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MIT No Longer Owns 18.0.0.0/8 (ttias.be)

Posted by msmash on from the hmm dept.

An anonymous reader shares: MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8. That's a very big block of scarce IPv4 addresses that have become available again. One block inside this /8, more specifically 18.145.0.0/16, was transferred to Amazon.

130 comments

  1. RTFA by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 5, Funny

    I did it! I read the whole article. And so did everybody who read the summary.

    1. Re:RTFA by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Was it as exciting as the summary? How many IP's in terms of number of Library of Congresses was it?

    2. Re:RTFA by marcgvky · · Score: 2

      Why the hell does MIT need ANY funds from Amazon or anyone else, to switch to IPv6??? Their endowment (what we know of publically) is over $13B USD!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I really vomit when this happens.

    3. Re:RTFA by Software · · Score: 2

      Where did you get the idea that money changed hands?

    4. Re: RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course money changed hands. Maybe not an obvious sale, but someone at MIT is greased up like a little piggy.

    5. Re:RTFA by tempest69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Because IPv4 addresses are valuable ($10 range currently) Having 16.7 Million of them is a nice chunk of change, letting 65K of them go for free seems to be a breach of fiduciary responsibility by someone.

    6. Re:RTFA by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Dammit! I was saving the article for later!

      Shouldn't you have put a "spoilers" warning in your subject line?

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    7. Re:RTFA by Scarred+Intellect · · Score: 1

      Well thanks for pointing that out. Now I feel ill and like I don't belong on Slashdot anymore.

    8. Re: RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have never belonged. Its why my post are always marked as AC. I'm a coward that nobody knows.

    9. Re:RTFA by Aighearach · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Possession of an IP address does not create a "fiduciary responsibility."

      You seen to have fell off a meme wagon.

    10. Re:RTFA by Atzanteol · · Score: 2

      Endowments come with many strings attached. Just because they have $13B USD doesn't mean they are allowed to spend it anyway they like. Most of the funds are earmarked for specific purposes. Additionally it must be invested to ensure future returns.

      It's not like they could just cut a check for $13B...

      --
      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
    11. Re:RTFA by kwoff · · Score: 1

      They announced it. Will use the money to upgrade their systems etc. Selling off 8 million IP addresses. I think that's worth around $100 million.

    12. Re: RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you post so often that I feel like I know you.

    13. Re:RTFA by Carewolf · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because IPv4 addresses are valuable ($10 range currently) Having 16.7 Million of them is a nice chunk of change, letting 65K of them go for free seems to be a breach of fiduciary responsibility by someone.

      They are not resellable like that, what they have is not property just a reserved allocation, and one that can be revoked if they start treating it as resellable property.

    14. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's right! Think of the strippers and whores.

    15. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The legal status of those early allocations is not entirely clear and probably more like property compared to later allocations through the RIRs.

    16. Re:RTFA by Pax681 · · Score: 2

      Possession of an IP address does not create a "fiduciary responsibility."

      You seen to have fell off a meme wagon.

      You SEEM to have FALLEN off a meme wagon .. FTFY
      you seem to have fallen off the grammar wagon :P

    17. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Comcast leases them out on a monthly basis. I think 5 statics are $30 per month.

      Why can't MIT sell them?
       

    18. Re: RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At MIT? Please. More like gender reassignment surgeries.

    19. Re:RTFA by Aqualung812 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's what ARIN says, but I've seen several companies sell off their IPv4 space to other companies, and ARIN doesn't revoke the transfer.

      --
      Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
    20. Re:RTFA by marcgvky · · Score: 1

      This did: https://gist.github.com/simons... They got paid.

    21. Re:RTFA by marcgvky · · Score: 1
      "As part of our upgrade to IPv6, we will be consolidating our in-use IPv4 address space to facilitate the sale of MIT’s excess IPv4 capacity. Net proceeds from the sale will cover our network upgrade costs, and the remainder will provide a source of endowed funding for the Institute to use in furthering its academic and research mission." from https://gist.github.com/simons...

      *vomitting sound*

    22. Re:RTFA by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Informative

      The legal status of legacy allocations has never been especially clear. They were allocated before the RIRs even existed and long before anyone thought IP addreses would have any value.

