The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire /8

Tue Sep 18 14:07:12 UTC 2012

http://paritynews.com/network/item/325-department-of-work-and-pensions-uk-in-possession-of-169-million-unused-ipv4-addresses

Department of Work and Pensions UK in Possession of 16.9 Million Unused IPv4
Addresses

Written by  Ravi Mandalia

Department of Work and Pensions UK in Possession of 16.9 Million Unused IPv4
Addresses

The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire block of '/8' IPv4
addresses that is unused and an e-petition has been filed in this regards
asking the DWP to sell it off thus easing off the RIPE IPv4 address space
scarcity a little.

John Graham-Cumming, who found this unused block, wrote in a blog post that
the DWP was in possession of 51.0.0.0/8 IPv4 addresses. According to Cumming,
these 16.9 million IP addresses are unused at the moment and he derived this
conclusion by doing a check in the ASN database. “A check of the ASN database
will show that there are no networks for that block of addresses,” he wrote.

An e-petition has been filed in this regards. “It has recently come to light
that the Department for Work and Pensions has its own allocated block of
16,777,216 addresses (commonly referred to as a /8), covering 51.0.0.0 to
51.255.255.255”, reads the petition.

The UK government, if it sells off this /8 block, could end up getting £1
billion mark. “£1 billion of low-effort extra cash would be a very nice thing
to throw at our deficit,” read the petition.

Cumming ends his post with the remark, “So, Mr. Cameron, I'll accept a 10%
finder's fee if you dispose of this asset :-)”.