IP Address usage

[Virtovo]

I've been noticing a recent trend with providers across all different products (Dedicated, VPS etc).  It seems that IPs are now being given away like candy.  I understand there has been a rush for a while to obtain as much IPv4 space as possible; however at what cost?

This has even been evident from typically more respected providers (I am not here to name names) in addition to those that it might be more expected.  What are peoples feelings on this?  It really bothers me when I see things like "Cheap IPv4", "/24 with every server" "severs with 253 IPs from $79/mo".  Surely the stand should be to conserve space and not hoard it out of a greed.

I do understand that there may be an attitude of "If you can't beat them join them" however how likely are ARIN to hold people to account over these practices?  

We've been toying with the ID of an ARIN region company registration to obtain IP space; however we don't have enough utilisation to get an allocation and are unlikely to before exhaustion.  Yet we could sign up with a provider who happily gives /24s away for free get all ranges SWIP, put then to use on cut your throat plans to generate justification.  It's wrong and we won't do it but surely theres something wrong with the system if this is possible.

 

[Nett]

When the IPs are out, most providers giving /24s out (at a cheap price) will realise it's a bad decision.

But the IPv4 exhaustion will definitely speed up the IPv6 adoption process, so after 5-10 years when every ISP has IPv6, IPv4 won't be that important anymore. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will be similar to the transition from DDR2 to DDR3.

 

[Virtovo]

When the IPs are out, most providers giving /24s out (at a cheap price) will realise it's a bad decision.

But the IPv4 exhaustion will definitely speed up the IPv6 adoption process, so after 5-10 years when every ISP has IPv6, IPv4 won't be that important anymore. The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 will be similar to the transition from DDR2 to DDR3.

The providers wont care.  When they stop getting allocations from ARIN they can then start charging their customers for the IPv4.  Unless customers have signed long term contracts they either choose to pay or move elsewhere (where IPs are unlikely to be any cheaper).

IPv4 exhaustion is not an immediate concern.  Even when ARIN run out v4 there will be plenty of v4 address space in the universe.  Space will be leased, sold moved, re-allocated etc, NATd etc.  It will be many years before v4 availability pushes v6 adoption.

 

[Nett]

So what if you get a /24 now? You can still pay the same price for the subnet 3-5 years later?

 

[MartinD]

The providers wont care.  When they stop getting allocations from ARIN they can then start charging their customers for the IPv4.  Unless customers have signed long term contracts they either choose to pay or move elsewhere (where IPs are unlikely to be any cheaper).

Not sure I agree. The more savvy provider will have been charging for a while and not throwing them around like candy. When the idiots who're giving them away can't get any more and have to start charging, they'll quickly realise that getting customers in the door with the lure of free ip's was a bad idea as those customers will suddenly realise they have to charge their customers for IP's... making the original server not such a great deal. Prices go up, people dead pool. Upstreams suffer and they too deadpool.

Meanwhile, those who have been charging and operating correctly carry on and make more money.. picking up the pieces.

 

[Virtovo]

Not sure I agree. The more savvy provider will have been charging for a while and not throwing them around like candy. When the idiots who're giving them away can't get any more and have to start charging, they'll quickly realise that getting customers in the door with the lure of free ip's was a bad idea as those customers will suddenly realise they have to charge their customers for IP's... making the original server not such a great deal. Prices go up, people dead pool. Upstreams suffer and they too deadpool.

Meanwhile, those who have been charging and operating correctly carry on and make more money.. picking up the pieces.

I understand you faced IP issues in 2012 when OVH started charging for IPs that were free before?

 

[MartinD]

Yep. While we could have taken the hit, it just wasn't the most sensible thing to do. We moved out because it didn't make sense to take such a huge hit financially and OVH went back on their word as they'd previously said existing customers on their pro plans wouldn't be affected.

I guess in a way I have first hand experience on both sides of what can and will happen. It's not nice but we did survive it. The level others are doing it though.. it's a massive timebomb waiting to happen.

 

[Francisco]

Boss.

They have no choice. At the end of the day, not everyone plays on the same field.

There are more than a few providers out there that are doing everything they can to get space

(not just the obvious one).

While many would love to see V6 "happen", it isn't going to for a good long while (5 - 10 years

before any real movement). These providers that have been so busy to make sure their V4 reserves

are filled will be doing all they can to stop the adoption of V6. It will directly eat

at their bottom line if suddenly those IP's mean nothing.

Don't expect V6 to ever take over. If anything, V4 will become a 'business' side, and V6 more

residential, with a beautiful CGNAT to merge things.

There's one business I know of that has moved an /18 in just 2 months doing it on 'Free /24

with every server!'. Does he hate doing that? Probably. Will he keep doing it? Right up

until the last subnet is assigned from ARIN.

Really, if you want to see your business still be around in 5 - 10 years then you better

have a game plan to hold you over. Be it you have your own subnets or easy &

affordable (read: the price is locked for the next 10 years) deals.

