Tag: Internet Protocol Version 4

200 Million New IPv4 Addresses to Enter Market: What to Expect? : Heficed

At the end of 2019, the US government passed a new bill authorising the Department of Defence to sell around 200 million Internet Protocol 4th version addresses. Several blocks of IPv4 addresses are planned to be sold out in ten years. Vincentas Grinius, CEO of Heficed, explains how these changes might affect the IP address market

[news release] The US Department of Defence announced the sale of around 200 million IPv4 addresses in multiple large and medium blocks. According to Vincentas Grinius, CEO of Heficed – the IP address infrastructure service provider, the new addresses would decrease the current IPv4 pricing, but would not solve the IPv4 shortage for certain market players. 

How would this Department of Defence sale affect the IP address market in the upcoming years?

Potential Buyers – Do Small Companies Stand a Chance?

New release of IPv4 addresses will be sold in big and medium-sized blocks, and since the Department of Defence has a deadline, they are focusing on large buyers. Large companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, or Google are always looking to grow their IP address databases, which would make them potential buyers.

“The biggest incumbents in the market are always looking to buy more IP addresses. As the number of IPv4 addresses is facing depletion, and we are slowly transitioning to IPv6, corporations are more eager to collect as many IPv4s as possible. At the same time, released addresses are contained in large bulks, which doesn’t give many chances for smaller buyers and brokers to obtain their fair share. Therefore, I believe that we will end up with a few major corporations acquiring everything.” – Vincentas Grinius expressed his concerns.

Do More Addresses Mean Lower Prices?

With new releases entering the market, companies are promised to see lower IPv4 prices. However, if only a few major buyers acquire it, the market might not face significant price changes.

“Due to IPv4 address exhaustion, prices have been rising for a while now. As the average price in 2015 was around 6 dollars, in 2018, the price for a single IPv4 address reached 17 dollars, and it’s predicted that this number will only grow and double in upcoming years. It’s possible that the Department of Defence bill could bring positive changes and lower IPv4 prices, yet if these addresses are shared only among a few big corporations, we probably wouldn’t even notice it.” – said Vincentas Grinius.

Risks of IP Address Abuse

Many IP addresses are linked to spamming, hacking, and similar vicious activities. Companies create blacklists to contain abuse, but the more addresses enter the internet, the more difficult it gets. Vincentas Grinius believes that potential buyers – large corporations could help solve the issue, “Although every address holder can abuse their usage rights, it becomes more challenging to control it with the surge of new addresses. However, if only large and well-known corporations obtain new IPv4 addresses, the chances of IP address abuse can be monitored easier.”

New IPv4 release might shake up the market. However, it possesses both positive and negative outcomes. New IPv4 addresses postpone the transition to IPv6 and give us more time to prepare. Yet with more affordable and accessible options, the chances of IP address abuse might increase. And if large incumbents acquire most of the blocks, we might not see significant changes.

ABOUT HEFICED

With its headquarters in London and server locations in every continent, Heficed is a network engineering and infrastructure service offering IP Address Market platform, including cloud solutions and bare-metal servers. At the core of Heficed‘s business is its world‘s first automated IPv4 address infrastructure engineering platform, which streamlines the process of leasing and managing IP addresses. www.heficed.com

Heficed Launches IPv4 Address Lease and Monetisation Platform

Heficed last week launched what the network infrastructure solutions provider is describing as a game-changing platform within the field of IPv4 addresses – the IP Address Market. The platform lets businesses and organisations to monetise their IPv4 address resources by merely listing them, while lessees can easily choose the needed IPv4 addresses and lease them in a simplified and secure way.

The new platform replaces what was Heficed’s main product, Switch, aims at increasing transparency of the IPv4 market space, and it starts with transparent pricing.

“Our new platform will offer a transparent way of monetising and leasing IP addresses,” said Vincentas Grinius, CEO of Heficed. “IP registrants do get charged a commission fee, but it is always visible what percentage goes to them, and what part of the price is the commission. Those listing their resources are only charged when a transaction is successful.”

Currently, the Internet is experiencing IPv4 address shortages. Most of the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), the entities governing IP address allocation processes in different continents, have exhausted their pools of IPv4s to allocate.

IPv4 addresses, originally a free resource, have become a commodity and a strategic asset for businesses because a single IPv4 address in the second-hand market now costs around twenty dollars. However, the market is hardly regulated and scattered throughout countless IP address brokers, leading to murky practices and pricing.

Users of Heficed’s IP address market are able to set their listing price, but the platform will suggest a likely price range, too, which is based on the current market situation. This way, Heficed hopes to level the playing field for everyone having IPv4 resources to lease, empowering organisations that have pools of unused IP addresses but lack the know-how or time to monetise them.

