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Amazon owns more than $2B worth of IPv4 addresses

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

#81
post #45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't take too much to make a breakdown of IP announcements. Ownership is a bit harder to track down, I think. Looking at something like https://bgp.he.net/AS32934#_prefixes will tell you what IPs Facebook announces. Rinse and repeat for whoever else. Maybe a bit tricky if you need to track down subsidiary ASes. Disclosure: I worked for WhatsApp including while it was part of Facebook, and was involved in getti…

Stupid question: why does WhatsApp need to be its own AS?

Probably because it was a standalone application before purchased for 22 Billion by Facebook in 2014.

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

#82
post #14

From what I understand the problem with IPv6 isn't technical problems it is with legacy. According to what I know in Africa and Asia they have mostly already been running on IPv6 the problem is just basically a bunch of lazy network admins in NA and the EU that don't want to learn the new tech and organizations that don't want to switch.

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 software that advertised IPv6 support, so we build an IPv6 only solution, only to find out that the manufacturer has NEVER had a customer using their software on IPv6. They tested it six years ago and never followed up, meaning that IPv6 does actually work in the latest versions.

Docker is another example, who in their right mind designed Docker to be a IPv4 only solution and then attempts to bolt on IPv6 later. It should have been IPv6 and then if you really needed it you could add an IPv4 ingress. Most of the issues we have experience using Docker could have been avoided by using IPv6 and dropping IPv4 all together.

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

#83

I’m more surprised that a single IP address is worth $20 apparently than Amazon owning 100 million of them. What I wonder, is it a competitive advantage for Amazon at this point that they have so many? Phrased differently, would it benefit Amazon if the current status quo of IPv4 vs IPv6 adoption is maintained?

Keep in mind contiguous IPv4 addresses are worth $20. One of the few examples of “the more of them you have for sale, the more they’re worth”

There's a u shaped curve on pricing. There's a lot of demand for /24s, because sometimes that's all you can justify.

Once you get bigger than what can be easily justified, the prices go down a bit. If you need a /18, you can probably use either an /18 or two /19s or ... You can make it work, and there's not enough benefit for contiguous to pay more. Of course, if you can justify an /8, there is a premium for contiguous. Otoh, not too many /8's for sale.

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

#84
post #36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of them list their IP ranges. I went and ran the numbers on DO's, available from: http://digitalocean.com/geo/google.csv 2,344,576 IPs, so ~47mm on the same math.

And for Google's from: https://www.gstatic.com/ipranges/cloud.json 7,580,928 So ~151mm, on the same math.

Hrmm it's not that much of an error since that is dominated by the /14 and /15 but there's a few /16 that Google uses for itself that aren't in that list. See the DNS TXT records for _netblocks{,2,3}.google.com

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

#85
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of NAT going on these days, and a lot of shared addresses. All those devices aren't all online at the same time. As I see it, IPv6 can't come fast enough. NAT really needs to die a death so people can actually use the internet fully, not only as a client or using hack-y work-arounds.

I want ipv6 as much as anyone, but we are not spending enough time preparing for NATs death. It's responsible for far more security than we as a collective would like to admit and there's a lot more we could be doing now to get ready.

That's a common misconception. NAT isn't a security feature but rather a feature of a stateful firewall, which is. There's no reason to remove the firewalls that are in place now when ipv6 happens.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the issue with this if it accomplishes the goal of proxying your connection? I assume the LLCs are designed as a legal shield but would probably have their veils pierced.

I mean, I don’t have any moral problems with it. But any time you’ve got one entity opening a bunch of LLCs, I think it qualifies as sketchy.

Hahaha definitely a red-flag if you ever work for a place that plays the LLC game. Wish my younger self knew that

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

#87

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.

I've never really considered this before but it's interesting. Does this happen randomly or is there some geographic/tower based IP sharing?

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I don’t have any moral problems with it. But any time you’ve got one entity opening a bunch of LLCs, I think it qualifies as sketchy.

Hahaha definitely a red-flag if you ever work for a place that plays the LLC game. Wish my younger self knew that

It’s also how Enron found so many buyers for its energy contracts ;)

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

#89
post #45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't take too much to make a breakdown of IP announcements. Ownership is a bit harder to track down, I think. Looking at something like https://bgp.he.net/AS32934#_prefixes will tell you what IPs Facebook announces. Rinse and repeat for whoever else. Maybe a bit tricky if you need to track down subsidiary ASes. Disclosure: I worked for WhatsApp including while it was part of Facebook, and was involved in getti…

Stupid question: why does WhatsApp need to be its own AS?

I'm not 100% sure, but if WhatsApp wanted to run their own datacenters, then they'll need their own IP ranges, and BGP/AS numbers is how IPs are "routed".

The AS number is used to let others know that a given IP range is reachable via your router.

I'd like to give a better explanation, but I think it would be wrong. BGP is really hard for me to grasp, even if my networking colleagues claims it's not really that complicated.

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

#90
post #84
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for Google's from: https://www.gstatic.com/ipranges/cloud.json 7,580,928 So ~151mm, on the same math.

Hrmm it's not that much of an error since that is dominated by the /14 and /15 but there's a few /16 that Google uses for itself that aren't in that list. See the DNS TXT records for _netblocks{,2,3}.google.com

Yeah, I limited to GCP rather than trying to pull together everything Google owns for simplicity.
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