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Yes, I think it would. Because despite the obvious business advantage they have, any would-be competitor would need IPs at a similar scale. That will either cos
by dstick 6y ago
Yes, I think it would. Because despite the obvious business advantage they have, any would-be competitor would need IPs at a similar scale. That will either cost a ton more than Amazon has, or they simply won’t be available.
I own 2048 IPv4’s myself and their value is ever increasing. Like digital real estate, without the fluctuation of crypto. But I would prefer it if IPv6 would take over IPv4, and fast, because it will become a problem that will stifle competitors at some point. If most IPv4’s are owned by big corporations, that’s essentially.. them owning the current internet.
IPv6 is practically free.
I would love to see a breakdown of IPv4 FAANG ownership!
- toast0 6y agoIt wouldn't take too much to make a breakdown of IP announcements. Ownership is a bit harder to track down, I think. Looking at something like https://bgp.he.net/AS32934#_prefixes https://bgp.he.net/AS32934#_prefixes will tell you what IPs Facebook announces. Rinse and repeat for whoever else. Maybe a bit tricky if you need to track down subsidiary ASes. Disclosure: I worked for WhatsApp including while it was part of Facebook, and was involved in getting AS11917 setup for WhatsApp.
- bonzini 6y agoStupid question: why does WhatsApp need to be its own AS?
- toast0 6y agoIt's helpful for some network policy issues.
- cranekam 6y agoI'm not sure what AS11917 is for now but the lion's share of WhatsApp now runs over/in Facebook's network/datacenters. WhatsApp chat connections are terminated on the FB edge like most other FB traffic and it shares FB's common CDN for media. AS11917 might be some legacy stuff or, as was mentioned, special policy stuff. But assuming things are as they were a year or two ago most of your WA traffic is via AS32934. Source: also worked at FB/WA.
- rescbr 6y agoSome chat endpoints were still at SoftLayer/IBM Cloud and I saw some at AWS as of early this year. Source: helped a customer with WA Business architecture (and worked at SL/IBM in the past)
- WhyDoesDangSuck 6y agoProbably because it was a standalone application before purchased for 22 Billion by Facebook in 2014.
- mrweasel 6y agoI'm not 100% sure, but if WhatsApp wanted to run their own datacenters, then they'll need their own IP ranges, and BGP/AS numbers is how IPs are "routed". The AS number is used to let others know that a given IP range is reachable via your router. I'd like to give a better explanation, but I think it would be wrong. BGP is really hard for me to grasp, even if my networking colleagues claims it's not really that complicated.
- cranekam 6y ago"Running a datacenter" isn't something that inherently needs its own IP range. You could run a datacenter only in private address space and NAT to the internet (though this wouldn't really be very practical) or even run in private space. My point is that having a lot of computers doesn't _necessarily_ require getting public IPs or ASNs. You need public addresses if you want to be publicly reachable. If you're small you might find an ISP — let's say ISP Inc — that will give you an internet connection and allocate some part of the address space it in turn has been allocated. There's no need for BGP or dedicated IPs here — the rest of the internet already knows how to reach the range(s) of addresses assigned to ISP Inc, and from there ISP Inc's own network takes care of sending the traffic down the pipe to you. If you need a lot more addresses, or you want to use more than one ISP (either of which could apply to WhatsApp's case), you probably need to get a dedicated assignment and an ASN. The ASN means you're an "autonomous system" — not a carved out bit of someone else's network. You go to your local registrar and convince them you need some addresses, and then you go to your ISP(s) and ask them for "transit", which means they'll connect you to their network and route to and from the rest of the internet for you. But since you're now using your own addresses it's not as simple as above, where your IPs were part of your ISP's range and everyone else just sent their traffic to your ISP for them to route to you. Your IPs are yours now, and until you tell the rest of the internet how to find you nothing will work. To make this work you have to get your ISP(s) to tell the internet "hey, y'all want to send traffic to Mr Weasel LLC? I can handle it for you". This is called "announcing" a prefix (IP range) and BGP is the mechanism through which all the routers on the internet propagate announcements detailing who is providing connectivity to who. Conceptually this stuff is quite straightforward but in practice it can be mindbending. As well as transit there are peering arrangements (where Mr Weasel can arrange with Netflix to swap traffic over a dedicated physical connection, rather than their respective ISPs) and hella complicated traffic engineering schemes linking the big content providers to the internet. For instance, Facebook has thousands of transit and peering connections with other ISPs and providers and deciding which path is optimal for any given situation requires very complicated policies and management.
