6 ms·

Why would that be relevant here (or sibling comment about Apple)? Last I checked except for 9.9.9.0/24 (to quad9) IBM is indeed the assignee for 9.0.0.0/8 from

by xoa 5y ago

Why would that be relevant here (or sibling comment about Apple)? Last I checked except for 9.9.9.0/24 (to quad9) IBM is indeed the assignee for 9.0.0.0/8 from back in 1992. Apple got 17.0.0.0/8 back in 1990. Back in the day a lot of big entities got whole /8 blocks (including of course a lot of the USG but private corps as well). Many of them are still around and fully active, while others are defunct (Halliburton had a /8 and that went back to ARIN then out to registries) and/or have shifted (like IIRC Amazon now has 3.0.0.0/8 but that was General Electric originally). That's not squatting, that's just making use of what they have. >I hope they stopped doing that, but I doubt it. Why should they stop? Ideally we'd have had at least 64-bit or better 128-bit from the beginning in a nicer form then IPv6 ended up and then every single one of us could have millions of IPs if we wished. That isn't how it ended up but that doesn't mean those who got them shouldn't use them. I make use of my minuscule bit of public IPv4 for my own stuff.

manuel_w 5y ago
> Why would that be relevant here Because it shows how wasteful these companies operate with resources others are in need of.
- xenadu02 5y ago
  It's irrelevant. Even if the authority existed to reclaim all the /8s handed out to private companies (it doesn't) you'd kick the can down the road a few years at best. Then we'd be right back in the same boat. There are only ~4 billion IPv4 addresses. There are more than that many humans alive, most of whom have or will have a smartphone. So we're already short on addresses without considering network equipment, servers, IoT, or anything else.
- assttoasstmgr 5y ago
  If they own the IP space they can do with it as they please. They've had it since 1992. It reminds me of the nouveau urbanists that move into places like SF in droves then instantly start complaining that the little old lady down the street, who has lived in the same house for 50 years, is being greedy and wasteful because she doesn't sell her family home to developers who will build 50 shoebox condos in its place. I suspect most of the "10/8 ought to be enough for anyone" crowd has never worked on a complex enterprise network. Just because a netblock is in use doesn't mean it has to be routable to the Internet. The problem isn't with IBM. The problem is all the cloud BS -- the 18,000th food delivery app that no one asked for -- isn't using IPv6. And that's just pure laziness on the developers' part.
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
But the point is that they're not using it. If it's not addressable from the internet, why not use 10.0.0.0/8 instead?
- gertrunde 5y ago
  It's not relevant whether or not it's accessible from the internet. And that 9/8 allocation predates RFC1918 by at least four years.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    I'm curious what you mean by this. RFC1918 is just an update for earlier RFCs that go back farther in time, like RFC1597. And IBM people are credited on the relevant RFCs. IBM is basically hoarding a bunch of addresses where there's no technical reason to. I get that they aren't required to do anything about it, but it does seem topically relevant.
    - wiseleo 5y ago
      IBM owns Softlayer. They may have a legitimate need for that many addresses. :)
- aparks517 5y ago
  For some applications, it's valuable to have globally-unique addresses even if they're not (all) broadly accessible from the open Internet. For example, if you're building private links between networks which don't share an authority for distributing private network addresses (they're administered by different companies or organizations perhaps). I don't know how common this is anymore, but I've seen it in the past.
  - cesarb 5y ago
    > For some applications, it's valuable to have globally-unique addresses even if they're not (all) broadly accessible from the open Internet. For a real-life example of that: according to documentation which can be found at its website, the Brazilian Central Bank has been allocated a full /18 for the national inter-bank network; each financial institution connected to that network receives a /27 or a /28 (or a pair of them) from that range. If you look up that address range on bgp.he.net, you'll find out that it's not announced to the public Internet at all.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
Of a highly constrained resource, they're using a tiny fraction of what they've been given. That's a weird definition of "using what they have." If I asked for a class C for my business running a local corner store, I'd be looked at like I was crazy. IBM gets 16 million public IPs and it's cool? Yeah, I know you can't perfectly use an IP space, but with 128 offices, IBM could give each office an allocation of around a hundred thousand IP addresses (rounding down by over 20%. But even if it were 10,000 - that's still absurd.)
- Melatonic 5y ago
  Everyone was talking about domain name squatting but turns out its been IP addresses this whole time :-D But that does definitely seem like an excessive amount for them to own. I would guess the huge swathes the government has reserved are not exactly being used to their potential either.
- icedchai 5y ago
  It may be difficult to understand now, but back in the 90's, addresses were handed out like candy. IBM got their allocation in the late 80's. I worked for a couple of small and mid-sized companies that had /16's and larger. And we barely used a fraction of that space. I have a /24, personally, registered back in 1993. It's routed to my home network. I know several other folks who were on the early internet, and had the same.
  - jrwr 5y ago
    Over at a University we run, we like to run like a ISP and only have a /16 to work with, its very tight even now, we have thousands of students using the Wifi, Dorm Networks and such. I do wish we had more.
    - digisign 5y ago
      Shouldn't many of those be on NATs?
      - 5y ago
thetinguy 5y ago
Apple is definitely still using it.
JAlexoid 5y ago
We have run out of freely allocatable IPv4 and equipment isn't catching up to IPv6 - it's very relevant here. Neither Apple, not IBM, actually need that many publicly useful set of IPs. IBM would be smart to sell them off. Apple is probably going to sit on them. (I used to work at IBM and that 9 block was very confusing to me, considering that IBM isn't even that big of a DC operator these days)
- Narkov 5y ago
  > equipment isn't catching up to IPv6 <citation required> It's not equipment...it's purely a financial business decision that this hasn't happened yet.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    The financial decision is... cost of upgrading equipment.
fomine3 5y ago
What should be done is charging fixed rate fee per IPv4 address. Maybe there's a problem that developed countries are too rich.

