple subscribers or sites use fewer globally routable IPv4 addresses. The provider can place customers behind a translation layer and reserve public addresses for services that truly need inbound reachability. The shared-address range 100.64.0.0/10 was reserved by RFC 6598 for provider use between customer-premises equipment and CGN. It is not globally routable public IPv4 space and must not be advertised as such.

What sharing breaks or complicates

RFC 6269 identifies potential application failures, greater monitoring complexity and new security vulnerabilities with large-scale address sharing. Common operational consequences include loss of straightforward inbound connections, difficulty identifying a subscriber when many users share one public address, dependence on accurate time-synchronized translation logs, and problems for protocols that embed IP addresses or assume one-to-one identity.

  • Test gaming, voice, video, peer-to-peer, VPN, webhook, geolocation, fraud-detection and allow-listing workflows before migration.
  • Define port-allocation, timeout, endpoint-independent mapping and logging policies, then verify that your lawful-access and incident-response processes can retrieve records.
  • Provide a documented method for customers or partners that need inbound access, such as a dedicated public address or an IPv6 service.
  • Monitor translation capacity, port exhaustion, latency, dropped sessions and abuse reports as first-class production metrics.
  • Keep IPv6 deployment funded and staffed. Sharing should buy time for transition, not become the reason transition stops.

A practical decision sequence

  1. Baseline: Publish an address inventory, utilization report, route map and demand forecast.
  2. Recover: Reclaim idle assignments, consolidate internal ranges and remove unnecessary public exposure.
  3. Classify: Label each workload as IPv6-ready, dual-stack candidate, IPv4-only legacy or requiring inbound IPv4.
  4. Start IPv6: Obtain space, enable upstream connectivity, test services and make IPv6 the default for new deployments where practical.
  5. Ask the RIR: Check your region’s free-pool status, waiting list, recovered-space rules and special-purpose policies.
  6. Plan a transfer: If demand remains, perform provenance, reputation, eligibility and cost due diligence before signing.
  7. Bridge carefully: Deploy sharing only with capacity, logging, support and security controls sized for production.
  8. Review quarterly: Recalculate public-address demand, IPv6 traffic, translation load and the number of IPv4-only dependencies.

Historical context for planning

IANA completed allocations from its unallocated IPv4 pool on 3 February 2011, a milestone documented in RFC 6269. That did not mean every RIR exhausted its own inventory on that date. ARIN’s free pool lasted until 24 September 2015, while RIPE NCC reported exhaustion in November 2019.

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RFC 9386 reports that, at the end of 2021, 5.2 million IPv4 addresses were available and 12.1 million reserved, for 17.3 million combined; it also reports an available-to-allocated ratio of 0.469 percent. Those figures describe historical conditions drawn from a January 2022 source, not current inventory, and should not be used as a present-day supply estimate.

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carrier-grade NATInternet registriesIPv4IPv6network operationsnetworking

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