Pros/cons of owning own IPs

[D. Strout]

As I understand it, the biggest advantages of owning one's own IPs is portability. Move to a new DC and you can take your IPs along with you. However it seems to me there are a lot of disadvantages that would make it less than worth it for providers that aren't of a rather large size. Perhaps people who know more about networking can explain it to me.

1. Expense - Doesn't it cost to get and maintain your ASN?
2. Peering - You have to find upstream providers who will peer with you
3. Peering confusion - What happens if you decide to expand to a new location and your peers aren't in that location?
4. Overall usage - Way out of my league here, but isn't it a lot more complicated to set up your AS's IPs on a new server, announce and originate them, etc.? Isn't it a lot easier to let an upstream provider do the work?

If you've found a provider you really like, why would you be worried about IP portability in the face of all of the above - you shouldn't have to move?

 

[drmike]

My understanding is ARIN regulates IP issuance.  

IPs aren't free, but they aren't exactly outrageous either.  Current ARIN fees are below.

The smallest allocation block for IPV4 is /21 which is 2048 IPs with 2046 usable.

IPV4 ISP ANNUAL FEES, EFFECTIVE UNTIL 30 JUNE 2013

Size Category

Fee (US Dollars)

Block Size

X-small

$1,250

smaller than /20

Small

$2,250

/20 to /19

Medium

$4,500

larger than /19, up to and including /16

Large

$9,000

larger than /16, up to and including /14

X-large

$18,000

larger than /14
 

Peering with your own IPs means peering to your colo/datacenter typically for providers on our level here.   Above there like a datacenter, peering is done with the upstream transit providers they are paying as a customer for bandwidth.

Peering confusion, I don't think there is any such thing.  You can peer in different datacenters to different peers.

Someone who has there own IP/ASN can speak to the setup and complications.  I never was involved in that, my network engineers handled that or datacenter folks.

I believe the goal having your own IP/ASN is total control over your network and ability to move things as needed.  Like changing datacenters as needed or upstreams.

Mind you there are some providers who have their own upstream commits and will maintain those from one datacenter to another or pay for a private VLAN type connection.   There are tons of options to engineer the peering arrangement and move the data to where you need it.

 

[KuJoe]

Pros - Everything.

Cons - None. Absolutely none.

1. Expense - Dirt cheap, the only thing cheaper is free and we all know free doesn't last forever (right Mr. OVH?).
2. Peering - You can have your data center handle this for you. Filling out an LOA is extremely simple.
3. Peering confusion - You break your IPs into smaller subnets (/24 is the smallest allowed by upstream providers).
4. Overall usage - You setup your routing on the router, the servers treat it the same whether it's your router or your data center's. All your servers care about is the gateway and as long as they can get to it they are happy. As for router configuration, any data center worth hosting in will help get it configured for you (or there are plenty of people here that can do it for you for cheap).

 

[Francisco]

Expense is 'iffy'.

When we were looking to head East last year I had more than a few DC's say we had to pay monthly for a BGP session, it was very confusing.

Francisco

 

[maounique]

There is also the portable IPs possibility, i.e. renting from someone, but that is increasingly difficult.

However, I will also comment a bit on the points raised:

It is cheaper to have your own than rent or get from the DC especially out of ARIN which still has some /8s. Here it costs about 1 Eur a month in most locations per 1 IP.

Routing is not hard, you just announce them with your own BGP or the DC can do it for you. Having your own BGP can be easier or harder depending on the DC, if you do your own you can blackhole fast, but, again, the DC can do this for you on some tresholds you set, but you lack the fine tune options.

It gets harder when you are multihomed and you have a handful of carriers/peers which have various costs and various contractual conditions, it gets hard when your DDoS is coming from all providers and you have to pay overages if your commit or 95 percentile is not well adapted for this kind of situation. Setting preferences is a fine art with few masters which like to fine tune it all the time as conditions change, new cables are layed down, new peerings appear, etc.

Once you set-up your BGP, adding a new /24 is a 1 minute operation, setting up networking on a server takes longer, I think.

 

[turfhosting]

They are definetly cheaper to buy from ARIN than rent from a data center. DC's charge about $2-2.50 per IP. Its ridiculous.. Makes it hard to compete with low end VPSes when a IP is $2.50/mo alone. 

 

[Coastercraze]

I suppose a con would be the hefty upfront cost. As of right now it's $1500 the first year I think? I know it all is changing July 1st.

Seems they're adding an XX-Small class (/22 or less of IPv4 and a /40 or less of IPv6) for $500 each I believe. Someone can chime in to confirm how it works. Might just be $500 for a class (with IPv4 and IPv6 in one package)?

A pro would definitely be that the IPs have your company written on them so abuse complaints should in theory go to your abuse contact. Also, you should be able to do rDNS and such a lot easier since you control the IP space. No need to go through the DC for that or have them SWIPed.