I've had the IP address talk with so many providers and I know I sound like Deckard Cain

going on about how the end times are upon us, but it isn't going to be pretty. APNIC has

been dry for years and RIPE is the same. You can still get IP's from RIPE but that's expensive

given the amount of IP's you can get (a single /22). There are multiple people on

WHT that have bought that single /22 and are trying to lease it monthly at a buck an IP

just to get some extra income.

Francisco

 

[MartinD]

I think we've had this conversation before, haven't we?

It is entirely true. When getting cheap IP's is no longer possible we'll see providers failing all over the place and it wont be at all pretty.

 

[Francisco]

I think we've had this conversation before, haven't we?

It is entirely true. When getting cheap IP's is no longer possible we'll see providers failing all over the place and it wont be at all pretty.

We have, I just think it's that providers are not trying to hide it anymore.

Before, providers would provision it only if you ticketed them and provided

some heavy justification.

Now, providers are putting it in thread topics, sigs, mass emails, tweets, etc.

From what I gather, they get very loose justification or none at all and just

fill in random things.

When it comes to justification, ARIN is very loose with some people and very

strict on others. They seem to especially hate VPS hosts.

Francisco

 

[Virtovo]

Boss.


They have no choice. At the end of the day, not everyone plays on the same field.


There are more than a few providers out there that are doing everything they can to get space


(not just the obvious one).


While many would love to see V6 "happen", it isn't going to for a good long while (5 - 10 years


before any real movement). These providers that have been so busy to make sure their V4 reserves


are filled will be doing all they can to stop the adoption of V6. It will directly eat


at their bottom line if suddenly those IP's mean nothing.


Don't expect V6 to ever take over. If anything, V4 will become a 'business' side, and V6 more


residential, with a beautiful CGNAT to merge things.


There's one business I know of that has moved an /18 in just 2 months doing it on 'Free /24


with every server!'. Does he hate doing that? Probably. Will he keep doing it? Right up


until the last subnet is assigned from ARIN.


Really, if you want to see your business still be around in 5 - 10 years then you better


have a game plan to hold you over. Be it you have your own subnets or easy &


affordable (read: the price is locked for the next 10 years) deals.


I've had the IP address talk with so many providers and I know I sound like Deckard Cain


going on about how the end times are upon us, but it isn't going to be pretty. APNIC has


been dry for years and RIPE is the same. You can still get IP's from RIPE but that's expensive


given the amount of IP's you can get (a single /22). There are multiple people on


WHT that have bought that single /22 and are trying to lease it monthly at a buck an IP


just to get some extra income.


Francisco

I agree with everything you've said.  I think we may even have the same provider in mind who I know is a good guy.  Maybe I am just being overly reflective on this based on our situation and the knowledge that we're unlikely to get our own space before ARIN run dry (if anyone has any ethical ways of getting around this please PM me).  

I just see all these IPs being given away from free.  At some point in the future the IP asset is going to be worth more than the customer utilising it, which will lead to interesting conversations and real implications for people signing up under these deals and their clients.  Looking at some of the recent plans being made available I can see maybe $1-2 profit per customer; however volume is helping the provider keep their head above water.  If they then start getting charged $1per IP with products with multiple IPs they are looking at overnight implosion.  

 

[SkylarM]

I agree with everything you've said.  I think we may even have the same provider in mind who I know is a good guy.  Maybe I am just being overly reflective on this based on our situation and the knowledge that we're unlikely to get our own space before ARIN run dry (if anyone has any ethical ways of getting around this please PM me). 

There is discussion in the ARIN groups to drop the base requirements from a /20 for single homed to either a /22 or a single /24. It's being discussed, but may take a back seat to the transfer policy discussion. Might get changed before they run dry, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Agree with everything Fran has to say, not much to really add to it.

 

[wlanboy]

The problem with IPv6 is that noone knows how to make money with it.

So everyone one is playing the IPv4 is important song.

You should rethink about what "ARIN is out of IPs" mean - the IPs are not dead, just allocated.

If I look at the address space - I do see a lot of companies.

It is funny to see that providers try to get some thousand ips, where others have millions of IPs laying around.

I am sorry for the ones who only rent ip space, because they will have to pay more.

Others will wait until the prices raise and will then sell their unused space.

 

[DomainBop]

I understand you faced IP issues in 2012 when OVH started charging for IPs that were free before?

 

2 years later OVH has done a full circle and is now giving out free IPs (€2 setup per IP, no monthly fee) like candy.  It is now possible to order up to 64 x /27 IPs (2048) per server on their regular line and soon up to 16 x /27 IPs (512) on their SYS line (SYS will require a PRO subscription).  They also plan to include up to 5 IPs for free with each Kimsufi server (previously it was 1 IP max for the 2014 KS line) http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?7929-Failover-IPs

The downside of this is there has been a surge recently of complete buffoons offering "DDoS protected VPS's" out of OVH  (buffoon defined here as one host actually asked "what does RAID 0 do?")

