Markets For IPv4 Addresses Emerging

netbuzz writes "An active marketplace for buying and selling IPv4 addresses is materializing, and policymakers are clarifying the rules associated with how network operators can monetize this increasingly scarce resource. At least four websites are serving as brokers for organizations that want to sell or lease IPv4 address space. The activity comes in the wake of Nortel's recent sale of 666,624 IPv4 addresses to Microsoft for $7.5 million, or $11.25 per address."

Comments

Re:I've got a large number of IPv6 addresses for s

[Kjella]

When I'm on IPv4 and you're on IPv6, whose do you think will get blamed for it being broken? Oh, yours because I can access 99% of the Internet just fine, just not you. Everybody who wants a server or just have their Internet work "normally" will want an IPv4 address.

Sure, eventually IPv6 will work all that shit out. But mostly people would rather pay a few bucks and make it somebody else's problem. You try it, switch an ISP's customers to IPv6 and watch the wires glow as people go nuts because their silly little app from 1997 doesn't support IPv6 addresses. I dare you and your $11/ip router to do it.

Re:It's official: IPv6 is for poor folk!

[jd]

Economics theory refers to what you're talking about as a Giffen Good. As prices rise, so does the appeal and therefore so does the demand. The usual laws regarding supply-and-demand, etc, don't work. Prices will rise to what the market will bear, but as prices rise the desirability ensures that the markets will always bear just that little bit more. Which is why you get market bubbles in the first place. The greater the overpricing, the greater the prestige in owning the commodity.

Ultimately, all bubbles burst and when the IPv4 market bubble burts it is going to cause a LOT of pain because none of those caught in the bubble will have bothered preparing for IPv6. They'll assume that there'll always be some way to extend the range, some way to inflate the bubble still further. We've all seen similar posts on Slashdot even, where people should be smarter than that,