ARIN 58 questions single-block IPv4 Waiting List fulfillment rule

Four blocks on the slide, one in your hand: ARIN's waitlist math

Why it matters

ARIN's own example puts four separate /24 blocks on the table. Its current rules let a qualifying applicant take one. The question is whether neat routing still deserves the last word on a scarce address queue.

Daniel Kade23 October 2026 at 20:52 UTCReading Time 2 minLast update: 23 October 2026

ARIN asked whether IPv4 Waiting List requests should still receive only one contiguous block.

Summary

At ARIN 58, staff asked whether the IPv4 Waiting List's one-contiguous-block rule still serves applicants and the available address pool.
In ARIN's hypothetical four-/24 example, a /22-qualified applicant willing to accept /24 gets one /24 and exits the queue. Four separate /24s cannot be bundled for that request.

ARIN put four /24 blocks on a slide. It gave the waiting applicant one. Chief Experience Officer John Sweeting's 22 October policy report drew that little scene to show how the rule works, not to claim there were four blocks sitting idle in a real stockroom. The applicant qualifies for /22, agrees to take as little as /24, receives a single /24 and leaves the Waiting List. The other three blocks remain available for other eligible requests.

The machinery is written into the Number Resource Policy Manual. Section 4.1.8.2 bars partial fulfillment; section 4.1.6 requires a single continuous address range. ARIN staff therefore cannot add four separate /24s into one /22-size delivery. An applicant who accepts the smaller block has solved an immediate address need, but may have to find the rest elsewhere. In a market where /24 is the smallest routable unit many operators want, that is a real choice, not typographical housekeeping.

The ARIN 58 Day 1 recap says participants discussed Waiting List abuse and the difference between receiving /24 and /22. Sweeting asked the community whether the multiblock restriction, the aggregation requirement and allocations larger than /24 still make sense. Those are questions in a policy meeting. Nobody announced a new issuance rule on that slide.

Aggregation has an operational case: one continuous allocation is simpler to register and route than a collection of fragments. But ARIN's example prices that simplicity in the applicant's address allotment. Four pieces of metal can sit on the counter, and the rule still asks for one tidy shape. The policy debate is finally about that price.