      In any case after arguing about it for years most of the major RIRs (ARIN, RIPE and APNIC) have allowed sale of IP addresses subject to some conditions. They have concluded that making IPv4 addresses a marketable commodity is the least-bad way to manage the post-exhaustion era.

      I guess that MIT probablly cut a deal with ARIN allowing them to carve up the block into smaller sub-blocks (allowing them to sell the unused sub-blocks while keeping the used ones) in exchange for agreeing to ARIN taking a role in the address space's management.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    23. Re:RTFA by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Surely you mean "a" grammar wagon, as excepting situations of internal conflict grammar is merely a matter of style in English.

    24. Re:RTFA by GESUS · · Score: 1

      Because they don't have a national wide network.

    25. Re:RTFA by Pax681 · · Score: 0

      Surely you mean "a" grammar wagon, as excepting situations of internal conflict grammar is merely a matter of style in English.

      Nope, it's one big , singular fucking wagon and you ain't on it!
      there's right way and a wrong way and you got it very fucking wrong.

      internal conflict

      Examples

      noun
      1.
      psychological struggle within the mind of a literary or dramatic character, the resolution of which creates the plot's suspense:
      Hamlet's inaction is caused by internal conflict.
      2.
      mental struggle arising from opposing demands or impulses.

      So tell me Captain Bollocks... in which manner were you using literary device of "internal conflict" correctly in your mangled sentence eh????
      Ooh.... I see, you didn't! dig that hole son, dig that hole!

    26. Re:RTFA by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      If you couldn't parse it, you didn't get to play. Not my problem.

      If I was French, I might want to get onto some singular grammar wagon, but since I use English I won't go anywhere near that shit. Like my friend said after getting an English degree: The first three years they teach you rules. The last year they teach that those are fake rules to help you practice, and actually it all a matter of style.

      People who claim there is only one style, or that it is in poor style to use a construct that they cannot comprehend, are not worthy of pause.

    27. Re: RTFA by Pax681 · · Score: 1

      Wow! Please stop trying to legitimise your silly, basic spelling and grammar error and try to pass it off and something other folks are 'too dumb to get' , you are just digging a hole deeper and deeper. :-)

    28. Re: RTFA by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      OK smartypants, if you think it is an "error," what is the authority on English grammar? Is there a book or something that lists the rules?

      You're hilariously fucking stupid. You can't even comprehend the nature of language, or the meaning of the word "grammar," or the meaning of "error." And yet you argue and dig and dig, even telling me that I'm digging, and yet, I do know the nature of language, I do know the source of authority for grammar, and if there is only one or a choice between several. (spoiler: several, and they only claim to be optional style guides)

      Even when corrected you're so aliterate that you argue with the correction instead of looking it up!

    29. Re: RTFA by Pax681 · · Score: 1

      LOL you REALLY bite don't you... As for a book on English grammar.. There are many books to help you with grammar and spelling. Try not to get so worked up you cry or something! MWAH!

    30. Re: RTFA by Pax681 · · Score: 1
      Answer number 2 (now that i am home again!....

      OK smartypants, if you think it is an "error," what is the authority on English grammar? Is there a book or something that lists the rules?

      maybe these will do the trick.. they are good enough for universities.
      or these should suffice
      you SEEM to think that "seen" is a perfectly fine and esoteric substitute for "seem"... it's not.
      You also seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that you are right under all circumstances even when blatantly wrong.
      I also find your utter pretentiousness absolutely hilarious! 100% entertainments from how hard you bite. It's just magical!...
      Please tell us all how magical and fabulous you are again!...

    31. Re: RTFA by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      They didn't buy them in the first place. They paid basically a processing fee. If you can't show why and how you will use them, you have to give them back. At least that was the case for a /24 a previous employer had for a wireless ISP business.

  2. Rejoice! by Kid+CUDA · · Score: 0

    This is the IT equivalent of colonised territories being restored to their rightful owners.

  3. But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why did MIT ever own that many damn IPs in the first place? No wonder we're out of IPv4 addresses.

