Summary

  • ARIN says its 2 July 2026 distribution fulfilled 307 IPv4 waiting-list requests from 199 cleared blocks; the official CSV contains exactly 199 rows for that date, totalling 142,592 addresses.
  • ARIN also warns that those cleared blocks do not correspond directly to the sizes issued. A compact split-and-remainder receipt would make the two totals reconcilable without identifying applicants.

A distribution can be correctly administered and still be impossible for an outsider to reconcile. That is the narrow problem in ARIN’s account of its second-quarter IPv4 waiting-list release.

On 2 July 2026, ARIN announced that it had fulfilled 307 requests from 199 IPv4 blocks on its cleared-address list. Both numbers are concrete. They are also different kinds of number. A cleared block is an input to allocation; a fulfilled request is an outcome under the waiting-list rules. The bridge between them is not published on either page.

That omission should not be confused with evidence of waste, unfairness or a policy breach. ARIN explicitly cautions that the blocks on its cleared list do not correspond directly to the block sizes issued to waiting-list recipients. The warning is useful. It tells readers not to mistake an inventory for an allocation ledger. But it leaves the reconciliation unfinished.

The input is unusually legible

The downloadable ARIN file makes the input side reproducible. Filtering its frozen copy for 2 July produces exactly 199 rows. CIDR arithmetic turns those rows into 142,592 IPv4 addresses.

Listed prefix size Number of cleared blocks Addresses represented
/17 1 32,768
/18 2 32,768
/19 1 8,192
/20 2 8,192
/21 2 4,096
/22 8 8,192
/23 6 3,072
/24 177 45,312
Total 199 142,592

This is not a list of 199 recipient allocations. A large returned or revoked prefix can be divided into several smaller issueable prefixes. Conversely, a piece may remain after requests are packed against the available inventory. The public page itself prevents a one-row-one-recipient reading.

The output follows different rules

ARIN’s Number Resource Policy Manual permits an eligible organization to qualify for at most a /22 and to elect a smaller size down to a /24. One organization may have one approved waiting-list request at a time. Requests are sequenced by approval date, but fulfilment is first-approved subject to the size of each available block. Requests are not partially filled.

Those clauses matter to the arithmetic. The allocator is not simply walking down a list and handing each applicant the next source row. It is matching whole approved requests to a finite set of differently sized prefixes. Receipt of any amount through the waiting list or specified transfer routes removes an organization from the queue; declining an offered block also counts as fulfilment under ARIN’s guidance. The word “fulfilled” therefore belongs to the policy process, not merely to a count of prefix objects.

Subtracting 199 from 307 gives 108. That number is not the number of splits. One /17 can produce many /24s; a /23 can produce two; a source block can leave a remainder; and the public material does not reveal the issued-size mix. Nor can 142,592 be treated as the number of addresses allocated. It is the address capacity represented by the listed input prefixes.

A public receipt does not need recipient names

The missing record can be small. For each distribution, ARIN could publish a versioned receipt containing:

  • the source-inventory date and hash;
  • each cleared source prefix, or a cryptographic commitment to the complete source set;
  • a privacy-safe histogram of issued /22, /23 and /24 prefixes;
  • the address total issued and the address total retained as remainder;
  • a source-to-child split reference, without applicant or ticket identity;
  • separately defined counts for allocated, declined, transfer-fulfilled and otherwise removed requests;
  • the packing-rule version and the final conservation check.

Such a receipt would not expose business plans, need assessments, contacts or queue identities. It would answer a simpler question: can the published inputs and outcomes be made to balance under the published rules?

That balance matters because the same cleared-block list serves another audience. ARIN asks blocklist operators to use it to remove reputation inherited from previous registrants. Yet a source prefix can be broader than the block later issued. A split map would help downstream users understand the scope and timing of reuse without claiming that any listed address actually suffered a routing, geolocation or email-delivery problem.

ARIN’s current waiting-list page says the next distribution is planned on or about 1 October 2026. That future date is not a deadline already missed, and it says nothing about the July run’s correctness. It is simply the next opportunity to publish the input, the output and the bridge at the same time.

Evidence boundary

The frozen sources establish the announcement totals, the 199-row input inventory, its CIDR capacity, the non-correspondence warning and the governing allocation rules. They do not establish the recipient list, issued-size mix, unused remainder, allocation order, internal review result, blocklist state or any operational harm. This article reports a missing public crosswalk, not a failed distribution.

Sources