Key Insights from the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report

The latest RIPE NCC Network Trends Report is one of the few documents that shows, with real data, how the internet is evolving at the infrastructure level: IP address usage, routing security, traffic growth, and regional differences across Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. For teams managing domains, hosting, VPS and dedicated servers, this report is not just interesting reading; it is a planning tool. It explains why IPv4 keeps getting more expensive, why IPv6 traffic graphs finally start to bend upwards, and why routing security (RPKI, filtering, hijack prevention) is no longer just an enterprise concern. In this article, we walk through the most important findings of the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report and translate them into practical decisions for your servers, networks and long‑term hosting strategy at dchost.com.

What Is RIPE NCC and Why Its Network Trends Matter

RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. It allocates and registers IP address space (IPv4, IPv6) and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) for the region, and runs measurement platforms that give a very detailed view of how networks behave in real life.

The RIPE NCC Network Trends Report brings together several data sources:

• IP address allocation and transfer statistics (who is getting which IPv4/IPv6 resources, and how fast)
• Routing information from BGP (reachability, path changes, hijacks, leaks)
• Traffic and latency measurements from probes and anchors across the region
• Operational incident reports and community feedback from network operators

For operators of hosting platforms, VPS fleets and dedicated server environments, this report is useful because it validates what you are already feeling on the ground: IPv4 scarcity and price pressure, the steady rise of IPv6, the need for better BGP hygiene, and the impact of regional congestion or outages on latency-sensitive services.

We have previously covered topics like IPv4 exhaustion and price surges from a hosting perspective and accelerating IPv6 adoption in real networks. The RIPE NCC Network Trends Report gives a regional, data‑driven backdrop to those discussions and helps you decide how fast you need to move.

IPv4 Exhaustion, Pricing and Address Market Signals in the Report

One of the strongest signals in the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report is that IPv4 scarcity is structural, not temporary. The RIPE NCC IPv4 pool has been effectively exhausted since 2019, and new allocations are tiny compared to historic ones. What we see now is a secondary market of IPv4 transfers and leases, and the report tracks how active that market is across different countries and ASNs.

Key IPv4‑related trends highlighted in the report typically include:

• Slow but steady growth in IPv4 transfer volumes as organisations buy, sell or consolidate legacy blocks.
• Increasing fragmentation: more smaller prefixes announced (/23, /24 instead of larger aggregates), which has routing and table‑size implications.
• Regional price variations driven by regulatory, economic and demand differences.
• More aggressive conservation within existing networks: tighter address planning, carrier‑grade NAT, and reclamation of unused ranges.

For a hosting provider like dchost.com, these trends translate into several concrete realities:

• IPv4 addresses are an asset that must be planned, audited and priced carefully. You cannot treat them as an unlimited, flat‑cost resource anymore.
• Service design has to assume IPv4 constraints: shared IPv4 with SNI for HTTPS, IPv4/IPv6 dual‑stack, and smarter use of proxy layers.
• Abuse management becomes more important: every blacklist or reputation issue that forces you to rotate IPs has a real financial cost.

If you want a deeper dive into the drivers of IPv4 cost and scarcity, we have a dedicated article on why IPv4 address prices are hitting record highs and how to protect your infrastructure budget. The RIPE NCC Network Trends Report essentially confirms that these forces are not going away; they are becoming the new normal.

IPv6 Adoption and Traffic Patterns: From Graphs to Real Decisions

The other side of the IP address story in the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report is IPv6 adoption. RIPE NCC has excellent visibility into how many networks originate IPv6 prefixes, which ASNs peer over IPv6, and what proportion of user traffic flows over IPv6 versus IPv4 in different countries.

Patterns that often emerge in the report include:

• Strong growth in IPv6 capability at the network level (more ASNs announcing IPv6, more prefixes in BGP).
• Uneven user‑side adoption: some countries and ISPs show 40–60%+ IPv6 user traffic, while others remain in single digits.
• Better performance over IPv6 in many cases, because paths are shorter or less congested compared to IPv4.
• Lagging IPv6 deployment in certain enterprise and hosting environments that still rely heavily on IPv4‑only systems.

From a hosting perspective, these findings matter for several reasons:

1. Latency and performance: If major eyeball networks in your target region prefer IPv6, serving your content only over IPv4 may be leaving performance on the table.
2. Resilience: Dual‑stack connectivity means that if one protocol path suffers a routing issue or congestion, the other can sometimes offer a cleaner route.
3. Future‑proofing IP needs: New services, especially API‑heavy or IoT‑adjacent workloads, will increasingly expect first‑class IPv6 support.

