[redm]

IPv4 is like any commodity. Now that it's not easily to get from ARIN, a market has sprung up around buying and selling it.

It's still relatively easy to get IPv4 blocks for a buck or two per IP through auction houses.

[zlynx]

Although whatever block you get has to be big enough to convince people to route to it. Too small and it won't matter. No ISP wants to carry the load for millions of tiny IPv4 blocks.

[icedchai]

The smallest you can get is a /24, and everyone accepts routes for that.

In 1997, I remember running 2 T1's w/BGP on a router with a whopping 32 megs of RAM. I think there were 50,000 routes! How things have changed...