IPv4 Transfer Pricing
ipv4marketgroup.com
ipv4marketgroup.com
- We had an older unit using freon which was no longer allowed for new units but was grandfathered in for old units
- I asked the HVAC guy if that meant that the prices of old freon had skyrocketed
- He said: "Well, yes, in the short term. Over time, it became cheaper to just buy a new unit rather than buy the stockpiled freon so there was an upper limit on how much that old freon could go for"
I imagine the same will happen with IPv4. There will probably be some edge cases that last a LONG time but most won't.
My favorite example of things lasting a long time are 3.5" diskettes. Apparently they were used in CNC milling machines so they were around long after desktops stopped having disk drives.
One thing that surprised me was that it was actually less cost-effective per IP to sell one large block. It made sense after I thought about it: you can count the potential buyers for a /8 on one hand, but there are tens of thousands of companies that would be willing to buy a /24 or two.
But a side effect of this was that we entered into an immediate long-term lease back for certain key ranges. Even though AWS may own 3/8, you probably won’t see anything in the 3.15/16 space advertised for the next 60 years.
Those edge cases might run deeper than you think, and we are certainly expecting them to last for a while.
> Even though AWS may own 3/8, you probably won’t see anything in the 3.15/16 space advertised for the next 60 years.
Why is that? Did i miss something?
That's the long lived edge case – I didn't really go into detail, but what the heck.
AIUI, assigning a new IP address to a mainframe isn't really hard: I'm told by reliable sources it's "just JCL, like everything else".
But assigning an IP address to a machine that's had the same one since the mid-eighties? When it has machines talking to it that don't have the concept of "DNS resolution", running programs whose source code was lost a decade ago? And all those things are the revenue critical systems? That's hard.
Talking with colleagues that have done large IP range sales before, this is pretty much the dominant strategy – your agreement sells all your contiguous space, then you have an immediate lease back provision for carved out space that gives you ~decade(s) of lease time to unwind whatever business processes exist that require those legacy IPs remain around.
That subnet had a handful of mainframes that had the same IP address for decades. When we migrated a handful of systems off those mainframes and onto what were then called "minicomputers" (heh!) they ended up in the same subnet.
Those mainframes ran the ERP system for an entire business unit. Every accounting application lived in or talked to a database in that space. Manufacturing information systems that ran assembly lines called into it. The IVR systems talked to systems in that space. Hell, public facing systems called into it (behind a thick layer of indirection :))
Basically, the systems behind that IP space were responsible for ~5 billion in annual revenue, and it was significantly cheaper to lease back those IPs from AWS, do absolutely nothing with them (in AWS), and advertise routes internally for the systems that still remain on those old IPs.
We've been "out" of addresses for 2-3 years, and while prices slowly rise, not a whole lot has changed. Of course, ARIN and RIPE had it better than most of the rest of the world.
A lot of the older planes require electronic components that speak a protocol that ran on hardware that is not directly replaceable. Instead, they run "emulator" boxes that are the same physical size as the old components and have the same physical ports but run Linux (or some other modern embedded system) inside.
What would happen if this became an asset bubble, a strange one since the idea is that it’s on its way out.
According to their previous sales page, 5-digit ASN's have been selling fairly fast at ~$2,000 level even though as you point out you can get one for just the RIR registration fee (ARIN at least will give you a 6-digit by defualt but 5-digit if you ask when applying).
I have the feeling I will run my website on IPv4 forever and never add an AAAA record.
I wouldn't be surprised if IPv4 stays around for another 1000 years.
Railroads have been around for over 2000 years and are still going strong. Despite cars and planes.
Postal service has been going on for 4000 years. Since the times of the pharaos! And It's still going strong too. Despite phone, email and whatsapp.
I still use VIM to edit my code, Django for the backend and no framework for the frontend.
HN and Wikipedia still use tables for their layout.
Horses used to be the main mode of transportation for centuries. Now they still exist, but as a tiny niche.
Sending letters by post was a mainstream thing. Now it's only travel cards for a minority who cares.
FreeDOS is still developed. So is BeOS/Haiku. But good luck finding anyone using that on a laptop in a cafe.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few enthusiasts still used IPv4 in legacy software in 1000 years. I would be very surprised if it remained mainstream.