[LINK] IPv4 auction site
stephen at melbpc.org.au
stephen at melbpc.org.au
Thu Apr 21 00:35:54 AEST 2011
Anyone can now bid for a block of IPv4 addresses
http://tradeipv4.com
1. What is this site about?
Free IPv4 addresses are about to run out.
The regional registries (RIRs) have few blocks of addresses left; the
Asia-Pacific registry (APNIC) already has stopped regular allocations and
reserves the remaining addresses for small allocations to new companies.
Some reserves are left from the early days of the internet when address
allocations were made more generously than today. Users of these
addresses may not actually need them anymore, but had little motivation
to return them to the RIRs.
This site offers a free market for IPv4 addresses, allowing resource
holders that don't need them anymore to sell or lease them to operators
who are short of addresses.
2. How does it work?
This marketplace is organized similar to a stock exchange: resource
holders can place offers to sell or lease address space, and service
providers can bid for this address space.
The trading price is determined for each of the service regions,
separately for sales and leases. In addition, addresses that are offered
for sale across regions are traded at a separate price.
3. Is it legal?
The RIRs have anticipated this situation for a long time, and have
changed their policies to allow explicit transfer of addresses between
local registries (LIRs) within their respective service region (Africa -
draft policy, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the
Carribean, and Europe).
Policies vary somewhat across region. Transfer across regions is
currently not supported by the policies, but changing policies in this
respect is under discussion. Certain aspects are unregulated; for
example, whether or not legacy (pre-RIR) allocations can be transferred
across regions is a gray zone.
4. What about IPv6?
The IETF has worked on introducing IPv6 precisely to prevent the
situation that is occurring now: if all had went well, we would be using
IPv6 in the internet, and there was no address shortage.
Many reasons have been discussed for this lack of acceptance; many
believe that the absence of economic forces has caused users to ignore
IPv6. With the actual exhaustion of the IPv4 space, this may change.
We believe that the development of the market price for IPv4 addresses
will determine whether users move to IPv6 or not.
--
Cheers,
Stephen
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