Special report Internet "samurai" and IPv6 advocate Jun Murai announced today he will sell more than 14 million IPv4 addresses and put the proceeds – expected to top US$300m – into a new trust co-owned by Asia-Pacific regional internet registry (RIR) APNIC.
Writing on the website for the organization that Murai founded in 1985 and which owns the addresses, the WIDE Project in Japan, Murai explained: "I have taken a decision to release this address block, for the purpose toward healthy development of today's internet services and toward supporting internet development in the AP [Asia-Pacific] region."
For the curious, the IPv4 addresses in question are vast majority of 43/8, or the addresses 43.*.*.*. Some are already allocated, and Murai owns 87.5 per cent of it, which he is now offloading.
Despite his revered status among internet engineers – Murai is the Japanese equivalent of "father of the internet" Vint Cerf and has been instrumental in internet development in Japan and across the Asia-Pacific region – the decision may prove controversial.
Under rules agreed by all five RIRs, any spare IPv4 addresses are supposed to be returned, for free, to the RIR and be redistributed as needed. But Murai received his address blocks in the early internet days before the rules were put in place, and so is pretty much free to do what he likes with them.
The enormous scarcity in such 32-bit network addresses has given them significant market value: currently each IPv4 address is worth between $20 and $30 apiece, meaning that Murai's seven-eights of a /8 address block, representing 14.7 million addresses, is worth anywhere between $294m and $441m.
It is almost unheard of for such a large block of essentially unused addresses to be sold, and competition is likely to be fierce among giant internet companies, such as Google, Facebook, as well as cable giants and multinational mobile operators who are struggling to deal with demand for IPv4 addresses from customers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:45PM (1 child)
The Mayans had long ago predicted that in 2012 we would run out of IPv4 addresses -- and they were right!
There are no more IPv4 addresses since 2012. The ones that exist are now a marketable commodity. They will continue to be a commodity product until the price of them goes high enough that IPv6 starts to look more attractive.
(But I have heard from others that six beers can make things look more attractive also.)
IPv4 addresses ! Buy 'em, sell 'em, collect 'em, trade 'em with your fiends!
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @12:45AM
https://www.xkcd.com/865/ [xkcd.com]