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Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

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Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not usually a “let the market decide” person, but ARIN has only made this problem worse with their idealism over reality policies. Their response has continued to be “time to switch to ipv6” which grossly oversimplifies the reality of the issue. Oddly enough, the Europeans, through RIPE are doing it right by allowing a market system so that unused but assigned net blocks can be sold to people that actually have a…

There are still blocks for sale in the US and probably always will be. Not saying your wrong just that the reality is more of a gray market vs the official ARIN party line. There are blocks that were assigned predating ARIN and if you never agreed then you can still sell these at a market rate.

Yep, I looked into that but you basically cede all control back to ARIN. ARIN does not let you consider them “assets” so they get involved in any company acquisition. IPv4 space from other regions is much more flexible.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#92
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s frustrating that they paint the unused space as evidence of of abandonment, but the reality is that it’s been impossible to use any of this address space!

I didn't even know about it until yesterday! It's kept quiet and secret I guess. As a ham for 10 years now, I totally would've used this for projects if I could've got allocated space. I believe http://hamwan.org/ is on 44.0.0.0.

Well, I've known of it for 30 years. Since starting with AX.25 to a TNC, then playing with KA9Q NOS. So it isn't really a secret.

As I understand it, the range was supposed to only be used for Ham to Ham comms, so if routed (generally tunneled) over the Internet, was only supposed to be to other Hams.

Certainly there are people with ACLs expecting that 44.0.0.0/8 will never be sent to the Internet, nor received from the Internet. So it has in effect been a bit like a shared RFC1918 space, but for Hams alone.

Moreover those in the know probably have it in their Bogon filers, I certainly do. So it may not yet be as usable as Amazon hope.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#93

I hate to be a downer, but nobody even knew about this space until it was mentioned here. I've been a ham for almost 10 years and this is the first I've heard of it. The Internet and ham radio don't mix. The rules of the modern Internet are "encrypt everything and trust nothing." The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything". It wasn't meant to be, unless you want to change the laws in every ITU…

over halve of this giant net uses ips in the affected allocation https://hamnetdb.net/map.cgi

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#94
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even know about it until yesterday! It's kept quiet and secret I guess. As a ham for 10 years now, I totally would've used this for projects if I could've got allocated space. I believe http://hamwan.org/ is on 44.0.0.0.

Well, I've known of it for 30 years. Since starting with AX.25 to a TNC, then playing with KA9Q NOS. So it isn't really a secret. As I understand it, the range was supposed to only be used for Ham to Ham comms, so if routed (generally tunneled) over the Internet, was only supposed to be to other Hams. Certainly there are people with ACLs expecting that 44.0.0.0/8 will never be sent to the Internet, nor received from…

People considering it a bogon are simply wrong. 44.0.0.0/8 has been routed on the internet for decades. If you register a subnet, you can even announce it with BGP just like any other. Also note that ampr.org (not www.ampr.org) resolves to a 44 IP.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not usually a “let the market decide” person, but ARIN has only made this problem worse with their idealism over reality policies. Their response has continued to be “time to switch to ipv6” which grossly oversimplifies the reality of the issue. Oddly enough, the Europeans, through RIPE are doing it right by allowing a market system so that unused but assigned net blocks can be sold to people that actually have a…

I believe the op is not talking about a denial by ARIN. The 44 space is administered by a series of volunteers that I believe is distributed worldwide. Some people in the amateur radio community like to create little fiefdoms and the distribution of subnets in 44 is not immune to this type of gate keeping.

Correct. ARDC (managing entity of AMPRNet) then used the lack of use of the 44 address space as an excuse to sell it off to the highest bidder. Those addresses were indeed unused, but not for lack of want.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#96
I know somebody who basically stole a class A IP network many years ago. (He wouldn't tell me which one. ;)

The company that owned it went out of business, so he registered their domain name, and sent in an email to authorize the transfer.

Once you've got a hot class A network on your hands, but don't have 16,777,216 computers to use it, what can you possibly with it?

It's not as if you can hide it in your garage, file the serial number off, repaint it, and put it up for sale on the black market!

He ended up trading it under the table to a company that could use it, in exchange for the promise of free service for life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addre...

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. You're blaming humanity because a marketplace developed following the scarcity of a commodity? Why was any of this bad behavior? I'm genuinely confused.

He's blaming humanity for maintaining a commodity as scarce, rather than working to alleviate the scarcity.

working to alleviate the scarcity

That's exactly what ipv6 is...

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#98

I hate to be a downer, but nobody even knew about this space until it was mentioned here. I've been a ham for almost 10 years and this is the first I've heard of it. The Internet and ham radio don't mix. The rules of the modern Internet are "encrypt everything and trust nothing." The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything". It wasn't meant to be, unless you want to change the laws in every ITU…

This didn't come up in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20363705 earlier this month. That "FreeBSD - A lesson in poor defaults" post said FreeBSD's OpenSSH port has "The NONE cipher is somewhat of a misfeature, removing the encryption bits and only keeping the data integrity. It allows users to accidentally shoot themselves in the foot pretty easily. The trade-off in performance isn't really worth it either, as the bottlenecks one might experience have a lot more to do with the MAC than the actual encryption."

So, when someone uses 44.0.0.0/9 where encryption isn't allowed, and they don't want to create and maintain their own OpenSSH fork, this FreeBSD code might be exactly what they want.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, we're left with less space than we had before. To my knowledge the FCC is pretty liberal with dishing out public RF spectrum ranges to private entities, but they're much more conservative with turning over private RF ranges to the public. Every part of the RF spectrum that the public loses is unlikely to be reclaimed. We have less airspace, permanently.

The FCC is shortsighted for not making all spectrum be leased. It should all be on 25 year leases, auctioned a few years in advance of expiry.

Congress could reclaim spectrum anytime they want, in theory.

Re: Amateur radio digital communications 44.0.0.0/8 partial sell-off

#100

I know somebody who basically stole a class A IP network many years ago. (He wouldn't tell me which one. ;) The company that owned it went out of business, so he registered their domain name, and sent in an email to authorize the transfer. Once you've got a hot class A network on your hands, but don't have 16,777,216 computers to use it, what can you possibly with it? It's not as if you can hide it in your garage, fi…

I can believe this about a class B or C. Class A is too large to go unnoticed.
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