    1. Re: But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nobody envisioned more than a few thousand computers on the Internet. The notion that hundreds of millions would be limiting was ridiculous.

    2. Re:But Why? by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Informative

      Technically, just the MIT LCS lab, not even the whole school, had the A block.

      DEC also had a class A address block for a while. HP got this, plus their own, when they bought DEC. At one point, HP had twice as many IP addresses than China.

      The Internet grew way more than any of the founders thought. 4 billion addresses seemed huge back then. Look at the List of assigned A blocks and how A blocks were thrown around in the early days.

    3. Re:But Why? by sl3xd · · Score: 2

      Because IPv4 was designed as a limited proof of concept, with IPv6 being the properly designed replacement.

      IPv4 was supposed to be deader than a can of SPAM by Y2K, and as historical as stacks of punch cards at this point.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    4. Re:But Why? by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

      The internet back then was mostly dialup. Even most schools would exchange email/news with each other via automated dialup at night when phone rates were lower. Consequently, most of the Internet traffic was store-and-forward. You sent an email, your mail server dialed up your school's computer and delivered the mail to them. The school's computer would hold it until night, when it would dial out to the main university in the area and deliver your mail. The university computer, being a minor hub would dial out more frequently, so after say an hour it would dial out to the man hub in the region and deliver your mail.

      The main hubs were the ones with always-on dedicated links to other major hubs. They were the ones which got the class A subnets. It made sense because then they could then parcel out the IP addresses to the minor hubs and spokes as they saw fit, and thus DNS resolution could always be handled locally (and thus immediately). For those of you who weren't on the Internet back then, because data was mostly being transmitted as store-and-forward, email typically was only slightly faster than postal mail (usually took a few hours to days to reach someone on another continent), and DNS changes could take up to a week to propagate through the entire Internet. So being able to resolve DNS changes locally quickly was a big deal.

    5. Re:But Why? by NatasRevol · · Score: 2

      LOL at HP.

      15.0.0.0/7

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    6. Re: But Why? by NotInHere · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oblig xkcd https://xkcd.com/865/

    7. Re: But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it ain't broke don't fix it, right? Ohhh wait a minute...

      xD

    8. Re:But Why? by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      The internet wasn't even public. If they had known Al Gore and the other "Atari Democrats" in Congress were going to come along and spend money opening it to the world, they would have started with something like IPv6. We got IPv4 because it was only for institutional communication and research. MIT is big on both of those, they do lots of work for government, for industry, and in collaboration with other institutions, in addition to their world-renowned research programs.

      In that environment, anybody important enough to even plug in could get a /8. People these days still don't understand what the internet is, no wonder we're out of IPv4 addresses! If the average idiot they let plug in now understood the resource, we wouldn't even be running out of IPv4 addresses for years. We have to switch to IPv6, because the commons is a tragedy.

    9. Re:But Why? by Lost+Race · · Score: 1

      15.0.0.0/7

      CIDR does not work like that!

      Or ... thatsthejoke.jpg?

    10. Re:But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why did MIT ever own that many damn IPs in the first place?

      Because this was once the entire internet. Notice the "MIT" in the east coast circle, second from the top.

    11. Re:But Why? by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Informative

      14.0.0.0/8 and 15.0.0.0/8 could be combined to 14.0.0.0/7 (or 15.0.0.0/7 if you prefer). 15 and 16 can't be combined. Do it in binary and it will be more obvious.

    12. Re:But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why did MIT ever own that many damn IPs in the first place?

      Back then you didn't have that much of a choice.

      Before CDIR, there was three sizes of network blocks you could get:
      Class C, a /24 or 256 total addresses.
      Class B, a /16, or 65535 total addresses.
      and Class A, a /8, or 16.7 million-ish addresses.

      That was it. If a class B network wouldn't be enough, you got a class A.

      Combined with the fact it seemed mindbogglingly impossible to find enough universities and government research think-tanks to need all of those IP blocks, and most of humanity didn't see any purpose in computers or networking at all, it didn't seem wasteful one bit.

