Reading the list of assigned /8 IPv4 addresses is almost like looking at Who is Who in corporate USA.

First of all, at least ten of the 254 available /8 address ranges (almost 170 million) has been assigned to the US DoD.

Fair enough, after all it was their invention to start with. But 170 million addresses? Not even if they give every single gun it's own IPv4 address it would make any sense.

After that there is:

03.0.0.0/8 General Electric Company
09.0.0.0/8 IBM
12.0.0.0/8 AT&T Services
13.0.0.0/8 Xerox Corporation
16.0.0.0/8 Digital Equipment Corporation
17.0.0.0/8 Apple Inc.
19.0.0.0/8 Ford Motor Company
32.0.0.0/8 AT&T Global
34.0.0.0/8 Halliburton
38.0.0.0/8 PSINet Inc.
40.0.0.0/8 Eli Lilly & Co.
47.0.0.0/8 Bell-Northern Research
48.0.0.0/8 Prudential Securities (insurance company)
52.0.0.0/8 duPont

... and so on. All of them with a hefty 16.77M address space. And, unlike e.g. Stanford University, that had 36.0.0.0/8 but returned their allocated block, none of the US companies seems interested in reducing their blocks to a more normal state, but rather is trying to make money of it, selling addresses to the highest bidders.

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Hello Bj”rn,

On Thursday April 24 2014 00:47, you wrote to All:

First of all, at least ten of the 254 available /8 address ranges (almost 170 million) has been assigned to the US DoD.

Fair enough, after all it was their invention to start with. But
170 million addresses? Not even if they give every single gun it's own IPv4 address it would make any sense.

You can't judge Jon Postel (he was the one who did it) with what we know today. What basically started as an experiment with an address space that was considered "infinite" got out of hand in a way that nobody foresaw. You can't blame people for not foreseeing the future...

After that there is:

03.0.0.0/8 General Electric Company
09.0.0.0/8 IBM
12.0.0.0/8 AT&T Services
13.0.0.0/8 Xerox Corporation

etc.

But there also is:

044/8 Amateur Radio Digital Communications

... and so on. All of them with a hefty 16.77M address space. And, unlike e.g. Stanford University, that had 36.0.0.0/8 but returned
their allocated block,

Nice gesture, but in the end it will just delay the inevitable by a few month.

none of the US companies seems interested in reducing their blocks to
a more normal state, but rather is trying to make money of it, selling addresses to the highest bidders.

I wish them luck. Yes, they may make a few bucks doing that. But only from suckers who have been late to jump on the IPv6 train. Investing in IPv4 addresses is a bad long term strategy. It is going slow, too slow, but in the long run the Internet WILL move to Ipv6. And when it does, the value of those hoarded IPv4 addresses will drop to next to nothing.
Right now the market value for an IPv4 address is around EUR 10. My prediction is that it may rise a bit in the coming years, but that it will drop when the IPv6 train gains speed and that five years from now, it will have dropped below EUR 1.

Cheers, Michiel

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* Origin: 2001:470:1f15:1117::1 (2:280/5555)

Hello Björn!

Apr 24 00:47 2014, Björn Felten wrote to All:

Reading the list of assigned /8 IPv4 addresses is almost like looking
at Who is Who in corporate USA.

And I bet that most of those addresses are not reachable by the public internet. The companies are too lazy to renumber to 10.0.0.0/8.

Regards,
Markus

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Hello Michiel!

Apr 24 01:11 2014, Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Björn Felten:

MvdV> Right now the market value for an IPv4 address is around EUR 10. My
MvdV> prediction is that it may rise a bit in the coming years, but that
MvdV> it will drop when the IPv6 train gains speed and that five years
MvdV> from now, it will have dropped below EUR 1.

It's amazing. Just a few years ago RIPE would have BBQed you if you tried to sell IP addresses.

Regards,
Markus

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Hello Markus,

On Thursday April 24 2014 20:21, you wrote to Bj”rn Felten:

Reading the list of assigned /8 IPv4 addresses is almost like
looking at Who is Who in corporate USA.

And I bet that most of those addresses are not reachable by the public internet.

My guess is that most of those adresses are not used at all.

The companies are too lazy to renumber to 10.0.0.0/8.

There is little incentive. What do they have to gain? Plus that recycling those addresses will only delay the inevitable by a few years. The effort had better go into the future: make IPv6 work!


Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20110320
* Origin: 2001:470:1f15:1117::1 (2:280/5555)

Hello Markus,

On Thursday April 24 2014 20:26, you wrote to me:

MvdV>> Right now the market value for an IPv4 address is around EUR
MvdV>> 10. My prediction is that it may rise a bit in the coming
MvdV>> years, but that it will drop when the IPv6 train gains speed
MvdV>> and that five years from now, it will have dropped below EUR 1.

It's amazing. Just a few years ago RIPE would have BBQed you if you
tried to sell IP addresses.

And the times.. they are eh changing....


Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20110320
* Origin: 2001:470:1f15:1117::1 (2:280/5555)

Hello Markus!

24 Apr 2014 20:26, Markus Reschke wrote to Michiel van der Vlist:

It's amazing. Just a few years ago RIPE would have BBQed you if you
tried to sell IP addresses.

reminds me of spamhaus.org/drop ranges still there for no use ?


Regards Benny

... there can only be one way of life, and it works :)

--- Msged/LNX 6.2.0 (Linux/3.13.10-gentoo (i686))
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Hello Benny!

Apr 24 23:59 2014, Benny Pedersen wrote to Markus Reschke:

It's amazing. Just a few years ago RIPE would have BBQed you if you
tried to sell IP addresses.

reminds me of spamhaus.org/drop ranges still there for no use ?

I'm no friend of Spamhaus since they messed up things by lack of logical thinking. When I changed my employer my RIPE person handle was still referenced by my old employer for quite some time while I've updated the handle. There was a issue with one customer of the old employer sending SPAM and Spamhaus put not just the networks of the old employer but also the networks of the new employer into the blacklist. If they would have read the RIPE objects they would have noticed that. So they caused some trouble and it wasn't easy to contact someone from Spamhaus to fix that ASAP. BTW, they added ALL networks, not just the one originating SPAM. And there were a lot of networks. So they took all other customers hostage. Those are the issues with blacklists overdoing their job :-(


Regards,
Markus

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