[DarkFuture]

I looked into buying my own IP space from that IP auction site, an IPv4 C-class costs around $10,000. What stopped me was finding out I also to register with RIPE and pay the LIR annual fee, costing hundred Euros per month or so, even if I wasn't yet ready to use the IP space (I wanted to setup a basic Anycast IP without Cloudflare with help of VPS host who said they can help and had multiple locations around world).

[rmoriz]

While I strongly support IPv6 migration, the current IPv4 pricing is a rip-off. All the brokers and auction sites are fantasizing.

The market is tight, but nowhere near the point where it was 4-5 years ago. Big cloud providers already bought enormous amounts of IPv4 while many regional ISPs and colocation providers went out of business.

There is no real pressure to buy IPv4 except for brand-new companies to get their initial /24 or /23 to start. Everything else is optional.

[direwolf20]

How can an auction site fantasize? The price is what someone bid, and that's the real price.

[greyface-]

When I bought my initial /24 on such a site, it was not a competitive auction. I was the only bidder, and I paid the opening bid price, which was set by the seller. It's true that it was a real price, in that I paid it, but the 'auction' aspect felt like a farce.

[rmoriz]

They keep details private. It's not something transparent like eBay or a public auction. I think it's just a scam to pressure buyers into offering more.

[alibarber]

If you have a ham radio licence (anywhere in the world) you can request a /24 if IPv4 space from AMPR for free.

It cannot be used commercially and should be in the ‘spirit’ of amateur radio. Unfortunately there’s also a bit of a backlog it seems (a couple of months) right now.

[tripdout]

Oh, interesting. What's at the intersection of networking and amateur radio that these address blocks are often used for?

[alibarber]

Quite a lot of interesting stuff - for example there are mesh networks setup worldwide that attempt to run IP over RF using these - and then use the internet to forward packets from one to another.

They also offer simpler ‘turn-key’ wireguard tunnels too for things like Web SDR setups.

For BGP direct announce in practice it seems to be in the spirt of non-commercial ‘self learning and experimentation’ which is what a lot of legislatures around the world do use as their base definition for the ‘amateur’ in amateur radio. So I guess much like having slices of radio frequencies reserved for it, we’re lucky there are slices of address space reserved for this.

[zajio1am]

Note that it is not a real C-class IP prefix unless it is from the 192.0.0.0/3 range, otherwise it is just a sparkling /24 IP prefix.

[RupertSalt]

Back around 1993-94 was a genuine gold rush in terms of domain names and network numbers.

My supervisor one day rushed into the bullpen and proclaimed that he had registered SEX.ORG, and presumably the only reason was to squat it awhile and then resell it for thousands. [Squatting and speculation were, in fact, quite legal and wise moves at that point in history, especially with a high-demand 6-character site!]

Personally, I discovered the registration process and forms for domain names and network numbers were fairly straightforward. I had seen a Usenet post where someone explained that you just had to write a description of your company, its structure and annual meetings, finances, etc. So I completely made up a fictional company and described those things in my application.

Hey presto, I was now the "owner" and "admin" of cthulhu.com and a corresponding 192.0.0.0/3 Class-C network. Now my coworkers at the ISP were savvy enough to arrange for the DNS servers to answer for their vanity domains. But having no appreciable homelab, or BGP peering of my own, my DNS domain and Class-C Network both languished, until ultimately they were reclaimed in a sweep of unused space by IANA and InterNIC.

I have been unable to recall the exact numbers or find them in a search, but I know that its moniker was related, such as "CTHULHU-NET" or something.

I went on to legitimately register under the .ca.us domain on behalf of my home network and my roommates. cthulhu.com has long been handed over to someone who uses it.

[RupertSalt]

I found it!

https://rscott.org/OldInternetFiles/network-contacts.1996061...

I had named it "HEARTLAND" rather than a Cthulhu-related name, which was hindering my searches. I had also asked Gemini and it hallucinated a historical record which it was unable/unwilling to link.

