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

Wed Sep 19 20:35:13 UTC 2012

Am I correct in assuming that the unused IP block would not be sold as 
is mentioned in the article, but instead  be returned to RIPE to be 
reallocated?

Robert

On 18 Sep 2012, at 10:07, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> 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 :-)”.