At dchost.com, we see the same curve in practice: more customers enabling AAAA records and testing their sites and APIs over IPv6, especially after reading our guides on why IPv6 adoption is accelerating and how to phase it in and step‑by‑step IPv6 setup on VPS servers.

The Network Trends Report reinforces a simple message: if you start planning IPv6 when IPv4 finally becomes unbearable, you are late. The right time is when you still have breathing room on IPv4, so you can test, dual‑stack and migrate calmly.

Routing Security Trends: RPKI, BGP Hijacks and Filtering

Another recurring theme in the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report is routing security. The report often shows statistics around:

• RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) adoption: number of prefixes with Route Origin Authorisations (ROAs).
• Validation and filtering: the share of BGP announcements that are invalid according to RPKI, and how many networks are dropping them.
• BGP incident trends: hijacks, route leaks, misconfigurations and how long they remain visible.

From a high level, the trend is positive: more operators create ROAs, and more transit providers and IXPs deploy origin validation. But coverage is still incomplete, and misconfigurations do appear. For hosting and data center networks, the implications are concrete:

• Protect your own prefixes: If you announce your own PA/PI space, RPKI ROAs are now a baseline control, not an optional extra.
• Choose upstreams carefully: Prefer transit and peering partners who implement RPKI validation and have clear routing security policies.
• Plan for visibility: Use RIPE NCC tools (like RIPEstat and RIS) or third‑party monitors to see how your prefixes are seen globally and catch anomalies early.

Even if you rely on provider‑aggregated address space from your hosting partner instead of your own ASN, you still benefit from their routing hygiene. At dchost.com we treat BGP configuration, prefix filtering and (where applicable) RPKI as part of the underlying reliability story for all services: domains, shared hosting, VPS, dedicated servers and colocation.

Traffic Growth, IXPs and Latency Across the RIPE Region

The RIPE NCC Network Trends Report also spends time on traffic patterns and interconnection. By combining measurement data and IXP statistics, it paints a picture of where traffic is growing fastest, which metropolitan areas act as hubs, and how latency evolves between countries and regions.

Some of the recurring observations include:

• Steady overall growth in traffic volumes, with occasional spikes tied to major events, software releases or streaming demand.
• Increasing role of regional IXPs in keeping local traffic local, reducing tromboning via distant hubs.
• Noticeable latency differences between locations that are well‑peered and those that depend on indirect paths.
• More diverse paths as networks deploy additional upstreams or peer at multiple IXPs for resilience.

For hosting and application owners, this data helps in two ways:

1. Data center placement and region choice: If your key users are in a particular country or metro area that is well served by IXPs, placing servers close to those hubs can bring a measurable drop in latency.
2. Realistic expectations about cross‑border latency: If the report shows persistent higher RTTs between certain regions, you can design caching, CDN and replication strategies accordingly.

We have a separate article on how data center location and server region affect SEO and latency. The RIPE NCC Network Trends Report gives you the macro‑level data to support those decisions, especially if you are deciding between multiple European locations for your workloads.

What These Trends Mean for Hosting, VPS and Data Center Strategy

The real value of the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report emerges when you map its findings to your concrete infrastructure decisions. At dchost.com, when we review such reports, we translate them into four main areas: address strategy, protocol support, routing policy and capacity planning.

1. IP Address Strategy: Treat IPv4 and IPv6 Differently

Given the clear signals about IPv4 scarcity and IPv6 growth, your strategy should not treat both protocols as interchangeable.

• IPv4:
  • Consider IPv4 an expensive, constrained resource dedicated to services that truly need public IPv4 reachability.
  • Use techniques such as SNI (Server Name Indication) to host multiple HTTPS sites behind a single IPv4 on shared hosting or reverse proxy layers.
  • Audit and reclaim unused addresses regularly; idle /29s or /28s add up.
• IPv6:
  • Deploy IPv6 by default on VPS and dedicated servers, even if some customers are not actively asking for it yet.
  • Ensure DNS templates create both A and AAAA records where appropriate.
  • Design internal systems (monitoring, logging, firewalling) to treat IPv6 as a first‑class citizen, not as an exotic edge case.

This asymmetric treatment of IPv4 and IPv6 is perfectly aligned with what the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report shows: IPv4 is constrained and getting pricier; IPv6 is abundant and increasingly used.

2. Protocol and Feature Support: Make Dual‑Stack the Baseline

The report’s evidence of growing IPv6 traffic and better IPv6 performance in many networks supports one clear recommendation: dual‑stack should be your baseline for serious projects.

On a technical level, this means:

• VPS and dedicated server templates come with IPv6 pre‑configured (static addresses and proper firewall rules).
• Shared hosting environments support IPv6 virtualhosts, not just IPv4.
• Reverse proxies, WAF and CDN integrations handle IPv6 properly, preserving source IP information (X‑Forwarded‑For, real‑IP) for logging and rate‑limiting.

