A new milestone in the history and evolution of the Internet has passed: On Thursday, February 3, 2011, it was announced that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), steward of the Internet's reserves of unassigned IP addresses, has distributed the final blocks of IPv4 addresses to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). The RIRs, based in North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, will now allocate them, according to rules developed in each region, to service providers and enterprises worldwide. And then all of the IPv4 addresses will be in use.