by xoa 5y ago

manuel_w 5y ago

> Why would that be relevant here Because it shows how wasteful these companies operate with resources others are in need of.

xenadu02 5y ago
It's irrelevant. Even if the authority existed to reclaim all the /8s handed out to private companies (it doesn't) you'd kick the can down the road a few years at best. Then we'd be right back in the same boat. There are only ~4 billion IPv4 addresses. There are more than that many humans alive, most of whom have or will have a smartphone. So we're already short on addresses without considering network equipment, servers, IoT, or anything else.
assttoasstmgr 5y ago
If they own the IP space they can do with it as they please. They've had it since 1992. It reminds me of the nouveau urbanists that move into places like SF in droves then instantly start complaining that the little old lady down the street, who has lived in the same house for 50 years, is being greedy and wasteful because she doesn't sell her family home to developers who will build 50 shoebox condos in its place. I suspect most of the "10/8 ought to be enough for anyone" crowd has never worked on a complex enterprise network. Just because a netblock is in use doesn't mean it has to be routable to the Internet. The problem isn't with IBM. The problem is all the cloud BS -- the 18,000th food delivery app that no one asked for -- isn't using IPv6. And that's just pure laziness on the developers' part.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago

But the point is that they're not using it. If it's not addressable from the internet, why not use 10.0.0.0/8 instead?

gertrunde 5y ago
It's not relevant whether or not it's accessible from the internet. And that 9/8 allocation predates RFC1918 by at least four years.
- tyingq 5y ago
  I'm curious what you mean by this. RFC1918 is just an update for earlier RFCs that go back farther in time, like RFC1597. And IBM people are credited on the relevant RFCs. IBM is basically hoarding a bunch of addresses where there's no technical reason to. I get that they aren't required to do anything about it, but it does seem topically relevant.
  - wiseleo 5y ago
    IBM owns Softlayer. They may have a legitimate need for that many addresses. :)
aparks517 5y ago
For some applications, it's valuable to have globally-unique addresses even if they're not (all) broadly accessible from the open Internet. For example, if you're building private links between networks which don't share an authority for distributing private network addresses (they're administered by different companies or organizations perhaps). I don't know how common this is anymore, but I've seen it in the past.
- cesarb 5y ago
  > For some applications, it's valuable to have globally-unique addresses even if they're not (all) broadly accessible from the open Internet. For a real-life example of that: according to documentation which can be found at its website, the Brazilian Central Bank has been allocated a full /18 for the national inter-bank network; each financial institution connected to that network receives a /27 or a /28 (or a pair of them) from that range. If you look up that address range on bgp.he.net, you'll find out that it's not announced to the public Internet at all.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

Of a highly constrained resource, they're using a tiny fraction of what they've been given. That's a weird definition of "using what they have." If I asked for a class C for my business running a local corner store, I'd be looked at like I was crazy. IBM gets 16 million public IPs and it's cool? Yeah, I know you can't perfectly use an IP space, but with 128 offices, IBM could give each office an allocation of around a hundred thousand IP addresses (rounding down by over 20%. But even if it were 10,000 - that's still absurd.)

Melatonic 5y ago
Everyone was talking about domain name squatting but turns out its been IP addresses this whole time :-D But that does definitely seem like an excessive amount for them to own. I would guess the huge swathes the government has reserved are not exactly being used to their potential either.
icedchai 5y ago
It may be difficult to understand now, but back in the 90's, addresses were handed out like candy. IBM got their allocation in the late 80's. I worked for a couple of small and mid-sized companies that had /16's and larger. And we barely used a fraction of that space. I have a /24, personally, registered back in 1993. It's routed to my home network. I know several other folks who were on the early internet, and had the same.
- jrwr 5y ago
  Over at a University we run, we like to run like a ISP and only have a /16 to work with, its very tight even now, we have thousands of students using the Wifi, Dorm Networks and such. I do wish we had more.
  - digisign 5y ago
    Shouldn't many of those be on NATs?
    - 5y ago

thetinguy 5y ago

Apple is definitely still using it.

JAlexoid 5y ago

We have run out of freely allocatable IPv4 and equipment isn't catching up to IPv6 - it's very relevant here. Neither Apple, not IBM, actually need that many publicly useful set of IPs. IBM would be smart to sell them off. Apple is probably going to sit on them. (I used to work at IBM and that 9 block was very confusing to me, considering that IBM isn't even that big of a DC operator these days)

Narkov 5y ago
> equipment isn't catching up to IPv6 <citation required> It's not equipment...it's purely a financial business decision that this hasn't happened yet.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  The financial decision is... cost of upgrading equipment.

fomine3 5y ago

What should be done is charging fixed rate fee per IPv4 address. Maybe there's a problem that developed countries are too rich.