7 ms·

$50/ip is surprisingly cheap. 1,000 IPs will cost 50k, less than the cost for hiring a dev for half a year. An entire /16 block is still in the single digit mil

$50/ip is surprisingly cheap. 1,000 IPs will cost 50k, less than the cost for hiring a dev for half a year. An entire /16 block is still in the single digit millions. I don’t know what’s a price that I feel would actually be too high. Doubling it to $100 still seems reasonable, but 200? $1000? 10 years ago they were worth $10 each, I wonder how much they’re worth in another decade. For the more knowledgeable amongst us, how is this not an investment opportunity? What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out?

smileybarry 4y ago
For $50 I kinda wish I could buy my own (/32) IP. I realize it’s horrible for privacy, DDOS-ing, etc. but there’s something neat about owning a specific address. Last place I worked at had extensive subnets and memorized IPs so that might be why.
Bluecobra 4y ago
> What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out? This is basically what Amazon does. I don’t see an easy way for a hedge fund to rent out the IP space unless they are a cloud provider. The problem is that to participate in BGP/the Internet, the smallest allocation that can advertised is a /24. You need to own the space you advertise before an ISP would allow this. The hedge fund would need to transfer the a minimum of a /24 to you and I guess you would have a contact to pay the hedge fund a monthly fee and give the space back when you’re done? Seems a bit messy to me.
- tomklein 4y ago
  Actually, you can assign (not transfer) IP ranges and the one advertising it does not need to own it, but would need a Letter of Authorization (LoA) or similar.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
  What causes the restriction of /24, rather than being able to route individual addresses?
  - casylum 4y ago
    Routing tables need to be limited in size in order for hardware to decide where to route packets fast enough. In the past hardware was more cpu and memory bound than the present.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      But also at present, dealing with millions of routes at the packet-switching level gets difficult. Especially because the speed of links has increased so much.
  - ikiris 4y ago
    Physics. Routers can only handle so many routes, so their operators set floor values for size of route they'll generally accept.
    - netr0ute 4y ago
      Then it's time for operators to get with the times, because routers today don't have those same limitations as before.
      - betaby 4y ago
        Nothing to do with with operators. Again, physics, notably tcam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable_memory#Ternary_CAMs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable_memory#Ter... very expensive.
      - wmf 4y ago
        Recent routers can handle 1M routes while the Internet routing table currently has... 928K routes. Allowing people to disaggregate further would blow out routers. I'm not counting gold-plated routers because I see no reason to force ISPs to buy those.
      - msbarnett 4y ago
        Do you have any conception of how much TCAM would be required to individually route 14 billion IP addresses? And even beyond that what else would be involved to route things fast enough at that granularity. A top end router today can handle ~million routes. You’re talking a four orders of magnitude increase.
- phil21 4y ago
  > I don’t see an easy way for a hedge fund to rent out the IP space unless they are a cloud provider. This is a solved problem these days. I personally know of IPXO[0] and can vouch for them as being legitimate and well ran. If you have an idle /20 laying around or whatever, I highly suggest getting it on their market and making some relatively easy money leasing out your blocks. The total interaction (short of initial setup) these days is clicking a few buttons in your favorite interface to publish ROA records every so often when an IP block sees churn. A hedge fund could hire a junior neteng to handle those requests, the very rare abuse complaint, and any hijacked routes you need to track down. Overall this is becoming a mature market with a number of players emerging for a public market. In private it's been going on for some time on a much more informal basis. [0] ipxo.com
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wmf 4y ago
RIRs won't approve transfers that are purely speculative. Also, IP leasing seems to mostly be used by spammers or other bad actors who trash the reputation of any IPs they use.
kloch 4y ago
> What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out? These marketplaces are open to all and operate with the knowledge and blessing of the RIR's. However, the recipient does still need to justify the allocation they are buying just like when RIR's were handing out addresses directly. While anyone with existing IP allocations are allowed to lease them out to anyone, even customers you are not directly providing connectivity to, IP's leased out to non-connected customers do not count towards justification for new allocations/transfers. This is different from Amazon or an ISP leasing IP's to their directly connected customers, which do qualify as justification towards further allocation/transfer justifications. So a transfer would be denied by the RIR unless the recipient claimed they were going to directly use the /12 to provide internet service to themselves or customers. If they lied on the RIR application that would constitute fraud, which is one of the very few reasons RIR's will actively go and revoke a registration for. RIR's are aware that businesses and use cases can change over time and they explicitly do not revoke for simply not needing addresses anymore, to encourage a liquid and efficient resale market. So the question comes down to whether the application was in good faith at the time it was made. RIR's know what's up and it would be very unlikely for a hedge fund to pull this off without actually investing significant capital and effort to deploy an operational network that would justify a /12. There have been proposals in ARIN to explicitly allow the leasing use case to count towards future justifications, or even for original allocations/transfers but these proposals have not gone anywhere.
kortilla 4y ago
> For the more knowledgeable amongst us, how is this not an investment opportunity? What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out? The numbering authorities (APNIC, ARIN) will block the transfer if your justification for purchasing isn’t to actually use them yourself. It’s not an open market that anyone can purchase on.
zokier 4y ago
> 10 years ago they were worth $10 each, I wonder how much they’re worth in another decade. Maybe not that much more. At some point the demand for ipv4 addresses is going to wither as ipv6 adaptation grows. 10 years ago we were at <1% ipv6 adaptation, now we're at 40%. Give it another decade and I can imagine someone like google or apple sunsetting ipv4 support completely and after that ipv4 addresses aren't going to be worth much anymore.

smileybarry 4y ago

For $50 I kinda wish I could buy my own (/32) IP. I realize it’s horrible for privacy, DDOS-ing, etc. but there’s something neat about owning a specific address. Last place I worked at had extensive subnets and memorized IPs so that might be why.

