IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Sun Feb 24 00:35:10 UTC 2008

Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> 
> Thus spake "Tom Vest" <tvest at eyeconomics.com>
>>> I agree, to a point.  My prediction is that when the handful of
>>> mega-ISPs are unable to get the massive quantities of IPv4  addresses
>>> they need (a few dozen account for 90% of all
>>> consumption in the ARIN region)...
>>
>> I keep reading assertions like this. Is there any public,  authoritative
>> evidence to support this claim?
> 
> Rechecking my own post to PPML, 73 Xtra Large orgs held 79.28% of ARIN's 
> address space as of May 07; my apology for a faulty memory, but it's not 
> off by enough to invalidate the point.

I can phrase it another way, working solely off the published data from 
the 5 RIRs (daily stats files)

Of the 13,521 IPv4 allocation transactions since 1 January 2006, some 
103 transactions accounted for 42% of the total volume of IPv4 address 
space allocated in this period. (i.e. an allocation event of a /12 or 
greater)

24 were recorded in the APNIC report, 37 in the ARIN report(*) and 31 in 
the RIPE report

> 
> The statistics came from ARIN Member Services in response to an email
> inquiry.  I don't believe they publish such things anywhere (other than 
> what's in WHOIS), but you can verify yourself if you wish; they were 
> quite willing to
> give me any stats I asked for if they had the necessary data available.
> 
>> If there is, is this 90% figure a new development, or rather the  product
>> of changes in ownership (e.g., MCI-VZ-UU, SBC-ATT, etc.),  changes in
>> behavior (a run on the bank), some combination of the two,  or something
>> else altogether?
> 
> Most of the orgs in the Xtra Large class were already there before the
> mega-mergers started; after all, you only need >/14 to be Xtra Large.  
> Given
> how most tend to operate in silos, they might still be separate orgs as far
> as ARIN is concerned...
> 

This data regarding allocations does not reflect after-the-event 
mergers. It simply looks at the size distribution in the daily stats 
files as reported by the RIRs.

In ARIN's case in particular 57% of all IPv4 addresses allocated since 1 
January 2006 were allocated as part of a /11 or larger, and 88% were 
part of a /16 or greater. This equates to 6 transactions of a /11 (out 
of 3,546 individual transactions for the same period, or fractions of a 
percent. For /16 or larger there were 306 transactions out of 3,546, or 
8.6%. Thats more than "a few dozen", but it does not also reflect 
mergers and aquisitions post allocation.

(*The ARIN report format had to be re-processed becuase of the differing 
procedure ARIN uses to update this report each day)

   Geoff