      It's similar to if you threw a party for say 50-100 of your friends, but already ordered a thousand pizzas.
      It doesn't seem wasteful to give each person not just a slice, but a whole pizza, or even many of them. Quite the opposite actually, better to be eaten or at least potentially eaten than to hoard a bunch back and be thrown away.

      It wasn't for a number of decades later that everyone and their cat wanted to be online, and those pizza slices had to keep getting thinner and thinner to go around.

      And it wasn't even an obvious problem until recently, since at the time the Internet was exploding in growth, the solution was already done and ready (IPv6) with nothing but old-guard financial interests holding it back.
      After all the ISPs hoarding all the IPv4 addresses can't charge you $3000/year for a thousand or two addresses if they allowed the Internet to switch to IPv6.

    13. Re:But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I still use punch cards. It's just so much easier to reorder lines of code that way. Also, the NSA has a harder time snooping on my card decks and I've never gotten a virus from a card sneaked into the deck by an intruder. It is, however, getting harder and harder to get my 029 serviced and running in top notch condition.

    14. Re:But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because IPv4 was designed as a reasonable standard, with IPv6 being the baroque, overly-complex design-by-committee and deliberately-obtuse replacement.

      I

      FTFY

    15. Re:But Why? by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      My stupid joke.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    16. Re: But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I used to hang out at the batch terminal at college. Because one of the top cards in the punched deck fed into the card reader was the password card. So it was one of the most likely cards to get mangled and end up in the wastebasket.

      I got a lot of free computer time that way.

    17. Re:But Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure it does.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      It's just not common.

    18. Re:But Why? by Lost+Race · · Score: 2

      15.0.0.0 is not /7-aligned. 14.0.0.0/7 and 16.0.0.0/7 are valid, but 15.0.0.0/7 is not.

      Even if 15.0.0.0/7 were valid CIDR notation, it would include 14.0.0.0 - 15.255.255.255, not 15.0.0.0 - 16.255.255.255 as was intended.

    19. Re:But Why? by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      Back in the good old days when the Internet was used mainly for colleges and government agencies. These colleges will reserve large blocks for themselves. I went to a small college and they had a Class B and two Class C IP address ranges (Back in the time Class B was X.X.0.0 and Class C was X.X.X.0) giving the colleges more than enough IP address for the who institution. Hack in the late 1990's every PC was connected to an unprotected Static IP address for their PCs.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    20. Re:But Why? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Because in the early days the Internet had an 8 bit network field and a 24 bit host field. So every network got what was later called a "class A" and even later called a "/8".

      Some of those allocations were reclaimed when networks shut down, but MIT kept a network running continuously, so they were able to keep their allocation.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  4. Half of all IP addresses are class As by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    By design, half of all IP addresses used to be class As. With the end of classless routing, its really time to take back almost all of these assigned class As that existed before they thought they'd never run out of IP addresses. No one should own an /8 unless they can really verify need. Heck, anything /16 or larger should really provide extended proof

    1. Re:Half of all IP addresses are class As by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better yet, start your own backbone. Take all the celebrity gosip, and useless tweets, derpbooks', with you. Hell, take HTTP with you. Shit worked more smoothly before HTTP. MIT and others, earned their addresses.

    2. Re:Half of all IP addresses are class As by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      The thing is the IANA (and by extension the RIRs) only have power because the cabel of backbone operations (at least one of which owns a couple of /8 blocks) say they do. Attempting to forciblly reclaim addresses like you propose could well cause major backbone operators to tell IANA to go fuck themselves. Having different providers disagree on who is the rightful owner of addresses is not good for anyone.

      Yes a market based approach means a few early adopters got a moderately large chunk of money for doing very little but it also means that "hoarded" addresses get brought into service without the use of force that could smash the Internet to peices.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  5. Trade. by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone traded 10.0.0.0/8 for it. MIT got a deal, because like /. UIDs, lower numbered ones are better!

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:Trade. by skipkent · · Score: 4, Funny

      I disagree.

    2. Re:Trade. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Isn't this supposed to be Funny rather than Insightful? Because I have a bunch of 10.0.0.0/8 addresses to trade. And 192.168.0.0/16, and 172.16.0.0/12 too. Take your pick.

