Merit Network Inc. is a non-profit, member-owned organization that runs a regional Research & Education (REN) network in the state of Michigan. Merit has twelve governing member institutions which are public universities. It serves as their internet service provider and provides them with IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. In October 2017, Merit assessed their IPv4 address usage and determined that several of the governing members could run out of IPv4 addresses in five years if they continued at their current growth rate. Merit presented these results to its governing board members and recommended a program that would help them begin or further IPv6 deployment on their campus networks. [Read the full article at Team ARIN – Blog]