5 ms·

Public IPs are about $10/each on the market. If you're running a serious service, $10 is a fairly small cost, so you just buy whatever you need. IPv4 exhaustion

Public IPs are about $10/each on the market. If you're running a serious service, $10 is a fairly small cost, so you just buy whatever you need. IPv4 exhaustion has mostly affected people that were getting addresses for "free".

blowski 10y ago
This has confused me too. All this talk of IPv4 exhaustion, and yet I get a free one with every $5 Digital Ocean box.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  Because DigitalOcean fought, and possibly paid, for their blocks for you. I don't do it any more but even in 2010-2011 getting blocks from ARIN took real work (ask for /18, get /19, lots of justification and explanation, etc). Now everybody's pretty much out. So I don't know DO's blocks, but very likely if they're running out they're having to buy more. Depending on how they cut it up a /16 -- I know they have at least one /16, because it came up here yesterday -- can serve at least 60,000 droplets or so.
  - alexforster 10y ago
    The main justification for getting more space is to show projected usage based on past usage. So if I get a /19 and use it in one month instead of three, I'll get an /18 next time, because that's about how much I'll need to sustain my growth. Rinse and repeat. Speaking on DO, it's likely that they grew so fast in the beginning they were able to acquire an awful lot of space.
slyall 10y ago
A couple of months ago I sold two networks (a /22 and a /24 ) that I had accumulated over the years. I got closer to $5/ip but a fairly small volume. A little bit of paperwork but not too bad. I thought it was interested that only a couple of years ago paying for IPs was very much against policy and now they even have pointers to brokers on the APNIC website.
- wtbob 10y ago
  > I thought it was interested that only a couple of years ago paying for IPs was very much against policy and now they even have pointers to brokers on the APNIC website. Selling things for what the market will bear is the only way we've managed to figure out to fairly provide resources to those who want them the most.
PhantomGremlin 10y ago
Public IPs are about $10/each on the market. Bah. mostly affected people that were getting addresses for "free". There are still a lot of "free" IPv4 addresses out there. The problem is the cost of IPv4 addresses is not evenly applied. There's hoarding by some early adopters. E.g. I see that Stanford gave back its original /8 allocation, but MIT did not.[1] And why is Prudential Securities still sitting on a Class A block? If MIT or Prudential had to pay 16,777,216 * $10 per month for their IP addresses, you can bet that most would be returned within 48 hours! Even if they had to pay only $16 million per year, you can bet they'd return most of those addresses. A true capitalist solution to the IPv4 "shortage" never happened. That's why you have the current situation. Some organizations are sitting on huge swaths of unused addresses, others (the free market) are forced to pay $10 per month. There are about 4 billion possible IPv4 addresses (sure, some are reserved for e.g. multicast, but those could have been reclaimed). If each and every IPv4 address cost $10 per month, there would never have been a need for IPv6. Even if each and every IPv4 address cost only $1 per month (about $50 billion per year in aggregate), there would never have been a need for IPv6. Or at least IPv6 could have been postponed for a while and "done right". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addre...
- pc2g4d 10y ago
  Feels like real estate. The move to IPv6 could be seen as a socialist land redistribution scheme, since it imposes a cost upon the entire system (by requiring network upgrades) in order to make cheap "real estate" continually available to the masses.
  - phicoh 10y ago
    There is no redistribution going on. Everybody who has IPv4 addresses now is free to keep them. If you want to compare to real estate, it is more like building a completely new city in the middle of nowhere. Initially the costs are high because you have to build new infrastructure. Initially, there is nobody there so there is no incentive to move to the new city. As the new city gets popular, everybody who has real estate in other cities may feel compelled to get real estate in the new city as well, but they don't have to give up their old property.
voltagex_ 10y ago
How do I buy one? How do I then use it? I "rent" a static IP from my ISP (Internode) because IPv6 still breaks random devices on my network (Xbox One, I'm looking at you).
- wmf 10y ago
  First become an ISP, then look at https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/listings.txt https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/listings.txt and https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/facilitator_list.html https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/facilitator_...
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    "First become an ISP" reminds me of "make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe". Although in this case becoming an ISP isn't impossible, it's certainly out of my reach.
    - daurnimator 10y ago
      Costs around $3k for a carrier license.
      - virtuallynathan 10y ago
        At least in the US/EU there is no such thing as a "carrier license". You simply register with an RIR, Pay to "lease" an AS number, request (or buy/transfer) address space. Once you've done that, buy transit from a provider in your data center or office building, set up a BGP speaker (Quagga, BIRD, GoBGP), and announce your IP space (has to be at least a /24 for IPv4, and a /48 for IPv6). This whole process can be done in under a month.
        daurnimator 10y ago
        Sorry, I should have specified I was talking about AU. To sell internet connectivity here you must have a carrier license from ACMA. I've heard that it costs ~3k to get one. Which makes setting up an neighbourhood ISP just expensive enough that no one bothers. (this is on top of all the normal costs you mentioned)

blowski 10y ago

This has confused me too. All this talk of IPv4 exhaustion, and yet I get a free one with every $5 Digital Ocean box.

