IP Address News

Providing you with a single site about IP Addresses News and Usage

IP Address News - Providing you with a single site about IP Addresses News and Usage

USG/DoD IPv4 blocks for sale someday?

The news that the US government (Department of Defense) was considering selling its 13 /8 blocks appeared on a number of mailing lists last month. The possible sale appeared in a version of the House appropriations bill. The Senate bill contained no such provision and the directive was stuck by the conference committee. Any future action on this area is unknown, but the fact that this appeared leads one to assume that it may come back in the future.

IPv4.global also recently published a commentary about the issue that discusses some of the possible impacts such a sale might make on the IPv4 market.

https://ipv4.global/u-s-department-of-defense-ipv4-address-space/

Previously, the US Government’s position on IPv4 block was that it would return them to the registry when they were no longer needed.

Consistent with the policies developed through the current multistakeholder model, the USG believes that all IP numbers are allocated for use on a needs basis and should be returned to the numbering pool when no longer needed.

https://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2012/united-states-government-s-internet-protocnumbering-principles

Times change and governments change too so its not surprising that given the value of the IPv4 holdings in today’s IPv4 market that politicians are revisiting what should happen to the DoD’s IPv4 resources.

RIPE Region hits the bottom of its IPv4 reserve pool

The RIPE NCC today announced that they have basically reached the end of their IPv4 reserve pool. When RIPE received its last /8 allocation from IANA they choose to allocate this block in /22 increments to new LIR’s (Local Internet Registries). They have now allocated the last /22 contigious block and are now in the process of allocating equivalently /22s made up of /23 and /24 blocks.

If you thought there was still time at RIPE to get in line as a new applicant to get a /22 unfortunately you likely have missed the boat. RIPE saw a increase in the number of LIR applications (basically a run on the bank as the pool emptied) and noted that due to the back log of applicants some current applicants will likely not receive a /22 but may get a /24 from the wait-list in the future.

https://www.ripe.net/publications/news/about-ripe-ncc-and-ripe/update-approaching-ipv4-run-out

ARIN 43 Public Policy Preview

Here is my ARIN 43 Policy Preview for the upcoming meeting in Barbados. For those of you who are unable to make the trip down you are welcome to participate remotely. Additional feedback on these draft policies is always welcomed by the advisory council.

There are quite a few policies to discuss at this upcoming meeting, including a number of new wait-list replacement draft policies.

2017-12 POC Notification and Validation Upon Reassignment or Reallocation

Policy Summary: This recommended draft policy requires that a POC be validated upon insertion into the ARIN database.

Discussion:  This policy was presented as a recommended draft at the last meeting in Vancouver, and was sent to last-call and the ARIN board following the meeting. The ARIN board decided to refer this policy back to the AC for additional consideration due to the operational impact that this new policy is expected to have on network operators. The text has been updated to reflect additional feedback and will be presented again to the community for their consideration.

2018-2 Clarification to ISP Initial Allocation and Permit Renumbering

This recommended draft policy attempts to clarify a discrepancy between the IPv4 policy and the IPv4 transfer policy around initial ISP block size, by setting the initial ISP allocation size to a /24.  (The current minimum is a /21).

Discussion:  The ARIN 40 the policy experience report noted a discrepancy in the policy on the initial ISP allocation size depending on if an ISP applied under the old IPv4 Allocation policy (section 4) or if they applied under the new IPv4 Transfer policy (section 8).  This policy attempts to fix this issue by setting the IPv4 policy to match the current methodology used in evaluating transfers.

2018-5 Disallow Third-party Organization Record Creation

This recommended draft policy states that only an authorized representative of an organization can create an organization record in ARIN’s database.

Discussion:  Currently any ARIN member can create an organizational record (org-id) in the ARIN database. This is commonly done when a reallocation or detailed reassignment record is created. This ability, over the years, has allowed ISPs to create multiple records for a single organizations. The goal of this policy change is increase the accuracy of organizational records and decrease the number of duplicative records. This policy like the POC validation policy could be a significant operational change for some network operators.

2018-6 Clarify reassignment requirements in 4.2.3.7.1

This draft policy clarifies which type of reassignment records should be created.

Discussion:  The current policy manual contains some confusing text about when a simple vs. detailed reassignment record should be created. This policy attempts to clarify that a detailed reassignment record is only required when the assignment will be routed outside of the providers network or the customer requests the detailed record.

