Last week we improved the format of the IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry. It is now much easier to see which address space is available for allocation to RIRs and which address space is reserved for Multicast and Future Use.
We made other changes, too. The IPv4 registry used to report that a lot of /8s were allocated to “Various Registries”. That wasn’t very helpful to anyone; it was a bit like saying “we don’t know”. In fact, the RIRs have been providing DNS and Whois services for addresses in these /8s but the IANA IPv4 registry didn’t indicate which RIR to consult because addresses in each of these /8s are often used by organisations in different RIR regions.
The RIRs and ICANN staff worked together to provide a more useful registry. Each of these /8s is now shown as “Administered by” one RIR. That RIR manages the reverse DNS for the /8 and provides a Whois service with a referral to the appropriate RIR when necessary.
We hope it’s much more useful and transparent than before.