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Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

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Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#51
post #12

So we've now had several interesting cases of how breaking changes to something popular (even foundational) are made and how that works out: - Perl 5 to Perl 6. I think this was an unmitigated disaster. 20 years ago Perl 5 had a lot of users. I'm pretty sure it's completely irrelevant now; - Python 2 to Python 3. It's been almost 12 years and we still have Python 2. Personally I think a lot of bad decisions were made…

[deleted]

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a law governing the ham radio bands' usage in general. No encrypted/obscured communications. In fact, you have to regularly, unambiguously, and publicly identify yourself every ten minutes if I recall.

why?

Securely encrypted data and noise are indistinguishable. If you can distinguish them then my encryption isn't good.

We don't want people to deliberately broadcast noise, but encrypted data is indistinguishable from noise, we can't allow that either.

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#53
post #38
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pivotal event was the Nortel-Microsoft deal where a court overruled the IANA hippies and said that IP blocks look like property and quack like property so they must be property.

Interesting. Followup question, is this the case only for ARIN addresses / US court system, or does it work like that elsewhere too?

AFAIK all the RIRs eventually decided to allow IP trading so no more precedents are needed.

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#54

Without going into too much depth, there was considerable controversy over this planned sale because of questions about ARDC's authority to make decisions involving this IP space (ownership of the IP block was never really assigned to ARDC per se but rather assumed due to lack of another clear owner), some historic bad blood between some amateur radio groups and ARDC (involving in part ARDC's administration of this I…

> On the other hand, maybe the endowment will allow them to hire a competent staff...

Does that ever really happen? If they are competent enough to know they need a better staff that's one thing, but if they are already incompetent they will just blow through the endowment with nothing to show for it.

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has long had IPv6 support in their operating systems, so I don't think they have been trying to hold it back either. And Microsoft has supported IPv6 since Windows 2000: https://news.microsoft.com/2000/03/15/microsoft-announces-ip... . I understand that LTE networks are exclusively IPv6, ditto "5G". My frustration with IPv6 is that my home ISP (Wave Broadband's DOCSIS service) is still IPv4 and they still hav…

> I want IPv6 so I can stop having to faff around with NAT. What makes you think your ISP will give you more than one IP even when they are no longer in short supply? If it's something that has value to you, it's something they will want to be paid for.

IPv6's has a fixed subnet size of 64-bits[1]. A router needs its own subnet, ergo everyone gets their own 64-bit address range. ISPs cannot give each customer a single IPv6 address because that would require each customer to have a single device connected directly to their router with no router in the CPE - basically like how dial-up used to work. There's no demand for a service like that.

[1] See https://www.ripe.net/about-us/press-centre/understanding-ip-... . I note that there is a lot of misinformation and badly-informed blog posts in the top search results for "ipv6 subnet size" like this one, ugh: https://www.crucial.com.au/blog/2011/04/15/ipv6-subnet-cheat... - which is wrong because IPv6 simply doesn't have 128-bit-sized subnet option (whereas you can have a 32-bit sized subnet in IPv4, which is how most residential ISPs/CPEs are configured).

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#56
post #37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thank goodness to! The only way these IP addresses are getting efficiently used (now) is there is an actual value and market for IPv4. AWS charges $1/month or $12/year to sit on an IP address unused. This price / value pressure has freed up a TON of address space and pushed down pricing signals on a lot of ipv4 usage (ie, you can say is it worth $300M to buy a class A or maybe we should spend $200M to get IPv6 go…

Even if this was the case (efficient market hypothesis is a dogma...) it could have been better if the money went to the internet orgs and could have been used to incentivise the migration off of ipv4. See the problems in eg the idea of all carbon trading credits being owned by the historically biggest CO2 emitter companies.

Dogma or not, there's always some cost to giving up addresses so nobody would give them up for free. A transfer tax to help pay for the transition would be an interesting idea but I don't know if IANA or the RIRs could plausibly implement that.

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#57
post #4

Is there any wonder that moving to IPv6 is delayed? Assuming an average $25/address, that's $400m/class A. Some of the organizations that own a class A: Apple, Ford, Softbank, Daimler, Prudential, Comcast. Softbank needs the money and the others wouldn't sniff at $300m+. Not sure how long the 100m odd addresses would last though.

> Assuming an average $25/address It'll be $50/address in a year, $100/address in 2022; I'm sure of it. Methinks now would be a very good time to invest^wspeculate in IPv4 addresses - I reckon it will be the next Bitcoin bubble-type event and likely even make it to the silly segment of TV news, with lampoonably inaccurate explanations of what an IPv4 address is to the general public.

Note that IPv4 speculation is technically against the rules. Be sure to factor in the cost of "laundering" the IPs into your business plan.

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why?

Securely encrypted data and noise are indistinguishable. If you can distinguish them then my encryption isn't good. We don't want people to deliberately broadcast noise, but encrypted data is indistinguishable from noise, we can't allow that either.

It's perfectly legal to transmit noise-like signals such as digital voice, DVB-S2 and OFDM. You just can't encrypt the content.

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you're using an extremely limited global resource. Blasting your voice around the world with 1,500 watts behind it is something that not everybody can do at once. So we need some sort of internationally agreeable rule set. The compromises include no encryption, required licensing, individual identification, no political speech, and others. But what we get in return is pretty cool: I can talk to somebody in Japa…

I'm not making the connection. If encoded data is allowed (unencrypted), why isn't it already dominated by general purpose digital comms?

Your conversations aren't just not encrypted, they're totally public. That's unacceptable for most communications.

Take everything you do on a phone call, over SMS, and over the Internet. Subtract anything personal, anything business related, anything involving copyright (e.g. watching a movie or listening to a song, even if you own it), and anything you don't want associated with your identity (anonymous blogging). Also, I forgot to mention that broadcasting is also disallowed. You couldn't just start telling poetry on a frequency without regard to anybody who may or may not be listening. You also can't use the bands for any commercial purpose.

Anyway, after subtracting all that, what your left with is what people use the band for today. Which, I suppose, could still be considered "general purpose." But when I said "general purpose digital communications," what I had in mind were the sorts of things you use email or the web for. By volume, mostly music, videos, porn, ads, and private business operations.

Re: Sale of amateur radio AMPRnet TCP/IP addresses raised $108M

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want IPv6 so I can stop having to faff around with NAT. What makes you think your ISP will give you more than one IP even when they are no longer in short supply? If it's something that has value to you, it's something they will want to be paid for.

IPv6's has a fixed subnet size of 64-bits[1]. A router needs its own subnet, ergo everyone gets their own 64-bit address range. ISPs cannot give each customer a single IPv6 address because that would require each customer to have a single device connected directly to their router with no router in the CPE - basically like how dial-up used to work. There's no demand for a service like that. [1] See https://www.ripe.ne…

RIPE just has a rule about only having ISPs hand out those /64s there is nothing to prevent someone internally to then split that /64 into smaller chunks to hand out to internal clients. Thats the would point of a subnet!
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