    3. Re:Trade. by Nick · · Score: 2

      I concur,

      --
      Fuck Ajit Pai
    4. Re:Trade. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People with low user ids who use Slashdot are all a bunch of unemployed weirdos.

    5. Re: Trade. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Waitaminit. Xfinity gave me the whole 10.0.0.0/8 address range on the cable modem they installed in my home last week! I didn 't realize what a deal I am getting! For only $59 a month, too!

    6. Re:Trade. by wed128 · · Score: 1

      No we're not! i'm browsing slashdot from work *right now!*

    7. Re:Trade. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pft, 127/8 is where it's at.

    8. Re:Trade. by BiOFH · · Score: 1

      I'm somewhere in the middle on this.

      --
      - I am made of meat.
  6. Class A shaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Internet Society: "Folks in the developing world can't get IP addresses for their servers and gateway routers and you guys are just sitting on yours. Now c'mon!"

    1. Re:Class A shaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Internet Society: "Folks in the developing world can't get food and water and you guys are just sitting on yours. Now c'mon!"

      FTFY.

  7. Xerox Too by muldoonaz · · Score: 2

    In the same regard, Xerox no longer owns all of 13.0.0.0/8 either. Amazon has a piece of that pie, too.

    https://whois.arin.net/rest/or...

    1. Re:Xerox Too by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1, Redundant

      I have a small section of 10.0.0.0/8.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    2. Re:Xerox Too by rickb928 · · Score: 2

      Don't we all, my friend, don't we all...

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    3. Re:Xerox Too by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Interesting, I wonder if there has been a policy change allowing /8 holders to split their blocks and sell the unused parts.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  8. Re: Who gives a fuck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mod up (+1, Factual)

  9. Re:RTFMA by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Needs an "M" in there for "misleading". MIT hasn't released the entire /8 back to ARIN; AFAICT from whois queries they've transfered a whole bunch of /16s (20+) directly over to Amazon, all of which are above the 18.145.0.0 line. Given the highly non-contiguous allocations across the upper half of the /8 range the most likely cause is that they've received chunk of cash for giving Amazon all the /16s that they were not currently actively using.

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  10. Time to get off IPv4. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone who hoards IPv4 should be charged $1000 per address per year to fund the transition to IPv6.

    1. Re:Time to get off IPv4. by PhotoJim · · Score: 2

      Or, let's just all migrate to IPv6 and be done with this.

    2. Re:Time to get off IPv4. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IPv6 is the "Zip drive" or "Firewire" of networking. It's a stopgap kludge that will never be successful because it's just not the right answer for the market. It works but it's clunky, complicated, and difficult to secure, etc.

      Most likely something else will come along and obliterate any need for IPv6. IPv6 will make inroads but that will all be undone.

    3. Re:Time to get off IPv4. by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      IPv6 is fundamentally not very different from IPv4. Yes there were a load of half-baked ideas from the IPv6 proponents but you don't have to use them. If you want you can use DHCPv6 in stateful mode and even use NAT66 to run IPv6 in almost exactly the same way you run IPv4. Yes there are issues with features such as port security on switches but that is because port security is in itself a hack and therefore needs to be updated for IPv6.

      Running dual-stack however is a massive PITA. Basically it means you have to set everything up twice and every machine has two identities. Introducing yet another new protocol to the mess isn't going to help anything.

      I think we are set up for a long and painful period where some networks are dual stack, some are v6 only, some are v4 only and the v6-only networks talk to the v4-only networks through various types of transition mechanisms.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  11. Too many IP addresses by Pasquina · · Score: 2

    MIT claimed all of 18.x.x.x early on and just held onto them. When I was there in 2007, I believe they let my frat have full control of all of 18.236.x.x, no subnets required, for 40 guys.

