Starting this month, every person in Latin America will be able to have the equivalent of 8,129,240 different addresses or computers connected to the Internet.

For many years now, whenever someone speaks about the Internet sooner or later the term "growth" and its yang, the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, appear. During the current month of October 2006 the anguish about this alleged scarcity has been overcome thanks to the equal allocation of IPv6 blocks made by IANA to each region.

In effect, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) ratified the Global IPv6 Allocation Policy from IANA to the RIRs that has been under debate since 2004 within the different Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). As a consequence of this, an equal allocation of a /12 block has been made to each of the RIRs, and this represents an important increase in the number of addresses available in our region.

According to what Latin American expert Ricardo Patara explained this morning, if we compare with IPv4 addresses, currently the region of Latin America and the Caribbean has capability for connecting an average of 67,108,864 computers. With this new allocation of IPv6 space, the region has capability to connect 4,503,599,627,370,496 computers, that is to say 67 million times more.

This is better explained by an example: if currently each IPv4 address could be shared by 8 individuals, with IPv6 each individual within the region would be able to have the equivalent of 8,129,240 addresses. An almost inexhaustible supply.

Another very relevant aspect of this historical event is that, as opposed to what happened in the case of IPv4 addresses, on this occasion each region, regardless of its level of development, has been given the opportunity to begin with an equal address space. This fact highlights the importance of having an Internet Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The important announcement was made this week in Montevideo by LACNIC.

As you may recall, the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Internet Address Registry (LACNIC) is the international organization, based in Montevideo, that administrates IP address space, Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs), Reverse Resolution, and other resources for the region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in representation of the Internet community.