8 ms·

IPv4 addresses have always had a cost (sort of, though they've gone from pennies per IP to $60+ per). I get the feeling Amazon was happy to eat the cost to redu

IPv4 addresses have always had a cost (sort of, though they've gone from pennies per IP to $60+ per). I get the feeling Amazon was happy to eat the cost to reduce friction in deploying EC2 instances but now they've hit maximum saturation and now they can just add another charge to the pile that 99.99% of users will never notice.

jwlake 3y ago
I run quite a few small production aws accounts for clients and this is a big increase to their bill. If you use a lot of t4g.nano instances, the IPs are more than the machines. I think the large customers that are 99% of the revenue won't care, but the bottom 50% of customers will notice.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  Most customers will have very few public IPs. If your architecture is based around dozens (or even more) of public IPv4 addresses then you need to rethink your design because cost isn’t the only risk you’re exposing.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Hahahaha, you are giving the average AWS customer way too much credit.
  - Bluecobra 3y ago
    I am pretty sure that the default VPC assigns public IPs (and a default route to the IGW) so if you grew organically without some kind of plan I can see many startups having tons of ephemeral addresses or EIPs. Also I just did a cleanup recently myself of this and migrated an account to a hub/spoke security VPC with transit gateway. AWS makes it real pain for running instances to migrate to private IP only. You have to play games with adding a second NIC/EIP to workaround this.
    - hnlmorg 3y ago
      AWS really need to deprecate the default VPC. Experienced engineers know to avoid it and novices are encouraged to design things badly because of it. There should be a “wizard” type walkthrough to guide novices through creating their first VPC (they’d generally be managing AWS via “clickops” so a wizard type UI would work here).
      - coredog64 3y ago
        You should try the latest VPC creation wizard. It collects all the required information and then creates what you need. The biggest complaint I have with it is that it doesn’t write ID values to well known SSM parameters within the region.
      - cyberax 3y ago
        I disagree. AWS should make it easier to just use routed IPv6, which makes the default VPC much more usable. And then just use one of the zero-trust overlays to secure communications between nodes.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  Now that you mention this, it's interesting for me to consider in retrospect. At least one prior employer had me architect solutions that were designed around scaling up using very small instances in large numbers during peak load. In theory those are deployed in the private address space behind a load balancer, but getting any actual information on the production deployment was like pulling teeth.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    I've seen a similar setup ~12 years ago: a very elastic setup on AWS following load changes. At peak times, the clusters had substantially more than 1k API instances running together; none of the the API instances ever had a public address, and not for cost reasons. Everything was on EC2, behind a bastion; you had to jump through two jump hosts to SSH to particular boxes (containers were not a thing yet). Everything ran on private networks. Everything was exposed through load balancers (HAProxy) via 2 or 3 public IPv4 addresses; I think one of them was only to interact with an off-AWS third-party service over the public internet. Yes, it was a startup, just very technically-minded.
capableweb 3y ago
> I get the feeling Amazon was happy to eat the cost to reduce friction in deploying EC2 instances [...] and now they can just add another charge to the pile that 99.99% of users will never notice. This always leaves me puzzled about the concept of "free markets." How can smaller entities compete when these massive conglomerates can perpetually introduce loss leaders or subsidize pricing in new sectors using profits from their existing businesses? This strategy effectively shields them and reduces competition. My initial thought is that it should be illegal for companies to invest in sectors unrelated to where they generated their profits. However, I recognize this could lead to numerous unintended consequences. So, what could be an alternative solution?
- dataflow 3y ago
  Predatory pricing is already illegal. Or at least was, but apparently SCOTUS weakened it substantially.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    When was the last time antitrust laws were actually used in the US "against" these huge companies?
    - fnimick 3y ago
      Not just huge companies! The entire venture capital model relies on providing a service substantially below cost and burning money to acquire users and eliminate competition so you can raise prices and profit later. In a sane world, Uber undercutting taxis with VC money should have been illegal.
      - nine_k 3y ago
        Is it how it works in the EU? Has it worked well for them? If the cost of initial operation were prohibited to be eaten by investment money, why the cost of development would not be, by the same logic? I do think that there are cases of competition stifling through dumping, and that's illegal for a reason. Unfortunately, things are not as clearly delineated as with e.g. burning down your competitor's factory.
lxgr 3y ago
At AWS or in general? To my knowledge, existing assignments aren't incurring any annual fees (or if so, not more than IPv6). There's just a secondary market for v4 these days, but that's also a one-time cost, as far as I know. In other words, either AWS is charging a recurring fee for an asset they purchase at a one-time flat fee (which is great if you use a service for less than the year or so it takes to amortize, and not so much afterwards), or I missed a development in the IPv4 exhaustion saga.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  I assume it’s a one time fee for AWS and pay forever for all of us that can’t afford to buy a block. I thought it was closer to $40 per IP last time I looked. AWS charging $3.60 per month looks pretty lucrative either way since the payback is only 1-1.5 years.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    We recently bought a /24 at $65 per IP. Larger blocks are somewhat cheaper, but not by much.
- akdor1154 3y ago
  You mean like my landlord?
  - lxgr 3y ago
    If you're renting property at a rate that would amortize after 12 months if you'd purchase instead, I suggest you do that – it shouldn't be hard to find a one-year mortgage ;)

jwlake 3y ago

I run quite a few small production aws accounts for clients and this is a big increase to their bill. If you use a lot of t4g.nano instances, the IPs are more than the machines. I think the large customers that are 99% of the revenue won't care, but the bottom 50% of customers will notice.