    For those interested, Wikipedia has an amusing list of original A level IP assignments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:Too many IP addresses by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      Most universities have way more IP's than they need. Gone are the days of every device getting a public IP. Heck even at their peak most schools didn't come close to use their allocations. But many of them refuse to give them up for reuse to this day. Companies too. Hell the tiny consulting company I started out at had two class C's (one for them, one for their sister company). There were like 15 of us between both companies! When they got them there were maybe 5 people across both companies. Sadly those subnets are lost to the ages. We were bought several times and at some point the company let the old domain lapse, which happened to be the domains for the ARIN registered contacts. The new parent never used the subnets so everyone forgot about them.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    2. Re:Too many IP addresses by hjf · · Score: 1

      A nationwide ISP here in Argentina, back in 2004, was assigning a whole /24 when you got their "gold" service. It was 1mbit, guaranteed, all business crap, and came with a /24.
      One day one of our servers stopped responding to the internet. Without any warning, they cut off the /24 to a more sensible /29... and my server was in .200/24.
      I had to give instructions to a field tech there to change the IP to .2 to get access back...

    3. Re:Too many IP addresses by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      Our ISP used to just forget about us. We could count on our internet going down about twice a year and it was always the same thing: They updated their routing tables and forgot about our subnets. Honestly more trouble than it was worth but my boss was so damn proud of those subnets!

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    4. Re:Too many IP addresses by Strider- · · Score: 1

      Well, I'm going to be a pit pedantic, and remind you that a /24 necessarily a class C. After the arrival of CIDR, and the end of classfull networking, we've moved to a better solution.

      That said, there is a very valid reason why a small organization might have an entire /24 even if they only have a few people. If you want to be truly multi-homed, with multiple connections to the Internet, announced via BGP, the smallest allocation you can advertise is a /24. It's better than in the old days, when most of the backbone cabal wouldn't accept an advertisement smaller than /19. All of this was/is done to keep the core routing tables at a manageable size.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    5. Re:Too many IP addresses by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      We used a grand total of about 10 IP's at any one time. We were not multi-homed to the internet. Ever. We had no legit use for 512 addresses (yes, we had two FULL class C allocations). At the time they got them, all you had to do was basically ask for them. Back in the day they were handing them out like they would never run out. These were also not IPs allocated to our ISP, they were directly allocated to our companies.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    6. Re: Too many IP addresses by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      If you're only thinking of the number of employees in a business for machine used addressing, you're doing it wrong.

  12. Not the only interesting assigment by rickb928 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ford still seems to own 19...

    Halliburton, Eli Lilly, U Michigan, Prudential, Merck are some of the more notable assignees.

    Some of these must be subnetted and farmed out, but IPv4 is destined for obscurity, so why bother?

    Still, reading RFCs and seeing Jon Postel's name makes me want to tear up. Miss him.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  13. I feel old by ugen · · Score: 1

    For the last 25 years or so I've been using "traceroute -n 18.0.0.1" as a quick and dirty way to see what the route "outside" looks like (because that assignment was one of the most "permanent" features of the Internet). It's a right move, to be sure - there is absolutely no reason MIT should control that many addresses. Just a small piece of nostalgia. Still can traceroute though ;)

  14. From MIT's official statement by Neuracnu+Coyote · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://gist.github.com/simons...

    "Fourteen million of these IPv4 addresses have not been used, and we have concluded that at least eight million are excess and can be sold without impacting our current or future needs, up to the point when IPv6 becomes universal and address scarcity is no longer an issue. The Institute holds a block of 20 times 10^30 (20 nonillion) IPv6 addresses.

    "As part of our upgrade to IPv6, we will be consolidating our in-use IPv4 address space to facilitate the sale of MIT’s excess IPv4 capacity. Net proceeds from the sale will cover our network upgrade costs, and the remainder will provide a source of endowed funding for the Institute to use in furthering its academic and research mission.

    --
    --
    1. Re:From MIT's official statement by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      I hope it's a concurrent upgrade to IPv6...

  15. Here we go again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it will still not be enough to avoid IPv6.

  16. lots of addresses tied up by big companies by lophophore · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is a lot of expensive real-estate tied up in these "8-blocks"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    HP, by virtue of their acquisition of the assets of DEC, has 2 8-blocks, which is probably worth a small fortune in real money. 33 million IP4 addresses.

    Most (all?) of these were reserved in the great IP address land grab back in the early 90s.

    --
    there are 3 kinds of people:
    * those who can count
    * those who can't
    1. Re:lots of addresses tied up by big companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Most (all?) of these were reserved in the great IP address land grab back in the early 90s.

