A recent AFRINIC cleanup exercise on the quarantined resources for the returned or reclaimed IPv4 address space has made available more number resources. Following this exercise, 618,496 IPv4 addresses, 15 /32 IPv6 prefixes and 80 AS Numbers (ASN) were released into the available pool. As a procedure, AFRINIC deletes all related objects from the AFRINIC whois database for the returned or reclaimed IPv4 address space and keep it in quarantine for twelve months or as long as the space is globally routed.

The clean up exercise ensures that these resources are not visible in the global routing table nor have associated objects in other Internet Routing Registry (IRR) databases. At the end of Phase 1 of the soft-landing and until no more than a /11 of non-reserved space is available in the 102/8 block, AFRINIC will begin issuing these IPv4 resources to resource members who will be notified about such reclaimed resources.