If you are currently IPv4‑only and planning your transition, our guides on accelerating IPv6 adoption without breaking things and choosing between IPv6‑only and dual‑stack hosting can help you define a realistic roadmap.

3. Routing Policy and Security: Raise the Bar

With more attention on routing incidents and RPKI in the Network Trends Report, the bar for acceptable BGP hygiene continues to rise. For hosting and network teams, this implies:

• Internal discipline: maintain accurate IRR/RPKI data for your prefixes, keep prefix filters tight, and avoid unnecessary deaggregation.
• Vendor and partner selection: prefer upstreams and IXPs that actively deploy RPKI validation and transparent route filtering policies.
• Monitoring: integrate prefix visibility checks into your regular NOC routine, not just as an afterthought during incidents.

Routing security is not just an ISP concern. A hijacked prefix can take your VPS cluster, e‑commerce store or SaaS platform effectively offline for entire regions. Thinking about BGP safety as part of your uptime and SLA story is now standard practice.

4. Capacity Planning and Data Center Footprint

Traffic growth and peering data in the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report also inform how you size and place your infrastructure. When we at dchost.com review such datasets, we usually ask:

• Which regions in our service footprint are seeing the fastest traffic growth, and do we have enough headroom there?
• Are there IXPs or carriers we should connect to in order to keep traffic local and reduce RTT for specific markets?
• How do these observations align with our broader data center expansion strategy and sustainability goals?

Capacity planning is not just about adding more servers; it is about putting them in the right place, on the right uplinks, with the right IP strategy and routing policies. The RIPE NCC Network Trends Report gives you a data‑driven context to make those decisions less guesswork‑driven and more evidence‑based.

Practical Action Plan for Network and Hosting Teams

Reading the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report is one thing; turning it into concrete steps is another. Here is a pragmatic checklist we recommend for hosting, SaaS and infrastructure teams:

Step 1: Review Your Current IP Inventory

• List all IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes you use (directly or via your provider).
• Identify idle or under‑utilised IPv4 ranges and plan reclamation.
• Verify that your reverse DNS (PTR), WHOIS and RIPE database entries are accurate and consistent.

Step 2: Define a Realistic IPv6 Roadmap

• Ensure all new projects are designed for dual‑stack from day one.
• Create a simple migration plan for existing services: DNS changes, firewall rules, monitoring and logging adjustments.
• Test end‑to‑end: website, APIs, email and monitoring tools over IPv6.

Step 3: Harden Your Routing and Upstream Choices

• If you have your own ASN and prefixes, deploy RPKI ROAs and keep them maintained.
• Validate that your upstreams and peers implement basic best practices (IRR/RPKI filtering, max‑prefix limits, clear communities).
• Set up alerting for unusual route changes affecting your prefixes.

Step 4: Align Data Center Strategy with Traffic Reality

• Map your user base against RIPE region latency and traffic trends: do your main markets match your current hosting locations?
• Consider additional regions or POPs where latency improvements would directly help conversions or user experience.
• Integrate sustainability and efficiency goals alongside capacity, drawing on our guide to data center sustainability initiatives that actually work.

Step 5: Communicate Changes Internally and to Customers

• Document your IPv6, routing and capacity strategies so that sales, support and DevOps teams are aligned.
• Educate application teams about dual‑stack testing, IP logging and firewall implications.
• For customers on VPS, dedicated or colocation, share clear how‑to guides (for example, our IPv6 and DNS/SSL articles) so they can benefit from the improved network capabilities.

Looking Ahead: Turning RIPE NCC Network Trends into Concrete Plans

The RIPE NCC Network Trends Report is not just a snapshot of where the internet stands today; it is a hint of where things are heading in the next 3–5 years. IPv4 scarcity and secondary market pricing are here to stay. IPv6 capability and traffic share will keep climbing. Routing security expectations will become stricter, and peering‑driven latency improvements will reward those who plan their data center footprints carefully.

At dchost.com, we use these signals to shape how we design our IP addressing policies, how we build dual‑stack hosting offerings, how we interconnect in data centers, and how we advise customers planning new projects. If you are evaluating your next move — consolidating shared hosting into VPS, deploying a new SaaS platform, or expanding into new regions — aligning your plan with the trends highlighted by RIPE NCC will save you both surprises and cost later.

If you want to discuss how these trends affect your specific setup — domain portfolio, hosting stack, VPS and dedicated servers, or colocation footprint — our team can help you translate the RIPE NCC Network Trends Report into a practical roadmap tailored to your environment.