hnlmorg 3y ago
Most customers will have very few public IPs. If your architecture is based around dozens (or even more) of public IPv4 addresses then you need to rethink your design because cost isn’t the only risk you’re exposing.
- Spivak 3y ago
  Hahahaha, you are giving the average AWS customer way too much credit.
- Bluecobra 3y ago
  I am pretty sure that the default VPC assigns public IPs (and a default route to the IGW) so if you grew organically without some kind of plan I can see many startups having tons of ephemeral addresses or EIPs. Also I just did a cleanup recently myself of this and migrated an account to a hub/spoke security VPC with transit gateway. AWS makes it real pain for running instances to migrate to private IP only. You have to play games with adding a second NIC/EIP to workaround this.
  - hnlmorg 3y ago
    AWS really need to deprecate the default VPC. Experienced engineers know to avoid it and novices are encouraged to design things badly because of it. There should be a “wizard” type walkthrough to guide novices through creating their first VPC (they’d generally be managing AWS via “clickops” so a wizard type UI would work here).
    - coredog64 3y ago
      You should try the latest VPC creation wizard. It collects all the required information and then creates what you need. The biggest complaint I have with it is that it doesn’t write ID values to well known SSM parameters within the region.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      I disagree. AWS should make it easier to just use routed IPv6, which makes the default VPC much more usable. And then just use one of the zero-trust overlays to secure communications between nodes.
sidewndr46 3y ago
Now that you mention this, it's interesting for me to consider in retrospect. At least one prior employer had me architect solutions that were designed around scaling up using very small instances in large numbers during peak load. In theory those are deployed in the private address space behind a load balancer, but getting any actual information on the production deployment was like pulling teeth.
- nine_k 3y ago
  I've seen a similar setup ~12 years ago: a very elastic setup on AWS following load changes. At peak times, the clusters had substantially more than 1k API instances running together; none of the the API instances ever had a public address, and not for cost reasons. Everything was on EC2, behind a bastion; you had to jump through two jump hosts to SSH to particular boxes (containers were not a thing yet). Everything ran on private networks. Everything was exposed through load balancers (HAProxy) via 2 or 3 public IPv4 addresses; I think one of them was only to interact with an off-AWS third-party service over the public internet. Yes, it was a startup, just very technically-minded.

capableweb 3y ago

> I get the feeling Amazon was happy to eat the cost to reduce friction in deploying EC2 instances [...] and now they can just add another charge to the pile that 99.99% of users will never notice. This always leaves me puzzled about the concept of "free markets." How can smaller entities compete when these massive conglomerates can perpetually introduce loss leaders or subsidize pricing in new sectors using profits from their existing businesses? This strategy effectively shields them and reduces competition. My initial thought is that it should be illegal for companies to invest in sectors unrelated to where they generated their profits. However, I recognize this could lead to numerous unintended consequences. So, what could be an alternative solution?

dataflow 3y ago
Predatory pricing is already illegal. Or at least was, but apparently SCOTUS weakened it substantially.
- capableweb 3y ago
  When was the last time antitrust laws were actually used in the US "against" these huge companies?
  - fnimick 3y ago
    Not just huge companies! The entire venture capital model relies on providing a service substantially below cost and burning money to acquire users and eliminate competition so you can raise prices and profit later. In a sane world, Uber undercutting taxis with VC money should have been illegal.
    - nine_k 3y ago
      Is it how it works in the EU? Has it worked well for them? If the cost of initial operation were prohibited to be eaten by investment money, why the cost of development would not be, by the same logic? I do think that there are cases of competition stifling through dumping, and that's illegal for a reason. Unfortunately, things are not as clearly delineated as with e.g. burning down your competitor's factory.

lxgr 3y ago

At AWS or in general? To my knowledge, existing assignments aren't incurring any annual fees (or if so, not more than IPv6). There's just a secondary market for v4 these days, but that's also a one-time cost, as far as I know. In other words, either AWS is charging a recurring fee for an asset they purchase at a one-time flat fee (which is great if you use a service for less than the year or so it takes to amortize, and not so much afterwards), or I missed a development in the IPv4 exhaustion saga.

donmcronald 3y ago
I assume it’s a one time fee for AWS and pay forever for all of us that can’t afford to buy a block. I thought it was closer to $40 per IP last time I looked. AWS charging $3.60 per month looks pretty lucrative either way since the payback is only 1-1.5 years.
- cyberax 3y ago
  We recently bought a /24 at $65 per IP. Larger blocks are somewhat cheaper, but not by much.
akdor1154 3y ago
You mean like my landlord?
- lxgr 3y ago
  If you're renting property at a rate that would amortize after 12 months if you'd purchase instead, I suggest you do that – it shouldn't be hard to find a one-year mortgage ;)