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This has confused me too. All this talk of IPv4 exhaustion, and yet I get a free one with every $5 Digital Ocean box.

Because DigitalOcean fought, and possibly paid, for their blocks for you. I don't do it any more but even in 2010-2011 getting blocks from ARIN took real work (ask for /18, get /19, lots of justification and explanation, etc).

Now everybody's pretty much out. So I don't know DO's blocks, but very likely if they're running out they're having to buy more. Depending on how they cut it up a /16 -- I know they have at least one /16, because it came up here yesterday -- can serve at least 60,000 droplets or so.

The main justification for getting more space is to show projected usage based on past usage. So if I get a /19 and use it in one month instead of three, I'll get an /18 next time, because that's about how much I'll need to sustain my growth. Rinse and repeat. Speaking on DO, it's likely that they grew so fast in the beginning they were able to acquire an awful lot of space.

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