Only organisations can do business on the IP Address Market, and this is one of the anti-abuse safeguards present within the platform. Additionally, entities joining the platform will go through the verification process. Before being approved for listing on the platform, the ownership of each IP address is also verified – either with RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) or LoA (Letter of Authorisation). A dedicated Abuse Management team works to ensure no IPv4s are being misused for spam or over illicit activities, while Halon and Abusix are used as anti-spam filters. If a user wishes to use the IPs on their own infrastructure, they will only be able to do so with pre-approved IP transit providers who support RADb.com.

“Organisations using our platform can rest assured their IPs will remain clean while they are on our network,” added Grinius. “Preventing the abuse of IPs is our priority, and we have taken extensive measures to protect the resources of our clients. The abuse report system is present and straightforward to use, while we are transparent about our reaction time when reacting to abuse or spam reports.”

The new platform is open for IP address brokers to list their resources, too. While the brokers are selling the IPs via their own channels, they can also list the same resources on the market and lease it for a specific time to make extra commissions.

For more information on the Heficed IP-Address Market, click here.

Fraudsters Obtained $30 Million Worth of IP addresses in South Africa

[HEFICED news release] In September, South African media revealed an elaborate fraud scheme where IPv4 addresses reportedly worth at least $30 million on the second-hand market were stolen or misappropriated from large multinational companies based in South Africa.

The registered owners were mostly not aware of any violation of their properties, as the attackers exploited complex ownership structures. In addition, the legitimate owners were often unfamiliar with the considerable asset value presented by their stocks of IPv4 addresses.

Among the address sets stolen were a number of especially valuable “legacy blocks”, sets of IP addresses that were assigned before the establishment of regional internet registries (RIRs) and are thus completely free to use.

“We often notice that companies that obtained large pools of IPv4s when they were still readily available are not aware that they are now quite valuable. Thousands of addresses used to be free, now a single legacy address can be worth as much as $30,” comments Vincentas Grinius, CEO of Heficed, a company offering network infrastructure solutions that center on the procurement and management of IP addresses.

IPv4 fraud has become an increasingly pressing issue in the past decade. This is because the omnipresent IP addresses are actually a finite resource. Their original sources, the RIRs serving a continental region each, have all nearly run out of original, free-to-use address blocks within the last ten years, with AFRINIC being the only one still allocating them with relative ease.

Since IPs are localized, however, African addresses only serve limited use – to operate a server within Europe or America, a user needs a European or American IP. This is especially relevant for latency-dependent customers, like those who operate within fields of tight competition.

Whoever needs IPv4 addresses thus has to obtain them on the second-hand market. Like in any commodity market, fraud constitutes a problem, too.

Even in highly-regulated jurisdictions like the United States, fraudsters still go after the high-value resource. With proper attention and dedication, even stolen addresses can be recovered, but this often takes considerable time and legal investments. Most importantly, it is often impossible for large-scale corporate owners to properly track IPv4 ownership themselves.

“As with all complex, immaterial goods, like stocks or virtual assets, intermediary network infrastructure providers fulfil more than just the function of traders. They market, manage and care for their clients’ resources,” says Grinius.

Dealing with technicalities like IP addresses is often the least priority large companies have, if they are aware of the issue at all.

“The news from South Africa clearly shows that oversight is the main issue. Mostly without notice, IPv4s have become a hugely profitable opportunity that can be utilized if the proper care is taken. Heficed is among the specialist companies that offers this oversight and care, and thus provides security to clients who might not even have known that their assets were in danger,” Grinius adds.

Heficed believes that companies must take charge of their own IPv4-security, since institutional help is unlikely to arrive. Officially, the protocol is being phased-out in favour of IPv6, a process that has only very slowly advanced since IPv6’s introduction in 1998. This long-term solution is still far off: according to Google’s own statistics, less than 30% of users have access to their services using IPv6.

“For the time being,” Grinius concludes, “the only way to avoid potentially ruinous security breaches is to work with trustworthy partners in procuring and managing IPv4 addresses. With high demand encouraging fraud, the existing authorities are simply overstrained.”

This HEFICED news release was sourced from: https://www.heficed.com/press-releases/fraudsters-obtained-30-million-worth-of-ip-addresses-in-south-africa-experts-comments

Hilco Streambank’s IPv4.Global integrates Escrow.com into online auction platform for seamless transaction service

[news release] Escrow.com and Hilco Streambank announced this week they have partnered to integrate Escrow.com’s Escrow Pay API into the IPv4.Global marketplace. The partnership combines Escrow.com’s premier escrow agency with Hilco Streambank’s leading IPv4 marketplace. Together, the integrated auction platform offers the IPv4 market unprecedented levels of transparency along with a seamless transaction process.

The integration of the Escrow Pay API into the IPv4.Global marketplace provides an integrated secure Escrow agent through a simple and secure three step check-out process, all within the IPv4 platform.

