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

Troubling for IPv6 adoption

[Ironchew]

Now ISPs and core networks have another excuse not to transition to IPv6. It will destroy this "market". 2^32 addresses is now a feature, not a bug.

Re:Troubling for IPv6 adoption

[Ironchew]

Knowing the greedy telecom companies, they'll try and sucker us all into ISP-level NAT first. After all, NAT works fine if home users are good consumers, passively web-surfing and connecting to "content providers" for any server needs.

Routing prevents "market" from working

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not possible to sell individual addresses. Period. It is not possible to sell small allocations between networks either. You can't keep your /28 address space if you move. Minimum space is /24 and that has to be assigned by the registrar or you "buy it" from someone with the blessing of the registrar. Of course, they would not allow the IP address space to be fragmented as that would cause more problems than it solves.

This is akin to routing phone numbers. In the past, numbers were hardwired to specific access areas. This remains true for most part today. The exception is today you can route phone numbers via IP (ie. internet). This allows us to have a market for phone numbers.

Is this possible with IP addresses? Sure! We "just" need a larger, more flexible address space where IPv4 can be assigned to. We could even call it something like, I don't know, IPv6. Then when network transitions to this space, the old IPv4 could use inventions like tunneling and IPSec to route IPv4 addresses over IPv6 for legacy applications thereby allowing individual IPv4 address to be portable!

Why does everything have to be monetized?

[hawguy]

Why does everything have to be monetized? Why can't ARIN just reclaim blocks that are not well utilized and reissue them? Does HP really need two /8 blocks?

Re:Why does everything have to be monetized?

[mysidia]

Why does everything have to be monetized? Why can't ARIN just reclaim blocks that are not well utilized and reissue them? Does HP really need two /8 blocks?

Maybe ARIN can just reclaim blocks, that are not "well utilized", but you'll need to explain how you want it to work. Once you make a proposal, then ARIN can either accept it, or the community will have explained why the proposal cannot work.

If you want ARIN to reclaim blocks, subscribe to the policy mailing list ARIN-PPML and champion your policy proposal that will result in ARIN reclaiming blocks; follow the ARIN PDP to submit a formal proposal. Build consensus; if people on the mailing list agree with you, your proposal might become policy .

Be prepared to show up in person at an ARIN meeting to defend your proposal, explain, and justify, as required by the policy development process. You'll need to provide a proposal for exactly how the reclaiming process should work, what should be subject to reclamation, and address any major concerns.

If you can't even do that -- then the reason ARIN "can't" "just reclaim blocks", is that noone has provided a reasonable acceptable policy proposal that permits ARIN to accomplish it .

Re:Why does everything have to be monetized?

[grcumb]

Because I'm more comfortable with buyers and sellers coming to mutually-agreeable terms for the transfer rather than some centralized bureaucracy decided what constitutes "well-utilized" and seizing them against the consent of the owners. Besides the general dislike for top-down authority, the decentralized decision-making process will likely yield (overall) better results for determining what is "well-utilized" and what isn't based on the preferences of the stakeholders.

Then you should run, not walk, away from your computer and never access the Internet ever again.

I don't know if you're aware of it, but oligarchic cliques of so-called 'scientists' and 'researchers' from ivory tower elitist academic institutions have been controlling your Internet since its inception. Not too long ago, one man (one man) was responsible for ccTLD management. The hubris!

It's because of this cabal of anti-market conspirators that the Internet is such a ramshackle digital hodge-podge driven by socialist ideologies that allow people access to anything - anything! - for free.

Happily, the Captains of Commerce are working even as we speak to save us from this intolerable freedom to share.

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:Have /21 pre arin block for sale

[jcurran]

If it''s registered in the ARIN service region, then its subject to policies developed by the community in this region for transfers. Go to www.arin.net and click on "Got IPv4 Addresses" for details.
Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN

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

[Kjella]

Dual stack, they will all still use an IPv4 address. If all ISPs had done this years ago and we had slowly phased out IPv4 in favor of IPv6 this would have worked. Now it will do nothing to lessen the blow of the brick wall we're running into.

legacy blocks

[jcurran]

Incorrect. Blocks allocated prior to ARIN are still maintained in the ARIN database accordingly to community policies. This includes processing contract, updates, being reclaimed, etc.
/John
John Curran President and CEO
ARIN

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,