Wait-list Update Draft Policies

2019-1 Clarify Section 4 IPv4 Request Requirements

2019-2 Waiting List Block Size Restriction

2019-6 Longer Hold Time Requirements for 4.1.8 Recipients

2019-7 Elimination of the Waiting List

Discussion:  In February, the ARIN board suspended the current wait-list policy. In their suspension notification the board noted the reason for suspension as “potential misuse of number resources under NRPM section 4.1.8 (Unmet Requests).” Since the suspension, the AC has been tasked by the board to consider the updates to this policy as allowed by PDP (10.2).

Additionally, a number of members of the community have submitted additional and sometimes overlapping ideas about how number policy should be updated.

This is my summary of the PPML discussion:

  • The community generally supports reinstating the wait-list in some form
  • The community appears to support /22 as the maximum size, although there were some comments toward going smaller to match APNIC’s /23 and RIPE’s /24 evolving policies
  • There is support for allowing the existing organizations on the wait-list to modify their requests to match the new maximum block size
  • A segment of the community appears to support restrictions on a per organization basis
  • A segment of the community supports some form of fee or block auction to reduce the arbitrage value of the resources; three different avenues were noted to achieve this goal
    • semi-static waiting-list fee
    • blocks are “auctioned” via existing brokers
    • ARIN directly “auctions” blocks
  • There was some discussion around restricting the transfer of blocks received by the wait-list including 8.2 & 8.3/8.4 transfers

2019-3 Update 4.10 – IPv6 Deployment Block

This draft policy updates the special purpose IPv4 block to facilitate IPv6 transition. Specifically, this policy sets all blocks as a /24 and cleans up the utilization requirements.

Discussion:  The current transition policy allows for a minimum of a /28 to be issued by ARIN. ARIN, however, does not currently have the technical ability to assign smaller than /24 blocks. Furthermore, a /28 practically is unroutable, so an organization if they were to receive a /28 would be unable to functionally interoperate with most IPv4 end points.

This policy attempts to address these issues, by raising the minimum size to a /24 and limits total amount an organization can receive to a /21. The policy also clarifies the utilization requirements by placing them directly in this section rather than a reference to the utilization requirements of end users.

2019-4 Allow Inter-regional IPv6 Resource Transfers

This draft policy allows IPv6 blocks to be transferred between RIRs.

Discussion:  The current current problem statement notes that the lack of acceptance of the relying party agreement for ARIN’s RPKI trust anchor as one of the reasons to permit an organization to transfer IPv6 resources to another RIR.  This is likely only one of the possible reasons that an organization may which to transfer resources.

2018 IPv4 Market Reports

Avenue4 and Hilco Streambank have posted their 2018 state of the IPv4 transfer market reports. A couple of comments I found of note in their report.

  • The average trade price for blocks <4k IPv4 address was approximately $20/IPv4 address
  • The average trade price for blocks >4k IPv4 address was approximately $17.50/IPv4 address
  • Avenue4’s data shows the number of IPv4 market transactions starting to flatten at about 80 transactions per quarter
  • The majority of addresses being traded is coming from legacy /8 blocks, additionally we are now seeing some of the largest telecoms selling their excess IPv4 supply
  • Hilco also collaborates the increasing prices for IPv4 resources, their auction website provides detailed pricing for most transactions

Avenue4 2018 State of the IPv4 Market (copy)

Hilco Streambank 2018 IPv4 Annual Report

IP Addressing in 2018

Geoff Huston has posted his annual IP addressing update.  Here are a few things I found interesting in his report for this year.

  • The current IPv4 Internet likely has 20 Billion devices connected to just 2 Billion IPv4 identifiers via NAT
  • IPv4 transfer transactions continue to increase, 9220 in 2018 vs 6182 in 2017
  • The IPv4 transfer volume hit a record in 2018 with 290M records being transferred, the previous highest year was 153M in 2015
  • IPv4 addresses that were originally allocated many years ago dominated the IPv4 transfer market in 2018, the original blocks were split into an average of 8 different blocks through the transfer process
  • The vast majority of all transfers which occurred in 2018 were between US organizations composing of some 262M IPv4 addresses
  • IPv6 allocation volumes increased in 2018 to an all time high of 39k /32 equivalents

Addressing 2018 (copy)