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by wmf
4096 days ago
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So in what way exactly does the Internet as a whole benefit from allowing IPv4 addresses to be traded in a free market? Compared to a world where you can't get IPs at any price? Seems pretty obvious: you can get IPs. I would like to know how we avoid ending up in a world where a few large companies control all the available IPv4 addresses (which they don't really need) so they can rent them to the rest of us at exorbitant prices. It seems like the cloud is already going there with only a few large providers. All I can suggest is to buy your IPs now before Amazon does. |
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You seem to be presenting a false dichotomy; there are plenty of intermediate solutions between the current state of affairs and a laissez-faire market. At the very least, if we're going to set a price on IPv4 addresses, I think it should be set by the RIRs - not by the companies to whom they were allocated. (Remember that RIRs have the right to reclaim addresses that are not being used.)
In other words: my concern is not that IPv4 addresses end up having a price tag on them; that seems inevitable at this point. My concern is that big players might be able to dictate the prices and effectively buy the small ones out of the Internet.