jsmthrowaway 10y ago
Because DigitalOcean fought, and possibly paid, for their blocks for you. I don't do it any more but even in 2010-2011 getting blocks from ARIN took real work (ask for /18, get /19, lots of justification and explanation, etc). Now everybody's pretty much out. So I don't know DO's blocks, but very likely if they're running out they're having to buy more. Depending on how they cut it up a /16 -- I know they have at least one /16, because it came up here yesterday -- can serve at least 60,000 droplets or so.
- alexforster 10y ago
  The main justification for getting more space is to show projected usage based on past usage. So if I get a /19 and use it in one month instead of three, I'll get an /18 next time, because that's about how much I'll need to sustain my growth. Rinse and repeat. Speaking on DO, it's likely that they grew so fast in the beginning they were able to acquire an awful lot of space.

slyall 10y ago

A couple of months ago I sold two networks (a /22 and a /24 ) that I had accumulated over the years. I got closer to $5/ip but a fairly small volume. A little bit of paperwork but not too bad. I thought it was interested that only a couple of years ago paying for IPs was very much against policy and now they even have pointers to brokers on the APNIC website.

wtbob 10y ago
> I thought it was interested that only a couple of years ago paying for IPs was very much against policy and now they even have pointers to brokers on the APNIC website. Selling things for what the market will bear is the only way we've managed to figure out to fairly provide resources to those who want them the most.

PhantomGremlin 10y ago

Public IPs are about $10/each on the market. Bah. mostly affected people that were getting addresses for "free". There are still a lot of "free" IPv4 addresses out there. The problem is the cost of IPv4 addresses is not evenly applied. There's hoarding by some early adopters. E.g. I see that Stanford gave back its original /8 allocation, but MIT did not.[1] And why is Prudential Securities still sitting on a Class A block? If MIT or Prudential had to pay 16,777,216 * $10 per month for their IP addresses, you can bet that most would be returned within 48 hours! Even if they had to pay only $16 million per year, you can bet they'd return most of those addresses. A true capitalist solution to the IPv4 "shortage" never happened. That's why you have the current situation. Some organizations are sitting on huge swaths of unused addresses, others (the free market) are forced to pay $10 per month. There are about 4 billion possible IPv4 addresses (sure, some are reserved for e.g. multicast, but those could have been reclaimed). If each and every IPv4 address cost $10 per month, there would never have been a need for IPv6. Even if each and every IPv4 address cost only $1 per month (about $50 billion per year in aggregate), there would never have been a need for IPv6. Or at least IPv6 could have been postponed for a while and "done right". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addre...

pc2g4d 10y ago
Feels like real estate. The move to IPv6 could be seen as a socialist land redistribution scheme, since it imposes a cost upon the entire system (by requiring network upgrades) in order to make cheap "real estate" continually available to the masses.
- phicoh 10y ago
  There is no redistribution going on. Everybody who has IPv4 addresses now is free to keep them. If you want to compare to real estate, it is more like building a completely new city in the middle of nowhere. Initially the costs are high because you have to build new infrastructure. Initially, there is nobody there so there is no incentive to move to the new city. As the new city gets popular, everybody who has real estate in other cities may feel compelled to get real estate in the new city as well, but they don't have to give up their old property.

voltagex_ 10y ago

How do I buy one? How do I then use it? I "rent" a static IP from my ISP (Internode) because IPv6 still breaks random devices on my network (Xbox One, I'm looking at you).

wmf 10y ago
First become an ISP, then look at https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/listings.txt https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/listings.txt and https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/facilitator_list.html https://www.arin.net/resources/transfer_listing/facilitator_...
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  "First become an ISP" reminds me of "make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe". Although in this case becoming an ISP isn't impossible, it's certainly out of my reach.
  - daurnimator 10y ago
    Costs around $3k for a carrier license.
    - virtuallynathan 10y ago
      At least in the US/EU there is no such thing as a "carrier license". You simply register with an RIR, Pay to "lease" an AS number, request (or buy/transfer) address space. Once you've done that, buy transit from a provider in your data center or office building, set up a BGP speaker (Quagga, BIRD, GoBGP), and announce your IP space (has to be at least a /24 for IPv4, and a /48 for IPv6). This whole process can be done in under a month.
      - daurnimator 10y ago
        Sorry, I should have specified I was talking about AU. To sell internet connectivity here you must have a carrier license from ACMA. I've heard that it costs ~3k to get one. Which makes setting up an neighbourhood ISP just expensive enough that no one bothers. (this is on top of all the normal costs you mentioned)