The network was: 192.160.182.0/24

ARIN still has the history: https://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/192.160.182.0?s=192.160.182.0

My original assigned user handle was: RE229 (a prime number, very on-brand)

My Netcom email address and a San Jose phone number are enshrined in the record. Don't bother contacting me through those! Interestingly, if you spell out the phone number, it ends in "NET", but does not spell anything compelling in its entirety.

[icedchai]

This is great. You still "own" it, as it still exists in "whois" and ARIN records! The problem is it is assigned to an email address you no longer have access to. You might need to contact ARIN to get back control of it... seems possible since it's in your name and not a company.

[RupertSalt]

That is baffling. I swear that I heard or received a direct communiqué, many many years ago, that ARIN and ICANN and IANA were sweeping out all of the unannounced networks and reclaiming them. Word went out during the initial pressure of address space exhaustion.

So if this is really still assigned to "me" as boss of "my company" I suppose nobody else has ever announced it. It has no BGP behind it. In fact, 192.160.0.0/16 has no BGP at all. That is a huge swath of space to be vacant.

So, in 34 years since its registration, no BGP announcement, no ASN has ever been associated with this Class-C, and it still "belongs to me", unpaid, un-rented? It boggles my mind. I had expected that it was easier to lose an unused IPv4 network than to lose a domain name from back in the day.

Now there is a lot of crazy contact information that is so, so old. It is credible but I barely recall even having some of those phone numbers. There's an email address at cts.com. Which appears to be utterly defunct now but it was a San Diego bboard run by "Bill Blue". I distinctly recall a lot of Usenet posters using "crash.cts.com" and it was a "shell account" provider. It would've been in-character for past-me to sign up there at some point. Some point, I don't know.

So it says they last attempted to contact me 16 years ago. Did they send a letter in the USPS? Did my family receive nothing? So weird. If I literally wrote to them with that return address, would they validate me?

I literally have no idea how I could even use a /24 network today. My ISP wouldn't accept it. I can't exactly run BGP from a Chromebook or Netgear router at home! I suppose the only way to use it would be on a VPS service? Would the VPS announce an old-school "personal" network?

[icedchai]

You may have been looking in the wrong spot? You can see plenty of prefixes in 192.160.0.0/16 currently announced. Check out https://stat.ripe.net/widget/routing-history

When ARIN contacts you, it's through email. They send an email with a confirmation link, so that probably bounced.

You can definitely announce BGP from a VPS with some providers. I have been doing this for years. Vultr will do it. However, they will validate (through email) that you "own" the block.

My recommendation is you first contact ARIN and see if you can "recover" contact info associated with the class C.

There are some restrictions around legacy blocks that predate the existing of ARIN. For some reason, they cannot reclaim them easily. So they just sit there...

[icedchai]

I remember those days. Anyone could get a /24 if they filled out the form and emailed it to Internic.

I'm still holding my early 90's "class C" and have it routed to my home network. It is legacy space, I never signed the ARIN RSA, so it remains free.

[pabs3]

They use this site now instead:

https://cthulhuventures.com/

[direwolf20]

You only need an LIR annual fee (~$2000) if you want to be an LIR and manage other people's resources. Otherwise you find another LIR (some popular choices are the ones the OP used) to manage your resources on your behalf. The annual fee is then ~$60. The resources are allocated directly to you, even when managed by a third party.

[frantathefranta]

Yeah for single person use, this only really makes sense with IPv6. I'm interested in doing this in the near future and I think the yearly price for all-in (IPv6 /48 allocation, AS allocation + necessary VPS connections) comes out to about $200. It goes up to $300-400 if you want a PI subnet instead of PA (PI follows you to another LIR, PA does not).

[zamadatix]

If you do ever sign up with RIPE remember you can get a free /24 if it's the first one on your account. If you just buy one to start you've paid to lose that privilege.

[yuvadam]

If you can register on ARIN the costs are only $260/year at the smallest tier and you can also apply for a /24 which you should be able to get.