Published in News

Black market for IP4 addresses opens

by on27 April 2011


Old tech done dirt cheap
A black market for IPv4 addresses is emerging as businesses who are desperate for addresses, but do not want to upgrade their networks are paying big money for them. Www.depository.net, www.denuo.com, www.addrex.net and www.tradeipv4.com are serving as brokers for organisations that want to sell or rent  IPv4 address space.

One bloke, Martin von Loewis launched his www.tradeipv4.com website immediately following the Asian regional registry's announcement that it was out of its regular pool of IPv4 addresses. Von Loewis told Network World that it was a legitimate market, although people were somewhat hesitant to use the service because many believe it's illegal or black market or gray market.

The free pool of unassigned IPv4 addresses ran out  in February, and the Asia Pacific regional Internet registry announced last week that it has doled out all but its last 16.7 million IPv4 addresses which are being held in reserve. Von Loew thinks  most of his initial customers will come from Asia where IPv4 is already exhausted. There are still a few free ones from RIPE so there is no need for Europeans to buy them. But he insists that he has been contacted by a number of potential buyers. He has established a minimum block of 256 IPv4 addresses -- known as a /24 -- for his trading site.

He expects most of the sales on his site will be for blocks of address space ranging from 256 addresses to 4,000 addresses, which is known as a /20.

More here.

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