      Kids... Sheesh... Try late 70's...

      https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc790

      Now get off my lawn...

    2. Re:lots of addresses tied up by big companies by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 1

      HP, by virtue of their acquisition of the assets of DEC, has 2 8-blocks, which is probably worth a small fortune in real money.

      It's a big fortune, the average price per address has exceeded $10 for awhile now. /24s routinely sell for $4-5K these days, /19s for around $100K. HP's space is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

      --
      "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
    3. Re:lots of addresses tied up by big companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IPv4 addresses go for $1/month retail

    4. Re:lots of addresses tied up by big companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone who is bothered by that should just start using IPv6, perhaps offer some services on IPv6 only. IPv4 addresses are only worth anything as long as they are a desirable way of connecting to the internet.

    5. Re:lots of addresses tied up by big companies by ZorinLynx · · Score: 0

      IPs are only worth that much because they're extremely scarce right now. If HP tried to unload all their address space at once they probably wouldn't get all that much for it.

      It's kind of like big executives who are worth a billion or more because of their stock holdings, but if they tried to sell it all the price would tank because of basic supply and demand.

    6. Re:lots of addresses tied up by big companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That is incorrect. The price of IPv4 addresses is capped by alternative ways of solving the problems that IPv4 addresses solve, not by lack of demand. You would have no trouble at all unloading an entire /8. The market would soak it up and ask for more. If you want to make IPv4 addresses worthless, you need to make them useless. Hoarding them is a good way to do that, because that spurs the transition to IPv6. Once there are significant chunks of the internet that IPv4 users cannot interact with, the price of IPv4 addresses will plunge.

    7. Re:lots of addresses tied up by big companies by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      To put that in perspective HPs market cap is about 30 Billion dollars.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  17. Apple should be next. by irving47 · · Score: 1

    Apple needs to shed a few, as well. They own 17.0.0.0/8

    --
    I had a sucky sig.
    1. Re:Apple should be next. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pick on the US military and government first. They hoard way more than any corporation.
      But yeah, Apple, GE, IBM, Ford Motors (yes, they have one too and it's stupid), and everyone else who has one could probably do without.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks

    2. Re: Apple should be next. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well they did create the internet right? Ohhhhh wait a minute...

      xD

    3. Re:Apple should be next. by supremebob · · Score: 1

      I wonder how many IBM has to spare. They own all of 9.0.0.0/8

  18. Pick on the worst offender for IP hoarding by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Good. Very few organizations actually need a /8.
    The US military has several. No point. Free them up!

  19. Re: RTFMA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    GE is about to do this with 3.0.0.0/8...

  20. Re: Who gives a fuck by bmxeroh · · Score: 2

    Mod up (+1, Facial)

    FTFY.

    --
    Central Ohio Home Theater Installation - The Theater People
  21. Re:RTFMA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's the changelog from the ARIN list if anyone's interested:
    http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-issued/2017-April/003050.html

  22. Reminding me that DoD (USA) have 13 of those!! by JcMorin · · Score: 1

    I know they are important and they protect the "world" but if they could release a couple of them that would lower the cost of everyone that need to have a server. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:Reminding me that DoD (USA) have 13 of those!! by Megane · · Score: 1

      I've heard that the UK MoD 25/8 addresses aren't even connected to the routeable internet.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    2. Re: Reminding me that DoD (USA) have 13 of those!! by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      25 is in use. logmein took shit when they changed their Hamachi product to that subnet.

    3. Re:Reminding me that DoD (USA) have 13 of those!! by msi · · Score: 1

      I've heard that the UK MoD 25/8 addresses aren't even connected to the routeable internet.

      I don't know if they are or not but LogMeIn Hamachi use the 25/8 space for their VPN address space.

  23. 'Bout time by jdkc4d · · Score: 1

    Ice worked in the it dept at two separate universities in the past that have given out public IP addresses to all of their wired computers. I guess when ip's were plentiful (ipv4) and security wasn't all that big, that was OK. These days though, everyone is firewalling up, and handing out internal addresses it makes no sense to continue paying for all that ip range.

