The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) has announced that has reached stage three or final stage of IPv4 exhaustion in Asia Pacific, which means that it has released almost all of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses in its available pool.

IPv4 Exhaustion Stage 3 starts when APNIC reaches its last /8 of available IPv4 address space. At this stage, all new and existing APNIC account holders will be allotted a maximum allocation of a /22 from the Final /8 address space.

APNIC has said that it will prioritize new entrants and those deploying IPv6 for remaining IPv4 addresses.

This way Asia Pacific has become the first region to reach this stage of exhaustion, due to notably high telephony and internet growth and hence the demand for IPs in the region.

Last year, PTA had estimated that IPv4 addresses in Pakistan will exhaust in 2014, which now looks little incorrect, based on above mentioned facts.

APNIC and PTA have been encouraging ISPs to move their systems to IPv6, however, the progress in this regard (in Pakistan) is not very impressive. This marks as a warning call for all ISPs in the country to speed up their pace for moving to IPv6 addresses.

To know more about IPv4 exhaustion and tranistion to IPv6 addresses you can click this or this link.