.../24 on a 128MB VPS...FTW

 

[Virtovo]

 

2 years later OVH has done a full circle and is now giving out free IPs (€2 setup per IP, no monthly fee) like candy.  It is now possible to order up to 64 x /27 IPs (2048) per server on their regular line and soon up to 16 x /27 IPs (512) on their SYS line (SYS will require a PRO subscription).  They also plan to include up to 5 IPs for free with each Kimsufi server (previously it was 1 IP max for the 2014 KS line) http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?7929-Failover-IPs

The downside of this is there has been a surge recently of complete buffoons offering "DDoS protected VPS's" out of OVH  (buffoon defined here as one host actually asked "what does RAID 0 do?")

.../24 on a 128MB VPS...FTW

We considered OVH as a location; however a history of inconsistent business practices second only to Hostbill made the decision for us.  

 

[mhosts]

When it comes to justification, ARIN is very loose with some people and very


strict on others. They seem to especially hate VPS hosts.


Francisco

Curious as to your viewpoint on this... In our experience ARIN is extremely policy driven. As long as you are meeting said policies, they cannot discriminate on the purpose of use. Be it, VPS, dedicated servers, cable, xDSL connections etc... 

 

[SkylarM]

Curious as to your viewpoint on this... In our experience ARIN is extremely policy driven. As long as you are meeting said policies, they cannot discriminate on the purpose of use. Be it, VPS, dedicated servers, cable, xDSL connections etc... 

ARIN has been giving the run around to a bunch of VPS providers requesting IP allocations in recent months, making processes take weeks to complete, requesting full client information for all allocations (not just most recent -- not to mention the fact they wanted address, phone numbers, emails instead of just names). I've know of one provider who ARIN requested individual transaction information.

Can also name Dedi providers who put in requests around the same time and went through a standard random justification check on only a handful of swips in their most recent block.

 

[datarealm]

ARIN has been giving the run around to a bunch of VPS providers requesting IP allocations in recent months, making processes take weeks to complete, requesting full client information for all allocations (not just most recent 

Any correlation to the age of the business making the requests?  Just curious.

Personally I think its despicable the way providers are handing IPs now.  The ARIN guidelines state valid technical justification is a requirement to IP reassignment.  Yes its easy to make money by not following the rules, and in this case there are no immediate repercussions.  In the long term its going to screw everyone pretty hard.

(Not to mention I'm pretty sure that I don't someone who just absolutely needs a /24 on a single server without justification coming anywhere close to my network....)

 

[SkylarM]

Any correlation to the age of the business making the requests?  Just curious.

Age doesn't seem to be a factor, moreso the business type. I know of a few that have gone through a similar process that have had ARIN blocks and dealt with them over the course of many years. I thought what you are thinking before I was able to confirm others went through the same process. 6 months or so ago they didn't put VPS providers through that kind of a process. Seems to me they should have had better NRPM verbiage for the purpose of Cloud/VPS based providers, and decided to do too little too late and make it hard on the little guys to get more allocations.

There's always been a bit of a disconnect between justification from a Dedi/Colo provider and a VPS/webhost provider. You can allocate /27's to your heart's content and they 'assume' you have documentation, and will typically spot check at random a handful of blocks to verify you are meeting the requirements for maintaining accurate IP justification forms for clients being allocated blocks larger than /29s (anything larger than a /26 is typically checked more often than smaller blocks). In my experience as a VPS provider (prior to our most recent allocation request), we have had to provide ARIN With First & Last Names with IPs associated for our most recently allocated block, since none of it is actually allocated in blocks typically larger than 2 or 3 IPs. NRPM is pretty spotty on actual justification requirements, so ARIN is sort of at free will to accept or decline provided information, and can theoretically ask for as much or as little information about clients as they wish.

In theory, the NRPM allows them to require more or less information for ANY request, and they could ask for full IP Justification forms for all of your existing allocations as a dedi provider if they wanted to. It's assumed you maintain that anyways, so they typically do not request it. Due to the nature of how they are doing allocation requirements now, it's technically easier to be a VPS provider renting a /21 from your upstream and giving them client name + IP, as they can pass that to ARIN and ARIN will accept it. However, if you have a direct /21 with ARIN they will likely come down harder on you.

The NRPM was never truly modified properly to handle VPS providers, the webhosting policies had been more aimed at Colo/Dedi providers. It's understandable what they are requesting of people as IPv4 depletion nears, however the NRPM should have been updated to reflect as such instead of ARIN randomly requiring more documentation for one request than another.

TLDR: NRPM was never properly updated to handle VPS/Cloud providers. Only gripe is the system is less than ideal and unpredictable with what ARIN may request, and process may be easier based on what "type" of "ISP" you are (see the /10 to Akamai and /12 to Cloudflare). If a standard was set, ARIN and the webhosts would spend a lot less time trying to gather and validate the requested information.

 

[earl]

So I was somewhat excited about the kimsufi line getting 5 free IP's included, but seems OVH changed their mind again..

what a bunch of jokers!!

https://twitter.com/olesovhcom/status/451106716466552833