Slashdot Mirror
Sales of Unused IPv4 Addresses Gaining Steam
netbuzz writes "A growing number of U.S. carriers and enterprises are hedging their bets on IPv6 by purchasing blocks of unused IPv4 addresses through official channels or behind-the-scenes deals. There is certainly no shortage of stock, as these address brokers have blocks available that range from 65,000 to more than a million IPv4 addresses. And it's not just large companies and institutions benefiting, as one attorney who's involved in the market says he represents a woman who came into possession of a block of IPv4 address in the early '90s and now, 'She's in her 70s, and she's going to have a windfall.''"
A bust has been made in the digital district of NYC. Agent Friedeggs and his partner, Copbot 4X, have a perp handcuffed in the backseat of their cruiser that is now being piloted by Google's driving software to take him back to the precinct where he'll be booked.
... " He cuts himself off as a warning light goes off on Copbot's torso. "Jesus H. Tesla, they've hacked the GPS signal to our car!" Copbot morphs into a go a cart as Agent Friedeggs draws his Taser and slides across its hood. Cheesy synth horns flair up over wakka guitars as their silent electric motor spins them off down the street.
They approach the criminal's ancient Cadillac CTS and open the trunk. Inside is a briefcase packed with millions of little strips of white paper, each bearing an IPv4 address. Copbot 4X applies a small strip of multipurpose adhesive to his index finger with his mouth and reaches down to snag one of the strips. As he feeds it into his mouth and the ping trace times out he emits a satisfied Artoo Detoo whistle. "It's pure," he confirms as Friedeggs nods satisfactorily.
"You know, I think we're finally gonna catch these bastards. These addresses belong on display in the Guggenheim, not
My work here is dung.
Like drilling for oil, more efficient extraction techniques can efficiently harvest the (many) remaining IPv4 blocks. And let's face it: IPv6 is not favored by the man on the Clapham omnibus. He understands the clean format of IPv4, but IPv6 is just annoying! What's the deal anyway with 2^64 devices on your personal network? This is way over-specified. Some practical geeks need to come up with a clean extension to IPv4 (48 bits should be plenty) that uses the current dot formatting.
You cannot own an address, you lease it.
From who? Come on boys and girls, the person you lease something from is called an... umm... what's that word? Help me out?
They find a way (or pretend to), in much the same way as they find how to "own" an employee Facebook or Twitter account--if the law is not on their side, the post-nasty-legal-threat settlements will be.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
If it's a lease, why can't you sublease the remaining months on your lease of an address range?
In this case, ARIN, RIPE, or APNIC.
ford could've averted their recent financial woes by auctioning off their 16 million ip addresses http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-19-0-0-0-1
I will never sell my ip address for any amount of money! It's 127.0.0.1!
It follows me where ever I go - it's very valuable, too.
It seems that we have been running out of addresses for 10 years or something and everyone has been talking about moving to IPv6 since the late ninteties ? I am sure there is a limited range of numbers and the issue is real but also seems like fodder for sensationalist tech journal articles.
ACK
You do realize that GPS signals are completely passive, yes? The whole system works by computing your location relative to the GPS transmitters whose location are well known - it's impossible to hack something through the GPS signal.
So what happens when someone spams your GPS device with incorrect signals that lead you to believe that you're heading back to point A when in reality you're heading back to point B? Perhaps I should have used the word 'spoof' instead of 'hack' but the post itself is a joke.
Also, no Copbot would ever sample an unknown IP4 address like that, it might link him to malware or compromise his location.
I'm not aware of anyone being able to exploit the ping command in such a way today -- perhaps so in this future universe that will never exist ...
My work here is dung.
What utter and serious bullshit. You cannot own an address, you lease it.
Just like beer! Amirite?
Sure, windfall now, but next month when IPv6 day comes and all the IPv6 sites stay lit, they'll be worth a rapidly diminishing amount.
ArsTechnica has a nice piece about IPv6 and why it's not going to be such a disaster thing after all, add to that the IPv6-capable home routers that are actually being made (at last!) and the ISPs who are rolling out IPv6 networking to their customers... and it's all looking rosy.
The 70-year-old lady "owns" the lease. She is (apparently) selling her rights to those addresses. So, yes, a person can't "own an address", but you can own the rights to use it.
