Hi, It seems there is a new trend in RIR-land: mega-allocations. This year APNIC, ARIN and the RIPE NCC have made the following allocations: # whois -h whois 126.0.0.0 whois.apnic.net inetnum: 126.0.0.0 - 126.255.255.255 netname: BBTEC descr: Japan Nation-wide Network of Softbank BB Corp. country: JP status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE # whois -h whois.arin.net 73.0.0.0 NetRange: 73.0.0.0 - 73.191.255.255 CIDR: 73.0.0.0/9, 73.128.0.0/10 NetName: CABLE-1 NetType: Direct Allocation # whois -h whois.ripe.net 86.192.0.0 inetnum: 86.192.0.0 - 86.255.255.255 netname: FR-TELECOM-20050302 descr: France Telecom status: ALLOCATED PA That's a total of 33 million IP addresses in 3 allocations (and as many months). The total population for these three countries is 127 + 293 + 60 = 480 million, so that's an IP address for nearly 7% of those country's inhabitants. If I were a conspiracy theorist I would think that IPv6 proponents are trying to burn up the remaining IPv4 space as fast as they can so we'll all be running IPv6 at the end of the decade. If that's the case: good job! :-) Seriously: what's going on here?