"Since every region has had IP address space available to it, there hasn't been a lot of demand for inter-regional transfers," Curran said.

ARIN won't transfer any of its remaining fresh blocks to Asia, Curran said. The so-called inter-regional transfers will only be for already assigned addresses that a third party in North America has to give up or wants to unload. There is an established system for doing those transactions, which must be approved and carried out by the RIR. So-called facilitators act as brokers for the addresses, matching up sellers and buyers and helping them negotiate prices. A at ARIN's website lists more than 90 IPv4 blocks that have been transferred.

Most of that activity has been driven by bankruptcies, because qualified applicants in North America can still get new addresses directly from ARIN, according to Curran. He expects inter-regional transfers to accelerate the activity.

One facilitator, Kalorama Group, said the new policy will make its job easier and may affect the market for IPv4 addresses.

"Today, when we have a demand party coming from a region outside of ARIN, we need to match them with supply in their own region," said Josh Bourne, Kalorama's managing director. Opening up transfers should make more potential partners available.