January 31, 2019

3 Things to Know before Trading in IPv4 Addresses

Technology constantly grows old and gets replaced by newer versions and iterations of the same thing, or simply different technology altogether. This is the norm, but the sphere of IP addresses has proven to be a definite exception. For one thing, IPv4 addresses, the precursors of the more advanced IPv6 addresses, continue to be in wide use, without any signs of their demand dropping.

There are many reasons for this, including the IPv4 private market, which shot outwards in 2015 when ARIN announced that it had exhausted its supply of addresses. ARIN, or the American Registry for Internet Numbers, is the authority regulating the distribution of IP address spaces to internet users in the region covering the United States, Canada, and many North Atlantic and Caribbean islands.

Things to Know about IPv4 Addresses

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  Selling Them is Legal: No internet professional should fail to understand that selling IP addresses is legally above board. While before 2009, one had no clear path to take in transferring addresses to another entity, that issue was quickly resolved once ARIN created laws, which regulated such transfers. Any company meeting ARIN’s rules can now sell IP addresses to another party.

• They Change with your Location: Imagine leaving for a holiday with your laptop in tow. When you get where you are going and finally connect to the internet, you would have a different IP address than you did back at home. This is because at the new place, you are using another network to go online. You could even be at the coffee shop down the block; if you connected to their Wi-Fi, your email provider would probably ask for your secret answer (because this is not your usual IP).
• Their Value is Rising Fast: because of their near-depleted supply, IPv4 addresses are worth a lot to companies looking to own private IP address blocks. The prices have been going nowhere but up, and experts are predicting a peaking in upcoming years, which makes a lot of sense considering how a transition to IPv6 is currently the least favored option on the internet scene. If you had been planning to sell IPv4 addresses which you do not need, now is really not a bad time to do it. If you can afford to wait though, that is likely to get you an even more lucrative deal.