For the uninitiated, can someone give a brief explanation of what that means?
Back when the internet was still young, you would go to ARIN (the American Registry of Internet Numbers) and say "I think I need 256 special numbers" and they would give you a block of 256 of them. Something like 1.2.3.0 - 1.2.3.255. If you asked for about 65,000 special they might give you 231.45.0.0 through 231.45.255.255.
MIT (the Massachusettes Institute of Technology in Boston, MA, USA) was one of the first people to ask for special numbers and so asked for over 16,000,000 of them (this was 1/256 of all of them) and so MIT was given 18.0.0.0-18.255.255.255.
Now today, all of the special numbers have given to people and companies. This makes each special number extra special and large groups of special numbers very extra special. Since MIT had 16,000,000 of the special numbers all next to each other, they decided to sell half of their special numbers for a lot of money.
Edit: Simple English: https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/