Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#121

Post by ThePhysicist » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:05 AM UTC

worldofmatthew wrote: post #99

ThePhysicist wrote: post #96

A small nitpick: They don't "own" these addresses, the regional internet registries (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC etc.) loan them to Amazon so they can use them, they could take them away again if AWS would do something that's against the RIRs' policies. We also have a single /22 block of addresses from RIPE (we were one of the last companies to get such a block in 2019), so far we haven't made use of it though as it's still a…

Did you register a ASN?

Not yet. Getting an ASN number is independent of getting LIR status.

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#122

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

bzb6 wrote: post #110

ThePhysicist wrote: post #96

A small nitpick: They don't "own" these addresses, the regional internet registries (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC etc.) loan them to Amazon so they can use them, they could take them away again if AWS would do something that's against the RIRs' policies. We also have a single /22 block of addresses from RIPE (we were one of the last companies to get such a block in 2019), so far we haven't made use of it though as it's still a…

That’s a huge nitpick, given that RIRs generally don’t give a shit even if you don’t use the addresses at all. Also I can imagine Amazon would rightly sue if a RIR tried to take addresses from them.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#123

Post by lukeramsden » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #119

Sebb767 wrote: post #6

This is 2.5% of the total adress space - not usable, total. It's about the equivalent of 6.25 class A (/8) prefixes. Quite impressive.

I dont think that's impressive. I think it means something is wrong with governance.

Why's that? They run an incredibly significant amount of internet infrastructure, is it not also natural for them to own a lot of IP addresses to go with that?

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#124

Post by HeWhoLurksLate » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

rualca wrote: post #100

TechBro8615 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a lawsuit against one of them recently. But the gist of it is they’re opening a bunch of LLCs and registering their IPs with ARIN. When you “geolocate” an IP, you’re really just looking up the registered info for that IP’s ASN in the ARIN/RIPE database.

> When you “geolocate” an IP, you’re really just looking up the registered info for that IP’s ASN in the ARIN/RIPE database. That's pretty much the whole business model of VPNs. That, and secure encrypted traffic.

Oh yeah, secure connections. Wouldn't want to forget that...

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#125

Post by Scoundreller » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

nucleardog wrote: post #55

bamboleo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this means that the poorer countries give the same IP to multiple users. I’ve received a “you’re doing that too much” error after the first google search of the day on my phone in South East Asia. I don’t remember which country

That's not exclusive to poorer countries. Cellular carriers in first world countries aren't assigning a public IPv4 address to every cell phone.

My guess is that providers allow higher rate limits on developed country ISP IPs for this reason.

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#126

Post by inglor_cz » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

zokier wrote: post #61

dstick wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think it would. Because despite the obvious business advantage they have, any would-be competitor would need IPs at a similar scale. That will either cost a ton more than Amazon has, or they simply won’t be available. I own 2048 IPv4’s myself and their value is ever increasing. Like digital real estate, without the fluctuation of crypto. But I would prefer it if IPv6 would take over IPv4, and fast, because it…

> I own 2048 IPv4’s myself and their value is ever increasing. Like digital real estate, without the fluctuation of crypto. Until the day when ipv6-only connectivity becomes practical/commonplace. At some point ipv4 market is going to crash when they are simply not needed anymore. Of course that inflection point might still be quite far away, but I wouldn't count on ipv4 stock being a retirement fund

This is slowly happening. On my blog, I can see IP addresses of people who subscribed for my newsletter. It used to be 100 per cent IPv4 a year ago, now it is more like 8:1.

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#127

Post by Scoundreller » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

SteveGregory wrote: post #52

At this point, it’s the same as RF spectrum. Yet clearly there is no regulatory body to manage it.

It’s okay. When it comes to RF, most regulatory bodies are content to let buyers camp on their allocations just to keep out any competition.

While the auction receipts go into the public coffers, it’s not like we get annual cheques.

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#128

Post by tpetry » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

aritmo wrote: post #70

TechBro8615 wrote: post #49

I used to own 10k IP addresses that I sold as proxy servers to internet marketers. I made about $20k a month and it paid my bills through college. I had no idea what I was doing and eventually shut down the company, but damn, I wish I at least kept control of those things. If you want to see some sketchy shit, look deeply into what the VPN companies are doing.

What are they doing?

Very often your residential connection is sold as proxy to e.g. circumvent rate limits. Companies like luminati are used for example for scraping google search results and many more things.

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#129

Post by iam-TJ » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #82

klodolph wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, legacy. But, > …a bunch of lazy network admins in NA and the EU that don't want to learn the new tech… That’s a cheap shot, and it’s not called for. Network admins are paid to make the networks run. Anything else is less important. If your IPv6 network experiences some small problems, well, you’re going to hold on to IPv4 because small network problems can mean big inefficiencies or lost sales. Just a few…

Yeah, it's not the network admins, they want IPv6 too. If at all possible our network admins want IPv6 only networks, the sad fact is that it's not possible in most cases. We had to return stacks of Cisco equipment, because despite being brand new it had no IPv6 support. We should have checked of cause, but we just didn't imagine that you could buy IPv4 only equipment in 2020. Software is even worse, we have had soft…

What is even more incredible in 2020 is that docker.com and hub.docker.com do not host on IPv6 .... and they're on AWS.

We discovered this due to operating an IPv6-only network and having to deploy NAT64/DNS64* on the edge specifically for reaching hub.docker.com

* NAT64/DNS64 was trivial to set up (Tayga + bind9) - took 2 hours for a networking apprentice

Re: Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

#130

Post by i_like_to_post » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

enz wrote: post #106

Let's use IPv6 more and it'll worth far less than $2B.

The problem with IPv6 is that it's a fundamentally flawed design. Which looks easier to input / dictate over the phone / write down somewhere? 220.12.30.01 or 2001:cdba:0000:0000:0000:0000:3257:9652?