UK sells off unused net addresses

#1

Post by mattvot » Fri, May 22, 2015, 11:55 AM UTC

UK sells off unused net addresses
bbc.co.uk

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#2

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Fri, May 22, 2015, 1:41 PM UTC

That was a well-written article. Someone who's not a tech expert might understand it, and wouldn't be mislead. Unusual.

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#3

Post by radiowave » Fri, May 22, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

Oddly enough, while the DWP's class A address range is used internally, in all written communications the leading octet of such IP addresses must be redacted for "security" reasons, despite being (a) a matter of public record, and therefore (b) displayed on the xkcd map of the IPv4 address space (as "UK Social Security").

https://xkcd.com/195/

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#4

Post by jgalt212 » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

This is interesting in that if IP addresses are allowed to trade freely (currently 4 quid per IP), I'd argue that we'll never run out of them. And this whole transition to IPv6 may never be necessary.

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#5

Post by longwave » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:04 PM UTC

For anyone interested the block that has been sold is 51.174.0.0/15. The remainder of 51.0.0.0/8 still belongs to the Department of Work and Pensions though none of it is publically routable.

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#6

Post by pascalmemories » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:16 PM UTC

longwave wrote: post #5

For anyone interested the block that has been sold is 51.174.0.0/15. The remainder of 51.0.0.0/8 still belongs to the Department of Work and Pensions though none of it is publically routable.

Department of Work & Pensions. Ho Ho Ho ! No-one seriously believes the DWP uses a /8. The whole UK Gov can use the block for internal purposes as it was allocated at a time before RFC1918 was a thing and everyone worked on the basis you needed to get an IPv4 allocation for your IP network. Several other public bodies in the UK got smaller blocks too (you can find them without too much digging on Google) but most of these were never externally routable either. You can bet traffic arriving from 51/8 is not about any pension.

Background: there were some pretty forward thinking people in the UK Gov at the early stages of 'the internet'; Parliament got it's own TLD when it was a case of sending an email to be allocated a TLD and various bodies got IPv4 allocations before they even had any sort of working networking going on. There are bits of the stories around if you look hard enough, but I've never seen it pulled together - I'm sure it would make interested (and probably classified) reading.

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#7

Post by justincormack » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:17 PM UTC

Still waiting for an ipv6 address for gov.uk

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#8

Post by michaelt » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:23 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #4

This is interesting in that if IP addresses are allowed to trade freely (currently 4 quid per IP), I'd argue that we'll never run out of them. And this whole transition to IPv6 may never be necessary.

Well, presumably if blocks of IP addresses get radically smaller, routing tables will get large enough that not every system can handle them. Given how sluggish people are about upgrading to IPv6 people obviously aren't upgrading often, so there must be a lot of legacy equipment out there.

So it's not like I can just buy an one or two IP addresses, like I could in a liquid marketplace.

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#9

Post by growse » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:23 PM UTC

I didn't think that RIPE let you sell off IP address space, given that RIPE 'owns' the actual addresses and just allocates them to members. Has the govt effectively 'sold' these addresses in the same way that my ISP has 'sold' me a static IP address on my DSL connection?

How can the buyers do anything useful with these addresses given that they'll still be tied to the original ASN through RIPE?

Re: UK sells off unused net addresses

#10

Post by throwaway1979 » Fri, May 22, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #8

jgalt212 wrote: post #4

This is interesting in that if IP addresses are allowed to trade freely (currently 4 quid per IP), I'd argue that we'll never run out of them. And this whole transition to IPv6 may never be necessary.

Well, presumably if blocks of IP addresses get radically smaller, routing tables will get large enough that not every system can handle them. Given how sluggish people are about upgrading to IPv6 people obviously aren't upgrading often, so there must be a lot of legacy equipment out there. So it's not like I can just buy an one or two IP addresses, like I could in a liquid marketplace.

If you are starting a new cloud provider and offering something like containers (say LXD), you have a big problem on your hands. IPv6 and v4 aren't really interchangeable from an end user perspective. Also, techniques are NAT64 are shocking when you look at them in detail (my jaw dropped at least ... not all protocols can be supported with NAT64, proxies need to be stateful etc.) We are in for a mess.