4 ms·

I don't think MIT needs any more money. Universities are often endowed with special assets that others organizations are not. Yes, universities should dole out

I don't think MIT needs any more money. Universities are often endowed with special assets that others organizations are not. Yes, universities should dole out as many IP addresses as students want. Where else will students get an opportunity to build something with that infrastructure? Maybe the university could use their infrastructure to create a non-profit ISP that serves some underutilized market. If I were endowing land to a university, I would want them to use it, or make it available for the public good. Not just sell it off.

johncolanduoni 10y ago
MIT may not need more money, but I guarantee you there are people there who could do something productive with a grant. Many more than can do something productive with 1000 public IP addresses anyway.
klodolph 10y ago
How many IP addresses do the roughly 12,000 students, 1,000 faculty, and 8,600 staff at MIT use? Do they use an average of 800 publicly-routable IPv4 addresses per person? Do they need that many? Do they want that many? Do they have projects that would actually use those IP addresses? Mind you, an /8 block might sell for maybe $3-$7 per address, or $50M on the conservative side.
- apostacy 10y ago
  If the ip addresses really aren't useful to them, they can provide them to someone who could carry on their spirit of improving society. How about providing services to the general public in some way, then? Transfer them to a non-profit trust that will allocate them to anyone who would do something important with them. If a university had extra land, I would argue that they provide it to someone who could give it back to the public in some way. It is because universities are supposed to do this in the first place, that they are endowed with things.
  - klodolph 10y ago
    I don't think we agree on what the purpose of a university is. I'd say the purposes of a University are research and post-secondary education. MIT is not some kind of general-purpose charity with the vague goal of improving society. It sounds like they decided that $50M is more useful than an /8 block for achieving their mission. All I'm hearing in response is the unjustified assertion that the IPv4 addresses are more useful somehow. I'd like to hear why the IPv4 addresses are so useful, and why you need 17M of them, and how they'll improve society more than $50M of research or education would.
    - apostacy 10y ago
      Obviously IPv4 addresses are useful, because people are offering money for them. My understanding of what they are used for, is to support clients behind NAT. But there could be some further application that I am not aware of. If IPv4 addresses are useful to Microsoft or Amazon, then perhaps they can be useful to the general public, in some way. Indeed, MIT already provides IPv4 hosting to anyone who physically shows up at their campus. Maybe MIT could grant their IP addresses to a non-profit that would find a way to improve society. It's debatable what universities should be doing. I've talked about this with several people who work in grant writing, and administration of well respected universities. What I have been told, is that it is generally the job of universities to educate certain people, with the end goal of improving society, and the world. And that is what justifies universities hand picking who they educate; affirmative action. So, picking out students from poor and marginalized communities, and targeting them for education, would arguably do more good for society as a whole. Universities played a part in ending slavery, by demonstrating that black people could indeed compete with white people intellectually. And that this mission is explicitly laid out in the charters of many universities. But, I'm aware of how indirect that is. Not everyone will agree. And certainly not all, if not most universities are like this. I think a lot of universities are just educational and research facilities.
      - klodolph 10y ago
        This answer is profoundly unsatisfying. It sounds like the argument is that IPv4 addresses are useful to ISPs and cloud providers, therefore they must be useful to MIT. Somehow. The question of why IPv4 addresses would be useful to MIT is completely dodged. I am also reading the comment about what universities should be doing and it sounds contradictory. You say the job of a university is to "educate certain people", but then complain that some universities are "just educational and research facilities". It feels like complaining that a bakery is "merely a provider of baked goods". Education and research are part of the university's mission. Making the world a better place isn't the mission, it's the desired outcome of education and research. So giving grants to students so they can attend classes furthers the university's mission, and giving grants to faculty so they can do research furthers the university's mission, but providing IPv4 addresses to some vague hypothetical project is not part of MIT's mission.

johncolanduoni 10y ago

MIT may not need more money, but I guarantee you there are people there who could do something productive with a grant. Many more than can do something productive with 1000 public IP addresses anyway.

klodolph 10y ago

How many IP addresses do the roughly 12,000 students, 1,000 faculty, and 8,600 staff at MIT use? Do they use an average of 800 publicly-routable IPv4 addresses per person? Do they need that many? Do they want that many? Do they have projects that would actually use those IP addresses? Mind you, an /8 block might sell for maybe $3-$7 per address, or $50M on the conservative side.

apostacy 10y ago
If the ip addresses really aren't useful to them, they can provide them to someone who could carry on their spirit of improving society. How about providing services to the general public in some way, then? Transfer them to a non-profit trust that will allocate them to anyone who would do something important with them. If a university had extra land, I would argue that they provide it to someone who could give it back to the public in some way. It is because universities are supposed to do this in the first place, that they are endowed with things.
- klodolph 10y ago
  I don't think we agree on what the purpose of a university is. I'd say the purposes of a University are research and post-secondary education. MIT is not some kind of general-purpose charity with the vague goal of improving society. It sounds like they decided that $50M is more useful than an /8 block for achieving their mission. All I'm hearing in response is the unjustified assertion that the IPv4 addresses are more useful somehow. I'd like to hear why the IPv4 addresses are so useful, and why you need 17M of them, and how they'll improve society more than $50M of research or education would.
  - apostacy 10y ago
    Obviously IPv4 addresses are useful, because people are offering money for them. My understanding of what they are used for, is to support clients behind NAT. But there could be some further application that I am not aware of. If IPv4 addresses are useful to Microsoft or Amazon, then perhaps they can be useful to the general public, in some way. Indeed, MIT already provides IPv4 hosting to anyone who physically shows up at their campus. Maybe MIT could grant their IP addresses to a non-profit that would find a way to improve society. It's debatable what universities should be doing. I've talked about this with several people who work in grant writing, and administration of well respected universities. What I have been told, is that it is generally the job of universities to educate certain people, with the end goal of improving society, and the world. And that is what justifies universities hand picking who they educate; affirmative action. So, picking out students from poor and marginalized communities, and targeting them for education, would arguably do more good for society as a whole. Universities played a part in ending slavery, by demonstrating that black people could indeed compete with white people intellectually. And that this mission is explicitly laid out in the charters of many universities. But, I'm aware of how indirect that is. Not everyone will agree. And certainly not all, if not most universities are like this. I think a lot of universities are just educational and research facilities.
    - klodolph 10y ago
      This answer is profoundly unsatisfying. It sounds like the argument is that IPv4 addresses are useful to ISPs and cloud providers, therefore they must be useful to MIT. Somehow. The question of why IPv4 addresses would be useful to MIT is completely dodged. I am also reading the comment about what universities should be doing and it sounds contradictory. You say the job of a university is to "educate certain people", but then complain that some universities are "just educational and research facilities". It feels like complaining that a bakery is "merely a provider of baked goods". Education and research are part of the university's mission. Making the world a better place isn't the mission, it's the desired outcome of education and research. So giving grants to students so they can attend classes furthers the university's mission, and giving grants to faculty so they can do research furthers the university's mission, but providing IPv4 addresses to some vague hypothetical project is not part of MIT's mission.