I'm well aware of at least one organization which owns a /8 network, and they don't need it. Within this organization, extremely few nodes are globally-routable, everything is firewalled up-stream, and all outbound internet traffic goes through proxies which actually mask the original class A so it's not obvious which organization the traffic is coming from.
Lab devices all get real, global IP addresses, even on small subnets. The whole thing is an insane waste when I'm quite quite sure that everything could easily be on a 10.x.x.x internal network.
I suspect they're just hoarding until the value is too high to not sell.
I almost picked up a class b in the early days but i knew i didn't 'need' it, so never did.
Of course never thought this 'internet' thing would ever be of the slightest interest to the average guy..
Doh/2
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That ISPs are buying all of them so they can monopolize the market. The small guys who little funds didn't do the several hundred milion dollar buying binges. Now if you want 4g for your next phone purchase it must be AT&T!
I could see companies like Cisco buying all of them too so they can force you to upgrade to newer routers with IPv6 support etc.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm of the opinion that Class A addresses were behind some of the large IT mergers. For example, DEC (16.0.0.0/8) was taken over by Compaq, who were later taken over by HP (15.0.0.0/8). So HP owns two adjacent Class A address spaces. That's got to be worth a pretty packet, and they don't really need 32 million addresses, do they?
(this is not a
What utter and serious bullshit.
What else do you propose?
IPv4 address for regular allocation* have run out at the IANA and APNIC and will soon run out at RIPE and ARIN too.
Meanwhile IPv6 is still in it's infancy with the majority of end users not having access to the IPv6 internet. So if you want to run a public server it needs to have a v4 address.
Under these circumstances a market means that IPv4 address gradually rise in value and as that happens people will re-evalute what applications really need a public V4 address. Lack of a market means that addresses stay where they are even if they could be more lucrative elsewhere stifiling choice.
You cannot own an address, you lease it.
That is true for modern allocations, with older allocations the status is less clear.
But even for modern allocations the RIRs are coming round to the realisation that allowing some form of sales** is a good idea as part of managing the twilight years of IPv4. The alternative is that you will only be able to buy usable hosting services from providers who happen to have a pool of addresses already (most likely hosting providers who are also end-luser ISPs and so have addresses they can recover using ISP level NAT).
* There are still a few held back for special allocations.
** IIRC arin and ripe are requiring the recipiants of such sales to justify their address use to reduce hoarding.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Sure we should all move to IPv6, but does anyone else think that hoarding a scarce resource just makes it scarcer?
Some of the early players were granted large swaths of IP space and they should return them if they are no longer needed.
Once again, a few greedy players screw things up for everybody else.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
You cannot own an address, you lease it.
I can. But that's because I'm not a penniless hippie. Wait... that's something else.
And here come the bottom feeders. For example, Addrex. I cant believe anyone would want to do business with Addrex, the CEO Peter Thimmesch is a notorious conman thats destroyed more lives and ripped off more investors than I can count. Just look at the littered wrecks of companies hes been involved with.
Well, I guess if clueless people want to part with their money...
ARIN needs to just take back the address space if someone isnt using it. And this nonsense about needing a million IPs is absurd. Come on, no one is rolling out a data center with a million new boxes. And all of them internet facing? Really? No multi-tier architectures?
Nevertheless, ARIN needs to take back these allocations. No one should be allowed "own" these address spaces. If every home user can't own the IP they are allocated, then neither should anyone else. Its a finite resource and if you arent using it anymore, then give it back so it can be allocated fairly through the same process everyone else has to follow (and yes, I know its a block, but come on whos actually using a /8?! Give it back!). Otherwise this is just more gaming of the system by corrupt big moneyed interests.
I don't normally support regulation and I am not sure I'd vote for this idea if asked to myself but I want to put it out there anyway.
What if we ban, that is right ban, the use ipv4 on publicly accessible networks after say 2018. Make it illegal to route ip4v addressed packet for a third party. This would force the move to ipv6. Which I think is good for freedom and the little guy. Yes that is right a forced migration is good for the little guy.
Its big business that has interests in keeping everyone on IPv4 and its actually big business who have the bigger investment in ipv4 only gear. The little guy can afford migrate.
What this is really about is ipv4 implies NAT. NAT implies third party brokers, which imply track ability, and opportunities to create digital toll booths. You can't just send files directly to each other; oh no they have be posted to some file sharing site so they can show you adds and the NSA has a good opportunity to data mine.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I mean, why is Valve giving IPv4 so much more steam? Is this a sale thing or something like that?
