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IPv4s are about to be bought, held, portfoilo'ed, speculated, and rented/mortgaged/sold like real estate. Companies like IPXO are already doing it. The costs of
by RiverCrochet 10mo ago
IPv4s are about to be bought, held, portfoilo'ed, speculated, and rented/mortgaged/sold like real estate. Companies like IPXO are already doing it. The costs of public IPv4's are going to go up for no technical reason because a new distinct ownership layer is springing up between you and the ISP. You're going to start renting them or paying a holder for the right to use them (on top of your ISP to transport it) at some point. And you can continue to do that, or get IPv6's for free.
- iso1631 10mo agoIPv4s have been bought and sold for years https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales Prices have been going down in nonimal terms for years, let alone real terms. In terms of investment they're a terrible asset.
- swinglock 10mo agoIPv6 and CGNAT growth has finally started to suppress IPv4 prices. There was a huge pump when hyperscalers decided they needed more. But IPv6 keeps growing and is the majority of traffic in many networks. If you own significantly more IPv4 addresses today than you need, I would dump them on the market yesterday. Spend some of the profits to move to IPv6 if still needed.
- rr808 10mo agonice. I wish I could buy an address instead of renting from aws...
- rahimnathwani 10mo agoIt seems like the addresses cost about $20 each, and can be rented out for ~$5/year. That doesn't seem terrible.
- wmf 10mo agoJust to be pedantic, it's "illegal" to hoard IPv4 or to buy it for any purpose other than using it directly. But yeah, in the real world it may become more financialized than it already is. OTOH if prices keep dropping maybe they won't bother.
- throwaway894345 10mo agoRelatedly, I've been seeing some people buying up old domains and squatting on them with AI generated content. Not even ads, but content that seems like something that might actually show up in a rare Google search query. Not really sure what the play is or why this is better than advertising the domain for sale (do registrars punish overt squatting these days?).
- malfist 10mo agoFord Motor Company has both a /8 and a /9. They own over 16 million ip addresses.
- almosthere 10mo agoNow all we need is for someone to make a crypto currency so you can fractionally own IPv4 addresses.
- runjake 10mo agoPresumably this would be port-based fractional and 443/tcp would cost a premium.
- RiverCrochet 10mo agoIt's already possible to "split" a frontend HTTP server on a given IP and port to arbitrary backend IPs and ports via the Host header and reverse proxies.
- almosthere 10mo agoI was thinking it was more of a "more than 50%" ownership controls the routing tables. Love the chaos.
- stackghost 10mo agoHow does one get an IPv6 allocation for free? Or, do you mean the ULA space? Because the latter doesn't really count.
- vel0city 10mo agoYou just ask your RIR. For example: https://www.arin.net/resources/guide/ipv6/first_request/ https://www.arin.net/resources/guide/ipv6/first_request/
- stackghost 10mo agoLooks like that's only for organizations. Even "end users" have to meet the requirements: >Have an IPv4 assignment from ARIN or one of its predecessors >Intend to immediately be IPv6 multi-homed >Have 13 end sites (offices, data centers, etc.) within one year >Use 2,000 IPv6 addresses within one year >Use 200 /64 subnets within one year Seems like they discourage individuals from getting allocations for their own personal use.
- immibis 10mo agoYeah. If you're not an ISP or other LIR yourself, the correct path is to ask your ISP or a third-party ISP for a provider-independent allocation. This costs a nominal fee, about $50 per year. I only know anything about RIPE policies but I gather the PI address processes and fees are very similar between RIPE and ARIN. RIPE has many members that are willing to handle address allocations for the RIPE fee plus 20% (so 60€ per year) and without bundling any other services.
- mjevans 10mo agoI'd really like minimum service requirements to be mandated by law. E.G. Comcast should be REQUIRED to give my OWN router a /56 or better, not a /60 because they waste a whole nibble of netmask at the cable modem which will _never_ talk to anything other than Comcast or my own Gateway.
- 10mo ago
- runjake 10mo agoWe own our own IPv4 and IPv6 ranges, which is nice. There already is a holder for the US: ARIN.net and I hear it's a pretty spendy annual fee for most orgs (we're legacy. we've had ours for decades)
- torginus 10mo agoI'm a networking noob, but would it be possible to extend DNS/HTTPS so as to allow a URL to point to a port other than 443? Doing so would allow each IP address to serve multiple websites/computers making the pool of addresses at least thousands of times larger.
- alibarber 10mo agoThat’s sort of what HTTP is already doing though no? Multiple websites can have the exact same DNS record and live on the same physical server / IP address, but the HTTP(S) request must specify what host name it is actually requesting, so the server knows how to serve it.
- psnehanshu 10mo agoIt is already possible using the Host header and TLS SNI. But traffic still flows through port 443.
- Macha 10mo agoAs others have mentioned, there's SNI and host headers to have multiple sites on port 443, but there is also the SVCB/HTTPS aliases (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9460 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9460) which will allow having the plain domain alias to other hosts including ones with embedded port numbers. Non-browser support is pretty lacking though.