Bluecobra 4y ago

> What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out? This is basically what Amazon does. I don’t see an easy way for a hedge fund to rent out the IP space unless they are a cloud provider. The problem is that to participate in BGP/the Internet, the smallest allocation that can advertised is a /24. You need to own the space you advertise before an ISP would allow this. The hedge fund would need to transfer the a minimum of a /24 to you and I guess you would have a contact to pay the hedge fund a monthly fee and give the space back when you’re done? Seems a bit messy to me.

tomklein 4y ago
Actually, you can assign (not transfer) IP ranges and the one advertising it does not need to own it, but would need a Letter of Authorization (LoA) or similar.
GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
What causes the restriction of /24, rather than being able to route individual addresses?
- casylum 4y ago
  Routing tables need to be limited in size in order for hardware to decide where to route packets fast enough. In the past hardware was more cpu and memory bound than the present.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    But also at present, dealing with millions of routes at the packet-switching level gets difficult. Especially because the speed of links has increased so much.
- ikiris 4y ago
  Physics. Routers can only handle so many routes, so their operators set floor values for size of route they'll generally accept.
  - netr0ute 4y ago
    Then it's time for operators to get with the times, because routers today don't have those same limitations as before.
    - betaby 4y ago
      Nothing to do with with operators. Again, physics, notably tcam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable_memory#Ternary_CAMs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-addressable_memory#Ter... very expensive.
    - wmf 4y ago
      Recent routers can handle 1M routes while the Internet routing table currently has... 928K routes. Allowing people to disaggregate further would blow out routers. I'm not counting gold-plated routers because I see no reason to force ISPs to buy those.
    - msbarnett 4y ago
      Do you have any conception of how much TCAM would be required to individually route 14 billion IP addresses? And even beyond that what else would be involved to route things fast enough at that granularity. A top end router today can handle ~million routes. You’re talking a four orders of magnitude increase.
phil21 4y ago
> I don’t see an easy way for a hedge fund to rent out the IP space unless they are a cloud provider. This is a solved problem these days. I personally know of IPXO[0] and can vouch for them as being legitimate and well ran. If you have an idle /20 laying around or whatever, I highly suggest getting it on their market and making some relatively easy money leasing out your blocks. The total interaction (short of initial setup) these days is clicking a few buttons in your favorite interface to publish ROA records every so often when an IP block sees churn. A hedge fund could hire a junior neteng to handle those requests, the very rare abuse complaint, and any hijacked routes you need to track down. Overall this is becoming a mature market with a number of players emerging for a public market. In private it's been going on for some time on a much more informal basis. [0] ipxo.com
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wmf 4y ago

RIRs won't approve transfers that are purely speculative. Also, IP leasing seems to mostly be used by spammers or other bad actors who trash the reputation of any IPs they use.

kloch 4y ago

> What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out? These marketplaces are open to all and operate with the knowledge and blessing of the RIR's. However, the recipient does still need to justify the allocation they are buying just like when RIR's were handing out addresses directly. While anyone with existing IP allocations are allowed to lease them out to anyone, even customers you are not directly providing connectivity to, IP's leased out to non-connected customers do not count towards justification for new allocations/transfers. This is different from Amazon or an ISP leasing IP's to their directly connected customers, which do qualify as justification towards further allocation/transfer justifications. So a transfer would be denied by the RIR unless the recipient claimed they were going to directly use the /12 to provide internet service to themselves or customers. If they lied on the RIR application that would constitute fraud, which is one of the very few reasons RIR's will actively go and revoke a registration for. RIR's are aware that businesses and use cases can change over time and they explicitly do not revoke for simply not needing addresses anymore, to encourage a liquid and efficient resale market. So the question comes down to whether the application was in good faith at the time it was made. RIR's know what's up and it would be very unlikely for a hedge fund to pull this off without actually investing significant capital and effort to deploy an operational network that would justify a /12. There have been proposals in ARIN to explicitly allow the leasing use case to count towards future justifications, or even for original allocations/transfers but these proposals have not gone anywhere.

kortilla 4y ago

> For the more knowledgeable amongst us, how is this not an investment opportunity? What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out? The numbering authorities (APNIC, ARIN) will block the transfer if your justification for purchasing isn’t to actually use them yourself. It’s not an open market that anyone can purchase on.

zokier 4y ago

> 10 years ago they were worth $10 each, I wonder how much they’re worth in another decade. Maybe not that much more. At some point the demand for ipv4 addresses is going to wither as ipv6 adaptation grows. 10 years ago we were at <1% ipv6 adaptation, now we're at 40%. Give it another decade and I can imagine someone like google or apple sunsetting ipv4 support completely and after that ipv4 addresses aren't going to be worth much anymore.