Maybe things (more or less) work that way, but personally I think IP addresses shouldn't be treated as something that can be saved / 'extracted' / bought & sold for profit.
It's not an asset, but an address space, a shared resource, a set of numbers used to manage a world spanning network. Have a share of it assigned to your organization, as necessary to run your piece of that network. When 64K numbers were assigned, other organizations have a need for IP addresses & your organization only needs a couple of hundred IP addresses, the remainder should be re-assigned to those other organizations needing them. The only money involved should be costs that originate directly from bookkeeping of what IP addresses are assigned to whom.
And if IPv4 addresses run out, move to IPv6 to leave IPv4 address space limitations behind in history / LANs / legacy stuff / niche applications.
This is the key to transitioning to IPv6. People will transition to IPv6 as costs increase for IPv4. When transitioning to IPv6 is cheaper than buying IPv4 addresses, the change will come quickly.
Hopefully people will observe this and learn how change happens. It doesn't happen because you wish it would. It doesn't happen because you know The Right Way for everyone to manage their lives or their businesses or their operations. It is driven by tangible benefits, not ideology.
(Magically, this results in people seeing tangible benefits from their decisions rather than absorbing "unexpected" costs related to idealistic or mandatory early adoption.)
How, in any tangible way is she anything more than a cybersquatter? Also: 'came into possession'? What, they 'fell off the back of a truck'? Sounds as sketchy as the legal profession.
It's called an RIR (Regional Internet Registry)
1 by federal law require that all routers (even the rockbottom cheapo ones) be able to deal with IPv6 when sold after %date%
2 require that all ISP provided equipment be IPv6 capable by %date%+15 days WITH NO CUSTOMER COST
3 require that the ISP backend stuff route IPv6 by %date%+45 days
at 60 days pull the FCC license for any ISP not in complience
set %date% at a fixed point no extensions no cutout deals
(oh and ISPs should be required to at no cost give a reasonable block of IP addresses to all customers)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
"It will be a slow, natural progression forward, with a lot of legacy IPv4 content and assets lying around,"
IPv4 content? Seriously? Assets? You mean old routers that don't support IPv6? if businesses have been buying enterprise network gear that only supports IPv4 then they deserve to have stacks of them sitting around, but there's no reason that an enterprise still can't use a LANA scheme and use NAT-PT at the edge. I swear people make the whole IPv6 thing seem like it will change the whole world, it won't. The content will be the same folks, you can still go to youtube and facebook . Although Facebook isn't quite there as yet.
it's just an evolution and yes the ISPs and large enterprises need to support it. You can even get your ISP to support NAT-PT or use tunneling, it will just take time. There are many transition standards such as NAT64, SIIT and DNS64 that also help in all this "confusion" but honestly folks if we can just get the ISPs to adopt it widely most of this confusion will go away and while we have IPv6 Days this is more an evolution not a revolution for your favorite Web apps. If you're worried that you're stuck with obsolete software or hardware that locks you into IPv4, don't worry you can still use it. Yes it will take a little change but it won't be like having to set the time on your VCR. Wait, er uhm, DVD player. Er Blu-Ray player, yeah that's it.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
For all intents and purposes the addresses that my company registered in the early 90's are ours. If we want to sell them, there's nothing within ARIN's Number Resource Policy Manual that says that cannot sell all or any part of our address space to anybody else. The transfer has to be done through ARIN and it has to be a group within ARIN's zone, but if we charge for it, ARIN doesn't care.
Strange. Most people who own a house are pretty sure they own that property, and the address is a description of its location.
Did you mean "you cannot own an IP address?"
And... ARIN or whoever can also revoke/reclaim them if they are not being used appropriately.
Working for a hosting provider we have to make sure and catch spammers and abusers or we might not get another allocation when we need them.
Just the opposite - impound all their IPv4 addresses, give them a handful of IPv6 links, and tell them to manage.
So ip6 is slow coming and now we know why, because there is tons of money to be made selling and buying ip4. Who's idea was it to create artificial hedge fund like for IP addressing.
Wish I had mod points for you today.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Free Waterfall Junior: "You can't own property, man."
