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> Apparently you can buy IPv6 addresses, use them for the servers on your home network, and then if you change your ISP, continue to use the same IP addresses?

> Apparently you can buy IPv6 addresses, use them for the servers on your home network, and then if you change your ISP, continue to use the same IP addresses? > I’m still not totally sure how this works but it sounds cool. Naively I would say this is completely impossible without some form of your home router (or ISP?) relaying your traffic, or perhaps telling the sender that I am now actually located in a different subnet somewhere. If anyone can have IP(v6) addresses and keep them and take them with you, then wouldn't that result in an unmanageably large lookup table at routing nodes to know where to route stuff to? How does that work?

adamcharnock 5y ago
So this is typically what BGP is for, but this is definitely not something that is typically offered to residential customers, nor even most business AFAIK. This is what you would typically get with a Direct Internet Access (DIA) connection. This is an uncontended connection where to setup a BGP peering with your provider. You then give the provider some documentation proving you own a range of addresses, and they agree to accept those routes from you via the BGP connection. They then advertise that to their upstream providers, and thus the routes propagate to the entire internet. There are a couple of gotchas though. Firstly, there is generally a minimum prefix size of routes that will be accepted into the global routing table. For IPv4 I think it is a /24, and for IPv6 I think it is a /32. You can get a /32 from regional IP registry (for free?) but you will probably need to become a member which – last time I checked - costs 3-4 figures a year. You can use a private-AS number though, as you'll only have one upstream provider. The other gotcha is cost. Depending where you are in the world, a DIA connection will cost in the very rough region of (EUR/USD/GBP) 1/megabit/month, although it becomes much cheaper when going from 1gb to 10gb. Now maybe there is some cool facility that some nice ISPs offer to bypass all this, if so then please let me know. I'm personally skeptical it would be worth their while for the 0.001% of residential customers that would want this service though. Source: I run a small ISP. I have some industry knowledge, but not loads.
metalliqaz 5y ago
its possible but it relies on your ISP being willing to route your traffic, and as the article notes, many won't bother
linsomniac 5y ago
I believe this might be talking about getting an ARIN reservation, as elsewhere it is mentioned that it is not cheap and points to the ARIN fees page. The list of ARIN requirements includes: "You plan to immediately be multi-homed". So you're going to need to be connected to multiple ISPs that will talk to you via BGP would be my assumption.
gnopgnip 5y ago
You can get your own autonomous system, and take your IPs with you when you change ISPs, or have the same IPs reachable through multiple ISPs. This is possible for both ipv4 and ipv6 but ipv6 is much cheaper. Still not really something that makes sense for a residential user. You need to have networking gear that handles routing on the internet, bgp advertisement instead of having your ISP handle it. There are annual fees, you generally need to be on a business plan with the ISP. For ipv4 the minimum ASN size is a /24, it costs around $12k to buy the IPs for a /24. Ipv6 ips are free. It also costs around $1000 in annual fees for an ipv4 asn, ipv6 is less. ipv4 ASNs smaller than /24 aren't advertised outside of your current ISP and aren't really portable. Currently there are about a million ipv4 prefixes advertised. And about 150k ipv6 prefixes. Some older ipv4 equipment has a limit of 1024k, or near 1 million advertised prefixes. This equipment is usually 15+ years old, but still is what runs the internet. Generally equipment that supports ipv6 can support many more networks

adamcharnock 5y ago

So this is typically what BGP is for, but this is definitely not something that is typically offered to residential customers, nor even most business AFAIK. This is what you would typically get with a Direct Internet Access (DIA) connection. This is an uncontended connection where to setup a BGP peering with your provider. You then give the provider some documentation proving you own a range of addresses, and they agree to accept those routes from you via the BGP connection. They then advertise that to their upstream providers, and thus the routes propagate to the entire internet. There are a couple of gotchas though. Firstly, there is generally a minimum prefix size of routes that will be accepted into the global routing table. For IPv4 I think it is a /24, and for IPv6 I think it is a /32. You can get a /32 from regional IP registry (for free?) but you will probably need to become a member which – last time I checked - costs 3-4 figures a year. You can use a private-AS number though, as you'll only have one upstream provider. The other gotcha is cost. Depending where you are in the world, a DIA connection will cost in the very rough region of (EUR/USD/GBP) 1/megabit/month, although it becomes much cheaper when going from 1gb to 10gb. Now maybe there is some cool facility that some nice ISPs offer to bypass all this, if so then please let me know. I'm personally skeptical it would be worth their while for the 0.001% of residential customers that would want this service though. Source: I run a small ISP. I have some industry knowledge, but not loads.

metalliqaz 5y ago

its possible but it relies on your ISP being willing to route your traffic, and as the article notes, many won't bother

linsomniac 5y ago

I believe this might be talking about getting an ARIN reservation, as elsewhere it is mentioned that it is not cheap and points to the ARIN fees page. The list of ARIN requirements includes: "You plan to immediately be multi-homed". So you're going to need to be connected to multiple ISPs that will talk to you via BGP would be my assumption.

gnopgnip 5y ago

You can get your own autonomous system, and take your IPs with you when you change ISPs, or have the same IPs reachable through multiple ISPs. This is possible for both ipv4 and ipv6 but ipv6 is much cheaper. Still not really something that makes sense for a residential user. You need to have networking gear that handles routing on the internet, bgp advertisement instead of having your ISP handle it. There are annual fees, you generally need to be on a business plan with the ISP. For ipv4 the minimum ASN size is a /24, it costs around $12k to buy the IPs for a /24. Ipv6 ips are free. It also costs around $1000 in annual fees for an ipv4 asn, ipv6 is less. ipv4 ASNs smaller than /24 aren't advertised outside of your current ISP and aren't really portable. Currently there are about a million ipv4 prefixes advertised. And about 150k ipv6 prefixes. Some older ipv4 equipment has a limit of 1024k, or near 1 million advertised prefixes. This equipment is usually 15+ years old, but still is what runs the internet. Generally equipment that supports ipv6 can support many more networks