Summary

  • LACNIC estimates that the last request on its IPv4 waitlist will wait at least 12 years and can receive no more than 1,024 addresses, a /22.
  • A queue position is not an allocation: it can move behind an earlier ticket, must survive a later eligibility review and disappears if the applicant is bought, sold or merged.
  • Recovered space is quarantined for at least six months, but LACNIC does not guarantee that it was never announced, filtered or blacklisted; rehabilitation belongs to the recipient.

Twelve years is an estimate, not a delivery date

LACNIC says it opened the waitlist on 19 August 2020, when it assigned the last IPv4 block then available. The queue orders demand against whatever space later returns through recovery or surrender. Its present page gives the applicant at the back two limits that must be read together: at least 12 years of waiting and at most 1,024 addresses.

Neither number is a promise. LACNIC says the waiting estimate rests on historical recovery patterns and may change because the quantity of space that will return cannot be predicted. A /22 is also a ceiling, not a reserved parcel. The queue therefore records an administrative sequence before it records any resource right.

The change from LACNIC’s 2024 reporting makes the uncertainty visible. That annual report said the list had grown by 22 percent and estimated a wait of about nine years. The current page says at least 12. Those snapshots do not establish a linear trend, but they do show why a date calculated from past recovery cannot be treated as a service-level commitment.

The place itself is conditional

Entry requires more than need. The applicant must be a LACNIC member, must already hold IPv6 resources and must be making an initial IPv4 request. Section 11.1 of the policy manual excludes ordinary organisations that previously received IPv4 space from LACNIC or its regional predecessors. Critical infrastructure has a defined exception; everyone else receives only one opportunity from this reserve, between /24 and /22.

Order is also more qualified than the phrase “first come, first served” suggests. Requests use ticket chronology, but LACNIC warns that a visible place can move if a ticket submitted earlier is approved later. Near the date on which a quarantined block will be released, the requests at the front are analysed again. Passing into the queue is therefore not the final approval that produces an allocation.

The position attaches to the organisation, not to its owners or transaction documents. LACNIC says it cannot be transferred and is lost in a purchase, sale or merger. That rule prevents a queue position from becoming a separately traded option, but it also means that twelve years of waiting may not survive the corporate change that keeps a network financed or operating.

A recovered block arrives with operational history

Every block distributed through this phase has spent at least six months in quarantine. That pause reduces immediate reuse risk; it does not erase the block’s past. LACNIC says it cannot guarantee that the addresses were never announced or that they are absent from filters and blocklists. The recipient is responsible for rehabilitation.

This is a material boundary. The registry can verify the holder, apply policy and change the authoritative registration. It cannot make every external network, reputation service or filtering system update at the same moment. An applicant may therefore wait years for a small block and still face an uncertain interval before the addresses work cleanly across the systems on which customers depend.

The policy adds another restraint: a block received from the reserve cannot be transferred for three years. The queue is intended to support a new entrant’s network, not to create immediately marketable inventory. The rule limits arbitrage, but it also makes operational due diligence more important before acceptance.

The queue does not replace the transfer channel

LACNIC also recognises intra- and inter-regional IPv4 transfers. Its 2024 report counted 197 transferred blocks, 25 percent more than in 2023, while noting that more transactions did not mean more addresses moved. A separate listing service can introduce offering organisations, receiving organisations and optional brokers. LACNIC charges a non-refundable USD 200 administrative fee for one year of participation, keeps the listing visible only to participants and states that it neither joins the commercial bargain nor audits broker services.

The queue and the transfer channel respond to the same scarcity, but they produce different positions. A waitlist applicant seeks a small recovered allocation under membership, IPv6 and first-request conditions. A transfer recipient must satisfy transfer policy and find a counterparty, while price and commercial risk remain outside LACNIC’s role. The public record does not show how many applicants move from one channel to the other, so it cannot support a claim that every transfer is an escape from the queue.

Evidence boundary

The available sources establish the rules, published estimates and institutional roles. They do not disclose each applicant’s current rank, the future recovery schedule, the probability of approval, the cost of rehabilitating a block or the prices agreed in private transfers. “At least 12 years” is not a guaranteed maximum, and “at most 1,024 addresses” is not a promise that the successful applicant will receive a globally clean or immediately routable /22.

Sources