Previous big spike at beginning of chart was also in November, in 2019. Can someone knowledgable explain why is this the case?
"Since the RIPE NCC began operations in 1992, we have been responsible for distributing IP addresses and AS Numbers in our service region. In November 2019, we exhausted our remaining IPv4 pool. This means that networks in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia are no longer able to receive “new” IPv4 addresses from us that haven’t previously been used by another network."
Black Friday subnet prices are hard to ignore.
It would certainly be nice if the chart scrolled and went back further.
The graph starts in November 2019 because that is when the waitlist system was introduced. There's not point in going back further because further back the waitlist didn't exist.
So this really big increase in November 2022 is a brand new phenomenon, and the waiting list has been sitting at 0 for the entire time since the 2019 increase.
What's causing the big increase now?
If you look at the graph for the address pool (https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/ipv4/ipv4-pool) you see that the number of available addresses rose starting from February 2020 and then was rather constant until decreasing again in August/September before running out now. To me the timing looks like it's Covid related, I guess many companies didn't want to change their addresses while the admins couldn't get physical access to the servers...
RIPE ran out of spare addresses at the end of 2019. After the queueing system was instituted some organisations must have returned some address blocks, which were used during 2020 and 2021, and my guess is that these have now run out. (it could just be that the return rate is below the request rate, but IMO the graph looks too straight for that).