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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

#31

Post by jasonjayr »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #25
lima wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, TLS with forward secrecy is not legal to use on ham RF links. Same with SSH.

Let's hope no IoT company is stupid enough to send customer data over this. Stuff like LoRa is very popular these days, but they are low bandwidth. Would not be surprising if a company decides that MVNO providers are too expensive and rolls their own communications infrastructure.

Not a HAM, nor any expert by any means, but IIRC, LoRa + the Wifi Bands (2.4ghz/5.0ghz) permit encryption.

It's only the HAM bands that forbid encryption.

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

#32

Post by jcrawfordor »

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 IP space), and due to a perceived conflict of interest involving the ARDC board of directors. This was a big enough and loud enough issue for a while that it's kind of odd to see any announcement of this transaction being closed that doesn't mention the upset when it was first proposed.

Overall I think the sale was the right thing to do, but it is the fruit of a poisoned tree to some extent, and there will be ongoing questions about whether or not ARDC should really be in control of these funds. I am personally most just concerned about ARDC's ability to competently manage such a large endowment, since historically they've been a fairly low-activity group with some odd internal dynamics and a bit of a rift with some other amateur radio groups. On the other hand, maybe the endowment will allow them to hire a competent staff and become much more involved in promoting digital amateur radio.

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

#33

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

rswail wrote: 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.

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

#34

Post by metalliqaz »

rcoveson wrote: post #27
sfmike wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nothing can be encrypted on amprnet?

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?

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

#36

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

tzs wrote: post #15
rswail wrote: 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.

Comcast started rolling out IPv6 across their network a long time ago. They hit 100% support on their broadband network in 2014. They run a lot of the own stuff on IPv6, such as on-demand video on their set-top boxes. I think any home modem/router that they support that did not support IPv6 hit EOL long ago and was replaced. There may be some class A owners who are trying to hold back IPv6 so they can make money off…

> 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 have no plans to roll-out IPv6 even though Wave's WaveG service has been IPv6 for as long as I can remember. I understand the cause of this is because Wave's network is incredibly hetereogenous because Wave's business-model was to expand by buying-up smaller regional cablecos but to retain their infrastructure (and talent) compared to Comcast's approach of asset-stripping (bad for employees, but good for customers...).

I want IPv6 so I can stop having to faff around with NAT. I'd love to be able to RDP-in directly to my desktop at home without having to pay companies like TeamViewer and Splashtop.

----

Update: I found Wave's peering page's IPv6 status page and it remains unchanged since 2011 (and possibly since 2008). Wow.

Compare:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110102140910/http://as11404.ne...

Live:

http://as11404.net/ipv6.html

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

#37

Post by fulafel »

temp667 wrote: post #26
wmf wrote: 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.

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.

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

#38

Post by fulafel »

wmf wrote: post #21
fulafel wrote: post #6

Anyone have pointers to the history of IP addresses becoming tradeable, as opposed to just being allocations and up to registrar to reallocate?

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?

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

#39

Post by Cullinet »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #33
rswail wrote: 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.

Exactly.

What was the reason why do much money was required at this specific time?

British businesses might have been natural customers for this address space, since the UK IDD code is 00 44.

I would gladly pay $50 per IP for what is almost the only virgin address space going, if I had been offered.

Diligent address space title management including some genuinely tough identification requirements, managed by any top tier corporate actions specialist, could have multiplied the value several times immediately, and then there would have been increased inflation rates applicable to the range precisely because of this management.

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