The pool of unallocated IP addresses that are distributed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has been depleted. In laymens terms, they have run out of IP addresses. APNIC, one of the five regional internet registries, exhausted its available pool of IP addresses on April 15. The four remaining regional registries are expected to exhaust their supply of IP addresses soon.

Because of the shortage of available IP addresses, SoftLayer, our upstream provider of IP addresses, has started rationing and limiting IP address allocations. At this point they will only issue dedicated IP addresses for websites that require ssl certificates. They have also asked us to return any IP addresses that are not being used to host websites that require SSL certificates.

At 12:00 a.m. On Saturday, June 4, we will begin renumbering websites that currently use dedicated IP addresses but don't use an SSL certificate. Your new IP address will be 208.43.100.35. Websites that currently use SSL certificates will not be affected.

The renumbering is not expected to cause any downtime. If you experience problems viewing your website after the IP address has been changed try clearing your browser's disk cache and/or clearing your computer's dns cache. If neither one of those options work, try rebooting your computer or your router/modem.

The problem some of you experienced this morning is that some Internet Service Providers took a long time to re-propogate sending your computer to the new IP.

I was down using Shaw until about an hour ago. It seems I'm now back online.

If anyone knows or is contacted by a member still experiencing problems please have them contact me directly at:
steve@xmarksthescot.com