Farnsworth: "I can. But that's because I'm not a penniless hippie."
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
In the early days the blocks were allocated with different expectations. It would be legally problematic for ARIN to try and take them back.
You should crack a book about Windows Authentication
Which book do you recommend that is affordable (no three-figure-USD extortionate college textbooks please) and will ship with time to spare before this Slashdot discussion is archived?
Most internet users to do not even have a regular IP address anymore. It is rather sad. A lot of the DSL and cable modems have built-in routers and have NATed private IPs.
I know, users don't know and don't care. But then all P2P internet is broken. Skype can't even exist anymore without the supernodes routing everything. It is a rather sad state of affairs.
Word on the street is ARIN is not allowing people to simply buy large blocks of IPv4 addresses. You now need to justify your need for the addresses before you can get them. So if you're fearing that IPv6 is coming soon I wouldn't hold my breath. ARIN will start taking unused IPv4 addresses back before any serious movement happens to IPv6, I think.
It is much more difficult to get a /24 from ARIN now than it was even a few months ago.
Do you have no idea how property works?
You don't actually own your own land in most cases/countries, you lease it from the government (or something to that same effect).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
WINS and netbios broadcasts are used to transmit windows hostnames over your home network. DNS has nothing to do with it. Maybe you should start learning about how networking works, before you start bitching about IPv6
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Just think of the revenue opportunities for selling V6 addresses.
Do you really wonder why those who are pushing it so hard do that?
Follow the money. Keep an eye on those I-99s.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Did Peter Thimmesch crawl back out from under his rock again? His a con man. Hes not going to sell a /8 for a billion dollars. Just google the guy, hes a con man. Anyone that buys address space from this guy needs to take a look at a bridge I have for sale. Seriously, do not do business with this guy. Hes a con man.
ARIN needs to just take these blocks back. If someone has a /8 that they arent using, then they dont need it and that should be screamingly obvious. IP address spaces are not property, and hording them is douche baggery.
"a woman who came into possession of a block of IPv4 address in the early '90s and now, 'She's in her 70s, and she's going to have a windfall."
Whoever said that lurking in your parent's basement and dorking around with computers all day and night would never amount to anything is going to be eating humble pie now!!
How else would a 50 year old woman come into a block of IPv4 addresses if not for a basement dwelling son who was trading IPs for groceries and rent?
The goal with IPv6 allocations is to give more than enough IPv6 address space. They want to prevent an organization from needing to come back to request more and also to avoid fragmented route prefix advertising in the core Internet routing tables.
Here your answer why 128bit addresses are used. You don't hand out address based on need, you give something so large that no one could use it all.
If you pay a billion, or even $10 million for a /8 block you are an idiot. There are so many ways you can solve addressing problems besides spending that kind of money, and on a protocol that is on its way out WOW! Who would want to pay that kind of money? And if they are publicly traded their shareholders should be up in arms. Are they in the market for a bridge? I've got one right over here...
Python
I'm puzzled as to why ARIN doesnt take these allocations back. Especially something as big as a /8.
Internet IP address are a commons, they are not property. If you arent using the address, then it should be given to someone who will. The reason we are "running out" (and yes we will eventually run out) at the rate we are is a combination of both growth and waste. Growth is something we are trying to address with IPv6, waste is something we need to address now because the transition is taking longer than expected. And waste is addressed by reallocating netspace from squatters. And I just love the lawyers "little old lady" line, seriously?! As in "This car only had one owner, a little old lady from pasadena".
The range 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254 is a nice block of addresses and it can be yours for a price.
I'm starting bids for my block of IP addresses starting at $10,000
Recent analysis of the Top 1 Million websites: http://hackertarget.com/ipv6-in-top-sites-infographic/
The analysis will be repeated after world ipv6 day (http://www.worldipv6day.org/) to determine if there is any significant increase. I am not hopeful.
The alternative is that you will only be able to buy usable hosting services from providers who happen to have a pool of addresses already (most likely hosting providers who are also end-luser ISPs and so have addresses they can recover using ISP level NAT).
I was under the impression that an HTTPS server connected to the IPv4 Internet still needed a dedicated IPv4 address, at least until the second quarter of 2014 when the last non-SNI browsers (Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Android Browser on Android 2.x) are expected to reach their end of life.
First off because all the tricks other than carrier level NAT will only buy a few extra months.
