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: 4, Interesting) by epitaxial on Thursday March 26 2020, @06:37PM (1 child)
Everyone kept saying that companies giving up their class A would do nothing to help the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:06PM
true, it just postpone a few more months or years the problem... and usually only for those that get the blocks... all others, they will still be unable to get more ipv4 address. That is why big companies will probably try to get some blocks and small ones will probably will never see anything
(Score: 1, Disagree) by fadrian on Thursday March 26 2020, @06:42PM (2 children)
The line between investing and hoarding is in the criticality of the shortage. Are V4 IP addresses in a critical shortage? Then he's hoarding. If there's no shortage or the supply isn't critical? Then he's not. However, whoever owns these is in the line to Shkreli-level asshole status. "Samauri" can say goodbye to any reputation he has. Hope the money's worth it.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:11PM
he got the range in the beginning of the internet, just like you have some companies, universities and military with full /8 ranges (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks). While they use many of those IPs, because they simply can, most of those ranges are totally unused. Some companies/institutions already released several blocks... but still, this will just postpone the problem a little, the demand for hew IPs is much higher than the ipv4 can ever support in a few years
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Friday March 27 2020, @02:46AM
On the other hand, the internet really needs to just make the full transition to IPv6, and releasing a bunch of IPv4 addresses just allows the transition to be pushed back that much further and the current pain to continue.
Really, in 2020 everything should be using IPv6 and should have been doing it for years, and a block of IPv4 addresses should be completely worthless.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:00PM (8 children)
Could he use sales of the address pool to somehow encourage better global IPV6 penetration? Seems like it would serve multiple purposes of his.
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:11PM (7 children)
I was gonna say, "let him suck eggs, we've got IPv6!"
Yeh, so much for IPv6, "coming soon" for the last ten years.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:30PM (5 children)
ipv6 is here, i have it for several years already, sadly some ISP and countries still lag behind for really no reason, many are just waiting for the political decision to enable it
https://6lab.cisco.com/stats/ [cisco.com]
https://ipv6-test.com/stats/ [ipv6-test.com]
Here in Portugal, 1 of the 3 biggest ISP already deployed ipv6 and one big and one smaller one is deploying it by region slowly to not overload their services with support calls if there is some ipv6 problem... but the last big ISP says for several years that it is ready for ipv6 but have yet to really enable it. both a problem of being laziness, don't care and older equipment still deployed
notice that ipv6 may also make some tracking, sniffing and "security" centers in ISP and countries obsolete (they can be upgraded, but that costs money)... so yes, that also justify why some countries are lagging for the ipv6 support
(Score: 2) by zoward on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:36PM (3 children)
As I understand it, almost all of the large ISPs in the U.S. don't support IPv6 yet. I occasionally look in on mine (Charter), but they won't provide it until they feel they have to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @09:23PM
Odd, I have Charter as well and have had ipv6 support for a while. At least my router reports a global ipv6 address on its wan port and it appears to be functional (ping6 works...) and test-ipv6.com works from one properly configured machine behind the router.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @03:30AM
IPv6 works fine on AT&T. You just can't run only IPv6, because a slowly shrinking number of websites don't support it/don't have infrastructure that supports tunneling.
(Score: 1) by ncc74656 on Friday March 27 2020, @06:23AM
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday March 26 2020, @08:55PM
It's sorta-kinda here. It exists, many devices can support it (but not all). I am using it myself as part of a dual stack. But it's not really HERE until someone setting up a server doesn't even care about IPv4 because they're sure everyone who wants to reach it can do so using v6. That won't be true until all ISPs fully support it.
For that matter, many still have to use HE tunnels to route v6 for their servers.
When v6 is HERE, the value of a v4 address will be nearly nothing and even that will be more novelty value.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday March 26 2020, @08:34PM
Where's he gonna get eggs from?
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:15PM (2 children)
Actually, any amount of IPv4 addresses is completely worthless.
It could be switched off at any moment and people will go IPv6 very quickly, in days or in a week.
Recently I observed we all just proved the possibility of rigid mind change in other sectors of global civilization...
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:51PM
People could be made to quickly accept . . .
* a mandatory global ID
* . . . implanted into their body
* massively deployed cameras
* . . . with facial recognition technology
* no more encryption
* keeping people isolated and afraid of one another
* Long lines for basic necessities, such as toilet paper, bringing back the idea of the Soviet era "queues". There was always a shortage of some basic necessity in any given week. The endless queues waiting to get just a bit of whatever was hard to get helps to drain the will of the people and make them feel grateful for the state to help them.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @02:50AM
They keep focusing on 5G!!! instead of IPv6 which, I would say, is more important.
(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]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @08:07AM
> IPv6 advocate
> increases available IPv4 addresses
But…
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @02:11PM
IPv6: So great people still don't implement it. It's only been around for over 20 years... That's a long time to have a supposedly tasty morsel sit on a plate untouched by anyone. Too bad we can't admit it mostly failed and try again for a next generation replacement. (Network effects!)