Well, in the 90s, you would be able to get a /24 by just filling out some paperwork. How is it today, how easy and cheap can I get a /24 now? Is it two forms an

Well, in the 90s, you would be able to get a /24 by just filling out some paperwork. How is it today, how easy and cheap can I get a /24 now? Is it two forms and an email? The simple reason people have to start paying AWS for them is that it isn't easy or cheap for AWS to buy large ranges anymore. If it was just "fill out a form telling someone I need 4 million more IPs" then AWS would have some cheap junior technician doing that, but now they need to rake in money to cover the expenses to get IPs and customers that need v4 needs to pay for it. You can check the rate of handing out v4 ips in 2012* and see that it was never going to be sustainable. The solution to the known-in-advance problem of ipv4 running out was not to .. not hand them out and just leave internet as it looked in Jan-2011 when IANA ran out of networks to hand out. So while it may be fun to state "I heard this long long ago", it just means others had better vision than you. *) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#/media/File:Rir-rate.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#/media...