IPv4 and Auctions

Thu Oct 24 22:37:42 UTC 2019

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 09:30:20AM -0400, Matt Hoppes wrote:
> On 10/24/19 9:25 AM, Chris Adams wrote:
> > Once upon a time, Matt Hoppes <mattlists at rivervalleyinternet.net> said:
> > > You don’t suddenly just not need a/8 or suddenly not need a/21.
> > 
> > You don't "suddenly just" do lots of things, because things change over
> > time; no need to attribute malicious intent.  For example, a former
> > employer had a /17, a /18, and a /19 at one point (and even that was
> > kind of tight).  The business has changed though, and now they have a
> > /23 and two /24s, and sold the rest.
> 
> I get that -- but if you don't need a /18, don't the ARIN rules require they
> be returned?

Well, there's need, and then there's "need".  If you've sprayed your
organisation's IP addresses all across your /18, then you "need" that whole
/18, and you're going to have to undertake a whole renumbering fiesta to
change that, which is going to be costly both in direct labour costs, as
well as disruption to services.

Since there's no requirement for all the addresses to be publicly reachable,
there's no way for anyone outside of your organisation to tell that only one
/24 in each /21 is actually being used, and even then each /24 only has 4-5
hosts in it.  Thus, nobody at ARIN (or anywhere else) is going to come
beating down your door to demand you give back that big block you're only
sparsely using.

Now, imagine that suddenly you can get Real Money for the unused addresses. 
It might, at some point, turn out to make financial sense to spend the money
to renumber into a smaller block and get phat sacks of mad cheddar for the
addresses you can free up.  If you want to take a charitable look at it, the
money that organisations get for "selling" their unused space can be seen
rather as compensation for undertaking the work necessary to free up that
space.  The invisible hand of the market at work!

You can also, of course, see it as pointless busy-work that would have been
better spent just rolling out IPv6 and being done with it.  Your mileage, as
the sticker says, may vary.

- Matt