Nicolás Antoniello's Global Registry Met an Empty IPv4 Pool

Nicolás Antoniello Wanted a Sixth Registry. IANA's IPv4 Drawer Was Empty.

Why it matters

Global networks crossed five registry regions with one address plan. Antoniello proposed a virtual desk to serve them. LACNIC's own impact analysis found that the desk needed five operators, a new system and an IPv4 pool IANA no longer had.

Sofia Ren3 November 2026Reading Time 2 minLast update: 3 November 2026

Nicolás Antoniello; identity grounded in a named LACNIC photo. The five-desk setting and empty drawer are imagined.

Summary

Nicolás Antoniello's 2018 LACNIC proposal envisaged a virtual Global Internet Registry run jointly by the five existing RIRs for organisations active in more than one region.
LACNIC staff pointed to unresolved eligibility and policy conflicts, a new registration system, changes to ICP-2 and an empty IANA IPv4 pool. The proposal was marked abandoned on 28 June 2018.

Antoniello began with a real operator's irritation: a company can use one ASN and one address plan across several continents, while registry membership still arrives in regional boxes. His LAC-2018-1 proposal offered a virtual Global Internet Registry, or GIR, for organisations that could prove operations in more than one RIR region. It would be a sixth registry without a sixth organisation. The five RIRs would operate it together.

The proposed desk would take IP addresses and ASNs from IANA, register them as global resources and ask applicants for a network diagram and addressing plan. Where two regional policies conflicted, the GIR would choose a requirement and justify the choice. Antoniello also sketched a fee: more than one regional membership, less than joining every region where the network operates. That was an institutional answer to a commercial and routing problem. It also handed a new body discretion over which regional rule would win.

LACNIC staff read the sketch as a long construction project. What proved multi-region operations? Did a company need legal incorporation in each region? A new registry would require changes to ICP-2 and coordination across all five RIR systems. The staff analysis then reached the bluntest line: IANA had no IPv4 blocks left to allocate to the proposed GIR. A global IPv4 desk with no new IPv4 stock would have to explain its supply before it could open.

The policy system records discussion from 19 January 2018 and abandonment on 28 June. It records no causal verdict connecting any one staff objection to that outcome. The filed proposal and impact analysis establish the design tension: Antoniello recognised that packets and customers cross regional borders; the proposed cure placed another registry decision between a network and its numbers. Five custodians could share the new counter. They could not conjure a fresh IPv4 pool behind it.

Source: LACNIC's original LAC-2018-1 proposal, staff impact analysis and status record.