I think that as a business and given the fact they are now charging for a previously free service (public IPs), offering a now paid service as free would nullify the reasons for doing what they are doing. They don't owe anyone anything for free.
That doesn't follow, because the reason is that IP addresses are scarce.
That’s not anything new. They’ve been scarce for a decade and they’ve footed the bill this long so why change it now other then someone noticed the opportunity
I think that as a business and given the fact they are now charging for a previously free service (public IPs), offering a now paid service as free would nullify the reasons for doing what they are doing. They don't owe anyone anything for free.
> They don't owe anyone anything for free. I always love this comments. We pay them literally hundreds of thousands a year.
Look I’m the last one that will bang the capitalism, consume, spend, drum, but nothing is ever free. You want a free nat box? Your managed database cluster just got a fraction of a fraction of a cent more expensive every hour. You would never get it for free even if they billed it as such. They wouldn’t be the biggest company in the world if they were in the habit of using their profits for your bills instead of the shareholder’s dividends. This is a business, not a family style steak house.
> They don't owe anyone anything for free. I always love this comments. We pay them literally hundreds of thousands a year.
Look I’m the last one that will bang the capitalism, consume, spend, drum, but nothing is ever free. You want a free nat box? Your managed database cluster just got a fraction of a fraction of a cent more expensive every hour. You would never get it for free even if they billed it as such. They wouldn’t be the biggest company in the world if they were in the habit of using their profits for your bills instead of the…
That doesn't follow, because the reason is that IP addresses are scarce.
That’s not anything new. They’ve been scarce for a decade and they’ve footed the bill this long so why change it now other then someone noticed the opportunity
IP addresses are supposed to be free! The RIRs are in the business of handing out addresses to whoever applies for them if the applicant can show that they have a reasonable use for the addresses. But as the IPv4 addresses eventually run out, AWS will then buy addresses directly from whoever has them. This is allowed, but a bit dubious, since if someone aren’t using their addresses, it would make more sense to return…
> IP addresses are supposed to be free! just like the air is supposed to be free! In reality, nothing can be free. The cost was initially not being paid for, because initially there's just quite a bit of addresses, and there wouldnt have been any quarrels. I maintain that the world is being polluted because things aren't free. Imagine if every cubic inch of air, water and land is owned. You would not be allowed to po…
IP addresses aren't a physical object with a cost to produce them.
No one is saying that maintaining the fiber optics and routers should be free though, that's why we pay ISPs.
I still don't get why we can't just expand IPv4 into IPv5 by adding some new blocks to the front. So instead of 192.0.0.1 it becomes 0.0.0.0.192.0.0.1 All existing addresses work, you simply append zeroes to any address which is too short for the new standard. Any old timey software still works as long as you use a router between the two systems with an old timey address. This would give us as many addresses as we wa…
This comment is just HN at its best. Chef's kiss. The Internet Engineering Task Force, a group of experts in the field, spent years and countless hours creating a new standard, but do not let that stop us from napkin-sketching up a new solution ourselves, I mean how smart can these experts really be?
I still don't get why we can't just expand IPv4 into IPv5 by adding some new blocks to the front. So instead of 192.0.0.1 it becomes 0.0.0.0.192.0.0.1 All existing addresses work, you simply append zeroes to any address which is too short for the new standard. Any old timey software still works as long as you use a router between the two systems with an old timey address. This would give us as many addresses as we wa…
IP is not a text format (like HTTP). It's a binary format where each field of the IPv4 header has an exactly defined offset and length. The source IP address is placed at offset 96 and has a length of 32 bit, the destination IP address sits right afterwards with the same length. Changing anything will result in new protocol definition, et voilà that's IPv6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_version_4#He…
In addition, there are also impacts on other protocols such as ARP, DHCP, ICMP, DNS etc.
So it's not as simple as changing only the IP packet format either.
> makes more economic sense to have fewer, central owners that can maximize usage What you have described is effectively a China-style ICP license[1]. Unless you are willing to give a big name cloud provider $x per month, you shouldn't be able to put a service on the internet? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license
Only on legacy IP. We're trying to kill it. A bit of pain will be necessary to finally get modern IP across the line of mainstream usage.
"We" are not doing anything of the sort. 11 years into IPv6 and you still can't single home a network behind v6. Much like DNSSEC the purists refuse to admit that it has basically been a failure outside of very specific use cases.
> spent $ billions buying up ASN blocks. You can't buy/sell/trade "ASN blocks". The only people handling "ASN blocks" are the 5 RIRs (APNIC, RIPE NCC, ARIN, AfriNIC and LACNIC) and IANA. > owning IPs is the ultimate rent seeking cloud business It also seems that your use of "rent seeking" doesn't match established use. It normally refers to people extracting money for things far beyond their actual value. The IPv4 ma…
> You can't buy/sell/trade "ASN blocks". The only people handling "ASN blocks" are the 5 RIRs (APNIC, RIPE NCC, ARIN, AfriNIC and LACNIC) and IANA. You absolutely can sell ASNs or ASN blocks, just like you can sell IPs. Want to sell an ASN? Ask the buyer for money. When the money is in your account/escrow, transfer the ASN to them. Get money. Sale complete. But that’s besides the point, this has got nothing to do wit…
> You absolutely can sell […] ASN blocks,
No you can't, because you can't actually acquire an ASN *block* to begin with.
Which is the point of my comment. Only the RIRs handle blocks of ASNs. As a non-RIR entity you can get individual ASNs, or multiple individual ASNs, but not an ASN block.