Microsoft buys 666,624 IP address

[webby]

Wake up call for our friends in the Regional Internet Registries. Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications equipment manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, has succeeded in making its legacy IPv4 address block an asset that can be sold to generate money for its creditors.

The March 23 edition of the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Report has reported that Nortel's block of 666,624 IPv4's was sold for $7.5 million - a price of $11.25 per IP address. The buyer of the addresses was Microsoft. More information is in its filing in a Delware bankruptcy court. Now the interesting question becomes, does the price of IPv4s go up or down from here? As the realities of dual stack sink in, I'm betting...up.

 

[KennyGS]

Is it conceivable that the quantity of IP addresses will continue to increase in the future?

 

[webby]

IPv4 provides for approximately 4.3 billion addresses - and they're running out. One section of IP's is supposed to be completely out by the end of april - some people have estimated.

"On February 3, 2011, the last batch of 5 /8 address blocks were allocated to the Regional Internet Registries. Each of the address blocks represents approximately 16.7 million possible addresses, or over 80 million combined potential addresses. These addresses could well be fully consumed within three to six months at current rates of allocation."

increased broadband use/ increased smart phones are eating into the remaining IP pool. (Essentially it's like phone numbers running out, and new area codes are issued etc.)

So they're going to what's called IPv6 - which consists of a longer ip #.
example -
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
Supposedly able to yield "340 trillion, trillion, trillion available addresses"

most hardware doesn't support it, and some firmware will either need to be updated, or replaced. Google & Facebook are among the few sites currently able to support the new protocol.

 

[KennyGS]

So, although current technology is effected by the finite amount of IP addresses, eventually upgrades will allow the use of longer IP addresses. I assume this will be a recurring problem.

Maybe I have a naive perception of things, but it seems that technological advances both cause and solve issues - a viscous cycle - similar to dealing with storage capacity, and processing speed.

 

[webby]

spot on

 

[Damaca]

So, although current technology is effected by the finite amount of IP addresses, eventually upgrades will allow the use of longer IP addresses. I assume this will be a recurring problem.

Maybe I have a naive perception of things, but it seems that technological advances both cause and solve issues - a viscous cycle - similar to dealing with storage capacity, and processing speed.

There is a 128 bit IP address format that is currently in its infancy stages of use. This is called IPv6. It was created because of the limited number of IP addresses available.