 

[KuJoe]

I suppose a con would be the hefty upfront cost. As of right now it's $1500 the first year I think? I know it all is changing July 1st.

Seems they're adding an XX-Small class (/22 or less of IPv4 and a /40 or less of IPv6) for $500 each I believe. Someone can chime in to confirm how it works. Might just be $500 for a class (with IPv4 and IPv6 in one package)?

A pro would definitely be that the IPs have your company written on them so abuse complaints should in theory go to your abuse contact. Also, you should be able to do rDNS and such a lot easier since you control the IP space. No need to go through the DC for that or have them SWIPed.

$1250 is still cheaper than $12288 so that's not a con at all (assuming you're paying $1/month per IP, if you're paying $2/month then you're looking at $24576 just for 2048 IPs when you can get 4096 IPs for just $1250).

With ARIN, you pay for whichever is more expensive so if you have a Large IPv4 allocation and a Small IPv6 allocation then your IPv6 is free. For smaller companies like us, we can finally get IPv6 for free in July (instead of having to fork over an extra $1000 for the smallest block).

 

[D. Strout]

@KuJoe, I take it your ASN is somewhat new? I see my IPv6s on my services with you aren't in it.

 

[KuJoe]

@KuJoe, I take it your ASN is somewhat new? I see my IPv6s on my services with you aren't in it.

We don't have our own IPv6 addresses yet. When the price drops in July we'll get our own but for now we're saving $1k and getting them for free from our data centers.

 

[wlanboy]

Pros - Everything.

Cons - None. Absolutely none.

Totally agree with it.

In my point of view this is the difference betweeen a hosting company (owning everything) and resellers.

 

[maounique]

With ARIN, you pay for whichever is more expensive so if you have a Large IPv4 allocation and a Small IPv6 allocation then your IPv6 is free.

That is just stupid. Every division should promote heavily IPv6, meaning giving for free since they are so many. First allocation is free from RIPE and it should be for everyone. RIPE even asseses you for the qualification to get a new block of IPv4 by the usage of IPv6.

Meaning you didnt bother to implement IPv6, tough luck, no IPv4 for you.

 

[KuJoe]

I'm sure ARIN will implement similar policies when they reach that level. As it stands IPv4 is getting cheaper so more people can eat up the remaining space faster.

As much as ARIN pushes it on their Twitter, the demand still isn't there for IPv6. When the IPv4 pool dries up it might give IPv6 a push in popularity but companies would still probably spend a small fortune on IPv4 rather than use all of the IPv6 available.

 

[maounique]

I'm sure ARIN will implement similar policies when they reach that level. As it stands IPv4 is getting cheaper so more people can eat up the remaining space faster.

As much as ARIN pushes it on their Twitter, the demand still isn't there for IPv6. When the IPv4 pool dries up it might give IPv6 a push in popularity but companies would still probably spend a small fortune on IPv4 rather than use all of the IPv6 available.

RIPE did this for a long time, not whent hey reached the last /8. The blocks of IPv4 were just larger before. However, you still had to prove you used a certain % of your current one AND you have IPv6 going. Well, was not mandatory IIRC, but the request was more likely to be rejected.

 

[ShardHost]

For new LIRs having own IPs with RIRs on last /8 policy is not worth it.  Cost to get involved with RIPE now for a /22 is probably just not worth it for most providers.

 

[rds100]

For new LIRs having own IPs with RIRs on last /8 policy is not worth it.  Cost to get involved with RIPE now for a /22 is probably just not worth it for most providers.

Well, it's 1800 EUR pear year and you can get a /22. That's 450 EUR per year per /24 or 37.5 EUR per month per /24 or approximately 0.15 EUR per month per IP - still much lower than the 1 EUR per IP per month that most DCs are charging now.

 

[ShardHost]

Well, it's 1800 EUR pear year and you can get a /22. That's 450 EUR per year per /24 or 37.5 EUR per month per /24 or approximately 0.15 EUR per month per IP - still much lower than the 1 EUR per IP per month that most DCs are charging now.

I guess ongoing it is not so bad; however there is the joining fee and also any other IPs you will need will come from upstreams

 

[ChrisM]

Con: FBI showing up at your door for a warrant for a server that is on the other side of the country.

Ended up downloading the VM and giving it to them on a unused flash drive I had laying around. 

 

[D. Strout]

Pros - Everything. Cons - None. Absolutely none.

Doesn't seem quite that "hands down", but it does seem that it is fairly advantageous. What about number of peers? Doesn't the DC's BW blend tend to be richer than what you can drum up on your own? 

 

[KuJoe]

Doesn't seem quite that "hands down", but it does seem that it is fairly advantageous. What about number of peers? Doesn't the DC's BW blend tend to be richer than what you can drum up on your own?

Richer and cheaper. That's why we don't buy our own.