[skuhn]

Public auctions (which they didn't use) are currently in the $45-50 per IP ballpark. At that price it's $247.5 million worth of IPs.

At auction the larger networks tend to go for less money per IP since there is a smaller market of people who want and can buy them (you have to be approved by ARIN/RIPE/etc. for the allocation size), which drives the price down.

[bgpdude]

The actual number is much higher. Amazon doesn’t publish all their IP addresses in that json, only the ones in use. They have almost double the IPv4 addresses, ie quite a bit reserved for future use. See https://toonk.io/aws-and-their-billions-in-ipv4-addresses/in...

[korethr]

What's the cutoff for larger networks where the price starts to go down? Would say, a /16 count? Or does that effect kick in as low as, say, a /20?

[skuhn]

I think that it starts to have downward pressure at /22 to /20. You can see Hilco's historicals at [1]. Not all purchases are done in public though.

It seems to me like an arbitrage opportunity, since /24 and /23 networks have many more potential buyers. But you have to be approved with a regional registry for the amount of space in order to buy it.

Observing things from the buy side, I suspect that IP space is being brought to auction in a slow but steady trickle so as to maintain upward momentum on prices. The price has approximately doubled in the last year.

[1] https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales

[oarsinsync]

> But you have to be approved with a regional registry for the amount of space in order to buy it.

This hasn’t been my experience in RIPEland since post IPv4-exhaustion. Is this an ARINism?

[skuhn]

That's my understanding with ARIN, yeah.

[Aeolun]

That’s not actually too expensive, considering they make that money back in a few months if all those IP’s are hosting even their smallest server.

[remram]

It's not like the news of "we have new IPs" instantly drive customers to rent more VMs. They are likely to have a lot of unused capacity for years, which is not paying back for itself.