But also, because ARIN wants to encourage the switch to IPv6. They worked hard in the 1990s to buy extra years and the carriers the ISPs and the corporations wasted those extra years doing nothing. No one is going to do anything until there is a serious shortage.
I own a class C block, registered in 1995. Haven't touched it for years and don't really need it now, it's still being unused. How do I claim it to give it to my friend who own a a small ISP ?
My POC in Arin is outdated and the IP records still point to me. Can't find the information in arin on how to reclaim it.
Thanks !
a hosting provider that is not an end-luser ISP
You mean like Go Daddy or Dreamhost?
I bet a lot of older android phones will be passed down to kids etc
And that's probably easier than passing an old iPhone down because at least many Android phones have a replaceable battery. But these older Android devices will probably have vulnerabilities that make TLS unsafe on them anyway. And even if not, Android's intent system allows third-party browsers implementing their own TLS client stack (hopefully one supporting SNI) to replace Android Browser.
and used with pay as you go sims
Unless they're for networks that don't use SIMs (Verizon or Sprint). And even a device designed for AT&T might be subject to "slamming" or "cramming", which refers to unrequested conversion of a SIM from a cheap plan to a more expensive plan just because it's inserted into a smartphone.
an ISP that sells primarily to techies is likely to have far more difficulty recovering IPs
You could always do what Comcast does: call the techie offering "business class", jack up the price, and put that toward recovering IPs.
What else do you propose?
IPv4 address for regular allocation* have run out at the IANA and APNIC and will soon run out at RIPE and ARIN too.
Meanwhile IPv6 is still in it's infancy with the majority of end users not having access to the IPv6 internet. So if you want to run a public server it needs to have a v4 address.
I'm maybe one of the lucky guys who has an ISP who is actively supporting world IPv6-day. With no cost on my side I am running on IPv6 now. All of my devices at home and therefore also my webserver are IPv6 enabled. I have a AAAA record assigned to the hostname I own.
So it's a bit difficult to put myself in the position of the people who still do not have IPv6, but in my opinion IPv6 is not in its infancy, nor is it difficult to transition to IPv6 (provided the upstream provider does IPv6, but the ease of transition follows recursion).
Just pester your ISP.
With IPv4, one would have needed several IPs, even if one was PATed, in order to prevent NAT overloading. With IPv6, regardless of how many toys one has, one would need only ONE link, and that's it. How is selling IPv6 more lucrative? Getting an IPv6 address is like collecting sand.
What ISP do you use and what router? And did you need to do any special configuration to get IPv6 or was it automatic?
The biggest problem I see for IPv6 at the moment is home routers. Afaict most of the deployed base of home routers does not support IPv6 and (with a few exceptoins) users are unlikely to replace them until they die or until they upgrade to a service that needs something faster. So even where ISPs offer IPv6 it is likely a significant proporition of their users will remain without IPv6 access.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Better than you do, apparently. A lease is:
But sure, if you redefine lease as a transfer of title for an indefinite period in exchange for no rent, with no restrictions on transfer or use except by the laws of the land, then yes, you're right. But then what was your point again?
Well most places have property tax. Can that be considered rent, might depend on the country.
"with no restrictions on transfer or use except by the laws of the land", exactly and there are a lot of those laws.
And the government can take back that land if it needs it, and will pay you for it of course.
All in all I do not see were you are coming from, that definition fits land "ownership" perfectly.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"Well most places have property tax."
There are places that have no property tax. You also don't get any services.
"there are a lot of those laws."
There are more laws regarding what you as an individual can do in general. Does that mean you're only leasing your body?
"And the government can take back that land if it needs it, and will pay you for it of course."
Thus not a lease. If it were a lease, they could just dissolve the lease or wait for it to expire. But they can't, so they have to buy it from you.
You're just being silly, or pushing some silly anti-government philosophy when you try to redefine property ownership as a lease. It violates every part of the definition of a lease.
You are just being silly. They cannot wait for the lease to expire, it is a infinite length lease. And they cannot just dissolve the lease without recompense, there is no reason they would want to make people angry or do something that illegal.
"There are more laws regarding what you as an individual can do in general. Does that mean you're only leasing your body?": No, as proven by you no longer having to follow those laws when you leave your country.
And my argument did not stand on property tax, a rent of 0 does not make it not a lease.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.