  24. We never really did run out of IPv4 addresses by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 0

    We just have a bunch of hoarders.

  25. Re:Only LUDDITES use IP addresses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I apped...........once.

  26. Sweet! by sootman · · Score: 4, Funny

    I have, like, TONS of 192.168.x.x addresses and I only use a few. How can I sell the rest?

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  27. back in the day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you had to do little more than ask and you were assigned a /24, that's how I got mine.

  28. You can have my ... by PPH · · Score: 1

    ... 127.0.0.1 when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers!

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:You can have my ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's fine. I'll have the rest. 127.0.0.2 to 127.255.255.255

    2. Re:You can have my ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I had to loopback around, and re-read this comment.

  29. Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now we can stop worrying about switching over it IPv6!

  30. Cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So I can horde millions of IP addresses for 30 years without ever using them, then charge a huge free to whoever wants them

    no, that's not against ICANN rules at all

    Fuck Amazon, and most of all Fuck MIT

    1. Re:Cool by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      Actually, this is entirely on ARIN rather than ICANN these days, and they absolutely allow transfer of IPv4 space for money (subject to a few criteria) and have done so for some time as part of their approach to dealing with IPv4 exhaustion. There's also nothing to say that these IPs have never been used by MIT - for all we know they were previously in use but have been freed up as part of MIT's IPv6 rollout - and since Amazon needs IPv4 space for their growing cloud platforms and can clearly afford this many IPs in one go it makes sense for MIT and Amazon to do a deal rather than parcel them out piecemeal to multiple users.

      IPv4 space has been a resource with a sell by date for some time; at some point (probably still some way off) IPv6 will gain critical mass and the value of IPv4 space will plummet, but until then its basically a game of chicken against that unpredicatable deadline. You can sell now, and maybe get $10/IP (for suitably large allocations), or you can wait a bit longer and gamble on either making more money for your IP space as people get more desperate, or wiping out because IPv6 has finally taken off and demand for IPv4 space has dropped. MIT could easily have held on to the IPs for a few more years, and would likely have make a lot more as a result, but by doing a deal now they've actually helped Amazon grow their cloud and put the IPs into productive use again. Sure, MIT likely made a lot of money on the deal, but that's still better than having the IP space sitting around doing nothing at all.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    2. Re:Cool by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Hoarding the addresses wasn't against any rules because when those addresses were allocated the rules didn't exist and the rules were not applied retroactively to existing allocations only to new allocations made under the new rules.

      Selling the addresses might have been against rules in the past (the legal status of early allocations was never very clear) but nowadays the three biggest RIRs are open to the idea of selling IP addresses subject to some conditions. Presumably MIT came to a deal with ARIN to allow this split/sale.

      The market approach to handling IP addresses is probably the least bad option at this point. As the price rises people will re-evaluate what services truly need a public IPv4 address and what services can make do with a more economical option.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    3. Re:Cool by marka63 · · Score: 1

      IPv6 has already gained critical mass. The CDNs are all turning on IPv6. The wireless ISPs are delivering the Internet over IPv6 today translating connections to IPv4 to talk to legacy servers. Sensible fixed line ISPs are delivering IPv6 today as it cuts down the CGN costs. The biggest players on the Internet are using IPv6 only internally translating connections to IPv4 to talk to legacy servers. IPv6 is not going away. It will just grow and grow.

      When a home becomes IPv6 enabled (basically replace the CPE with one that supports both IPv4 and IPv6) most of the traffic switches to IPv6.

  31. So what happened to IPv5? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm waiting to use it with my iPhone 2 and my comp running Windows 9.

    1. Re:So what happened to IPv5? by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      Because there was already a protocol whose assigned protocol number is 5?

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  32. IP addresses and TCP/IP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IP addresses and TCP/IP are being held hostage by the monopoly Cisco.

    Time to start afresh.

  33. STLS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ARIN actually helps broker the transfer of IP addresses with through their STLS.

    If MIT gives the address space back, they're not responsible. If they sell the netblock off they're being greedy. The world is funny :p

    https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/

  34. Re: Who gives a fuck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like a sticky situation.