I share your pain, bro :) Although, two corrections: 1) prices are, in my experience, lower than what you quoted: around 10-12 $/IP, depending on the subnet s

I share your pain, bro :) Although, two corrections: 1) prices are, in my experience, lower than what you quoted: around 10-12 $/IP, depending on the subnet size. 2) RIPE is indeed encouraging the marketplace model: it is seen as a mechanism to move resources to LIRs that need them the most, with the side effect of increasing IP efficiency. Also, to note: 4) Since some time, there is a policy proposal [1] to allow intra-RIR transfers to/from RIPE. I'm not aware on whether there is such a proposal within ARIN, which currently allows only transfers to/from APNIC (not very useful if you're american... addresses in APNIC ended a long time ago!). 5) RIPE currently operates in a "emergency policy" that allows a /22 to new registrants and a /24 to new members. ARIN will follows the same policy as soon as they remain with a single /8 left (probably around May-June 2014). 6) I always like to give a link to the very informative exhaustion graph of Geoff Huston [3] :) [1] http://www.ripe.net/ripe/policies/proposals/2012-03 http://www.ripe.net/ripe/policies/proposals/2012-03 [2] https://www.arin.net/resources/request/transfers_8_4.html https://www.arin.net/resources/request/transfers_8_4.html [3] http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html