[CLUE-Tech] Buying an IP.

[Nate Duehr]

On Friday 19 December 2003 09:02 pm, Jim Ockers wrote:

> Due to the size of the global routing table ARIN no longer gives out
> /24 blocks.  The only way you can get a /24 anymore is to get it from
> someone who already has it, or from someone who has a larger block
> and can allocate a portion of it to you.

And due to the virtual impossibility of truly justifying a need for 
anything larger than a /24 (even that's tough) with NAT nowadays, 
getting a direct allocation from ARIN for any organization smaller than 
a large ISP or a networked co-location facility is pretty much in the 
past... they'll point you at your upstream and ask you to get your IP's 
from them.  And they won't be portable to another ISP.  

Only the oldest players on the Internet own their own IP space anymore, 
basically.

Also, look carefully at ARIN's pricing... you may not want to pay for 
that /21 if you somehow managed to lie, cheat, and steal (GRIN) to get 
it.  :-)  They're not cheap.

And also check with your upstream if you do somehow end up with your own 
block...  Larger ISP's will usually have a clue (hmmm clue...) about 
how to route your netblock if you somehow end up with your own IP's, 
but many medium and smaller ones will struggle with it and want you to 
use their IP space anyway as they have to modify egress filters, set 
routes through any redundant paths they may have.

If you go that far, maybe you even want to go so far as to BGP peer with 
them and announce your own AS number!  

Whoa... now you're getting into "you're driving us nuts, just use our IP 
space"-land.  :-)

Seriously it'd be really difficult to get "personal" IPv4 IP's these 
days, methinks.  Maybe there's a source out there with some portable 
blocks who's willing to subnet it out, I dunno... but doubtful.

With IPv6, the problem in most cases for personal use is that your ISP 
probably isn't "playing" in that arena yet -- and won't route your v6 
addresses directly, so you end up tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 to someone 
kind enough to dump you into the v6 backbone.  If either end of that v4 
tunnel is down, you're down.  Not to say it's not worth experimenting 
with, but it's more difficult right now than say in a few years when 
more v6-friendly ISP's are out there.

Anyone know of any IPv6 friendly ISP's who'll do direct IPv6 routing for 
the "little guys" yet?  Just curious...

-- 
Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com