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Microsoft Buys 666,000 IP Addresses
RabidMonkey writes "Microsoft has managed to purchase 666,624 IP addresses from the bankrupt Canadian company Nortel for $7.5 million. This works out to $11.25/ip. An exact list of blocks isn't available yet. There has been a lot of discussion on NANOG about whether this allowed or not, and what the implications to the dwindling IPv4 pool may be. Is this the first of many such moves as IPv4 address space has run out? Will ARIN step in and block the sale/transfer? How long will such measures drag out the eventual necessity of IPv6?"
Fucking Devils...
... I'll bet they're all in the 169.* block.
#DeleteChrome
I always knew Microsoft was Evil. :)
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Does this mean that companies will start selling IP addresses for increasing amounts of money? should I buy a block of 100 as an investment now? A bit like buying up domain names?
What are your intentions with this block of IP addresses, Microsoft? To whore them out, or help speed the adoption of ipv6 by sitting on them, or neither?
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
it is so horrible that microsoft are bailing out a bankrupt businss buy buying assets from them for more than what they are worth... allowing the company to pass the money down to employees that have lost wages... i cant think of anything worse
portfolio
So what you really mean is 667, 000 not 666, 000. But that's not quite as fun :P
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
They are hemorraging assets left and right. By this time next year I doubt there will be any employees left at "Nortel". It's too bad because they were a major player for so long. That NT-1 switch is a real work horse.
You never know...
Does this mean that companies will start selling IP addresses for increasing amounts of money? should I buy a block of 100 as an investment now? A bit like buying up domain names?
Not bloody likely. Most likely Microsoft will dump what they don't need. With IPv6 around the corner it's like buying 666,000 ice cream cones on a hot Summer day - better use them up before they are no use anymore.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Only 1 address will used by MS, the other 666,623 are for Northwind Traders.
Looks like the closely packed parallel universes are colliding again. We got a Time Cube infestation here, folks.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It is pre 1997 and pre-ARIN, which is not subject to any of the transfer restrictions or guidelines ARIN as since imposed. Since it is grandfathered in, it is not subject to the annual maintenance dues. Let me know if anyone is interested.
In order for IPv6 to be rolled out, I fear the FCC will need to get involved (as with HDTV). And that's just for the US.
I have no doubt the US will be among the last countries to get widespread IPv6 adoptation. Most major Swedish ISPs (Telia, etc) say they will start giving everyone both IPv4 and IPv6 in 2013, and drop IPv4 by 2015. They may delay, the IPv4 drop will depend on how the rest of the world are doing, but still: There will be no local market for IPv4 by 2014. Maby you can still sell address space to poor people like those in the US, who knows, all I'm saying is that the local market, and probably the whole EU market, for IPv4 will be dead soon.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Fuck yeah, I'm going to park on this Comcast DHCP assigned address for the next 10 years then sell if for a fortune!
Yes, adoption of IPv6 is coming along VERY smoothly; large corporations are being EXTREMELY cooperative about converting to the new standard, thereby ensuring that we will NOT abruptly run out of internet addresses -- in keeping with their usual policy of extreme foresightedness.
*rolls eyes, jerk-off gesture*
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Of course it does. I believe the Mayans knew we would run out of IPv4 addresses near the end of 2012. They knew that would be the end of the world so they didn't do a calendar past that.
Sales of IP addresses have been common place since about the late 90's or so. I had a class C block for 15 years and had offers many times, but I turned my block into ARIN about 1.5 years ago (yes, it was assigned to me for personal use before the Internet was commercialized, they used to do this). Microsoft has done nothing different from what many other companies have been doing for years. I bet Google has bought IP addresses from companies and individuals. This story only exists because it's "Microsoft".
Why would the ISPs care about playing havoc? NATing will break P2P (Which competes with the ISPs own television service), Video on demand (Same), VoIP (Which competes with the ISPs phone service)... they can screw over any potential competition, and in a completly deniable way.
No organization should ever need more than a few class Cs of publicly routable IP space.
You're thinking backwards, every endpoint should ideally have a public IP, NAT breaks the end to end model and makes software much more difficult to write.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
i need to see proof! i'm not investing my money in a more expensive "renewable" IPv6 pipe dream!
i doubt that we're even running out of IPv4 addresses. the world doesn't work like that, and i'd be damned if i'm going to give up my net-enabled gadget way of life in the name of your flawed science!
IPv4 depletion is a MYTH perpetrated by left-wing pinkos trying to cripple the free market and personal freedoms.
They may be figuring that during the transition (or after) that having a big block of them, especially for legacy services would be worthwhile. There's probably a lot of infrastructure out there that won't ever switch to IPv6 gracefully (if at all), but might be important. Sort of like IE6 that won't die. I suspect there will be a lot of custom equipment/servers that will need to keep plugged into IPv4 long after the rest of us have moved to IPv6.
It's not like 7 million dollars is a lot of money to MS, and if it turns out to be wasted it won't be a noticeable loss.
Bah, there's an easy solution anyway.... just talk to the creators of CSI and see if you can get in on the 427.x.x.x block.
Quite obvious if you ask me...
ARIN has no say over these. They are legacy blocks (allocated before 1997, the founding of ARIN). See http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xml
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I agree, at the moment that's what will happen - and arguably that's the rational response, at the level of the firm if not at the level of the net as a whole. But in the longer term I believe a market for IPv4 addresses will have two consequences:
1. Organisations that are currently sitting on more address space than they need will start to use it more efficiently so they can sell or lease the surplus. That will ease the address space shortage.
2. New organisations, which don't face a large upgrade cost if they choose IPv6, will buy a few IPv4 addresses for public-facing assets such as websites and mailservers that absolutely have to be reachable by IPv4-only customers. Everything else will be done with IPv6. Then a few years down the line, someone within each organisation will ask, "What share of our revenue comes through the IPv4 site, and how much is that site costing us?" Organisations on the margin will start to drop IPv4 support, creating extra pressure for the remaining IPv4-only organisations to upgrade.