- oAlbe 6y agoWhat does AS stand for in this context? An internet search didn't prove to be very useful.
- CKN23-ARIN 6y agoAutonomous System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet)
- slickrick216 6y agoJust out of curiosity how does one go about purchasing and maintaining ownership of IPv4’s. Do you need to do it through your own company or is it possible as an individual. I’ve heard you have to demonstrate you can use them but that was in relation to IPv6’s.
- toast0 6y agoDepending on which Regional Internet Registry you belong to (based on country of residence/incorporation), the process is roughly: A) justify an AS and pay the fee B) find someone to buy IPv4 addresses and pay them (probably a deposit) C) justify IPv4 address space to the RIR and pay the fee to transfer from your seller D) pay annual dues If your RIR actually has space available, you might be able to skip step B. And you can get IPv6 addresses without finding a seller, because all the RIRs have IPv6 space. RIR processes are generally human driven, so you might get more questions if you're filing as an individual.
- dstick 6y agoUntil recently, every new LIR got a /22 with RIPE. That’s how I got mine. Right now, none are public any more so you indeed have to buy them. The whole RIR and IP ownership process is so antiquated it’s almost hilarious. It’s on par with BGP, with is fully trust based as well :) A fascinating field, that I’m glad not to be a part of any more!
- slickrick216 6y agoGood to know thank you.
- wmf 6y agoYou do have to put IPv4 addresses into use within a year or so when you buy them.
- spoonjim 6y agoHow do you own an IPv4 in perpetuity? Can they be bought in small scale, say 1-10?
- therealx 6y agoPretty sure youd have better luck purchasing a perpetual license to one from a top tier owner.
- CKN23-ARIN 6y agoThe smallest routable IPv4 network on the Internet is a /24, which is 256 addresses. Regional Internet Registries won't assign you smaller than a /24, but individual ISPs might. Even if you have an assignment, maintaining it requires payment of annual fees to your RIR, unless you're a lucky "legacy" address holder from before the RIRs were formed.
- icedchai 6y agoI own a /24 from the early 90's, registered before ARIN and the other RIRs existed. It is considered a legacy block and I've never signed the legacy registration agreement, so no fees for me! I do have it routed to my home network over a "business broadband" connection.
- CKN23-ARIN 6y agoJealous! I pay ARIN hundreds of dollars a year in RSA fees. As a legacy address holder, how do you feel about RPKI?
- icedchai 6y agoI use my network mostly for experimentation and it is unlikely to be a target for hijack. If I were a commercial enterprise I would want RPKI for the future. Currently it seems mostly irrelevant in a practical sense, due to the small number of ASes actually validating.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
- zokier 6y ago> I own 2048 IPv4’s myself and their value is ever increasing. Like digital real estate, without the fluctuation of crypto. Until the day when ipv6-only connectivity becomes practical/commonplace. At some point ipv4 market is going to crash when they are simply not needed anymore. Of course that inflection point might still be quite far away, but I wouldn't count on ipv4 stock being a retirement fund
- inglor_cz 6y agoThis is slowly happening. On my blog, I can see IP addresses of people who subscribed for my newsletter. It used to be 100 per cent IPv4 a year ago, now it is more like 8:1.
- dijit 6y agoBut you still need an ipv4 address even if it’s only 10% of people who are ipv4 only.
- oarsinsync 6y agoIf 90% of users are on IPv6, you as a content producer are unlikely to need IPv4 at $20/IP (or rather, $5120 per /24). If 90% of content is on IPv6, you as a user are unlikely to need an IPv4 address.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoFewer and fewer people are able to get an IPv4 address - that's the main reason for IPv6 !
- dijit 6y agoBut some people (like myself) are unable to get an ipv6 right now. Some people are unable to get ipv6 from their cloud hosted servers outbound right now too. Even if they tried.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
- JPDeckers 6y ago> I own 2048 IPv4’s myself and their value is ever increasing. I own several /22's, and are renting them out through a broker. So far, 1 months rent (easily) covers the yearly RIR costs, so quite a good margin, and I still own them. So when time comes, I can sell them, but before that, rent keeps coming in. Just need to make sure they are sold before the market value of an IPv4 crashes to zero.
- CKN23-ARIN 6y agoWhat kind of entities does your broker rent them out to? Are you worried at all about tenants trashing your IPs' reputation and future market value?
- wut42 6y agoThis is a good question, I don't get why you are downvoted. I also own some /22 and I've been so far reluctant to rent them for the reasons you mentioned.