“The integration of Escrow.com provides our worldwide base of buyers and sellers a globally recognized option to securely escrow their transactions,” said Gabe Fried, Chief Executive Officer of Hilco Streambank. “Adding global partners like Escrow.com supports our continued expansion worldwide.”

The IPv4.Global marketplace connects sellers and buyers of IPv4 addresses. In addition to the already streamlined process, buyers and sellers can now view the status of their payments, which are securely held in escrow, by the trusted third party, until both parties are satisfied with the transaction.

Buyers and sellers also benefit from Escrow.com’s global customer support and the reassurance of working with a trusted escrow service operating within licensing regulations for 20 years.

IPv4.Global launched its IPv4 address auction platform in 2014 with the goal of creating a streamlined method for monetizing IPv4 address blocks. The new integration with Escrow.com closes the loop for a smooth IPv4 marketplace transaction. “With Escrow Pay, we now provide even greater levels of service to people all around the world who want to buy or sell IPv4 assets,” Fried said.

Escrow.com has safely processed over US$4 billion worth of transactions. By releasing the Escrow Pay API in mid 2018, it gave businesses the power to build the functionality of the Escrow.com Platform directly into their online platforms with a single API call. The escrow company regularly secures funds for IPv4 address transfers within and between different Regional Internet Registries, with whom IPv4.Global has close working relationships.

“Escrow.com is the leading global provider of escrow payments for anything of value, from cars, boats and aeroplanes to domain names and IPv4 addresses,” said Escrow.com General Manager Jackson Elsegood. “The integration of Escrow Pay provides a superior and simplified experience to online marketplaces and digital transaction services.”

IPv6 Deployment Grows 3000% in 5 Years

Deployment of IPv6 has increased 3,000% since the beginning of World IPv6 Launch 5 years ago, according to a report released by the Internet Society this week.

Deployment of IPv6 has increased 3,000% since the beginning of World IPv6 Launch 5 years ago, according to a report released by the Internet Society this week.

The State of IPv6 Deployment 2017 shows IPv6 deployment is increasing around the world, with over 9 million domain names, out of over 330 million, and 23% of all networks advertising IPv6 connectivity.

Google reports 37 countries exceeding 5% of traffic, with new countries being added weekly. Akamai reports 7 countries whose IPv6 traffic exceeds 15%. In Japan, all three major mobile networks, NTT, KDDI, and Softbank, are deploying IPv6 this year, and in India, Reliance JIO’s deployment has driven measures of IPv6 traffic in the country to exceed 20%. The IPv4 Market Group comments that it expects IPv6 user count to exceed 50% world-wide in 2019, and with that, the start of the decline of the IPv4 address market.

The report also finds over 25% of the Alexa Top 1,000 websites are reachable using IPv6 with some networks now IPv6-only internally (e.g. JPNE, T-Mobile USA, SoftBank), and some major networks are now majority-IPv6 (e.g. RelianceJIO, Verizon Wireless, SkyBroadcasting, XS4ALL).

IPv4 is also slowly being turned off as some organisations in the process of turning off IPv4 within their networks and/or data centres to reduce network complexity and cost (e.g. T-Mobile, Facebook, LinkedIn).

For those who will have to move to IPv6, and haven’t yet started, the Internet Society’s core recommendations are to: (a) start now if you haven’t already, (b) use established RFP requirements like RIPE-554: Requirements for IPv6 in ICT Equipment, and (c) take advantage of existing IPv6 deployment information including the Internet Society’s Deploy360 Program.

The IPv6 protocol came out of a recognition, reported on by Frank Solensky to the IETF in August 1990, that the allocation rate of IPv4 address space was such that the Internet would run out of address space in less than five years. While this took longer, IPv4 numbers are scarce with the 5 Regional Internet Registries having no IPv4 addresses to allocate, retaining retain space only for allocation to new market entrants.

To download the State of IPv6 Deployment 2017 report from the Internet Society, go to:
https://www.internetsociety.org/doc/state-ipv6-deployment-2017

NTIA Reopens Consultation On Incentives, Benefits, Costs and Challenges to IPv6 Implementation

NTIA logoThe US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), who was responsible for overseeing the IANA transition to a global multistakeholder oversight is now reopening a consultation on how to boost IPv6 adoption. With IPv4 addresses as ‘scarce as hen’s teeth’ the NTIA recognises the imperative for IPv6 implementation and use

NTIA logoThe US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), who was responsible for overseeing the IANA transition to a global multistakeholder oversight is now reopening a consultation on how to boost IPv6 adoption. With IPv4 addresses as ‘scarce as hen’s teeth’ the NTIA recognises the imperative for IPv6 implementation and use.

The consultation originally opened on 18 August seeking public comments and input on the benefits, costs and challenges experienced, as well as any insight into additional incentives that could aid future adoption, implementation and support of IPv6. In response to requests for additional time in which to comment, the NTIA has extended the closing deadline for submitting comments to 17 October.

The NTIA is specifically seeking comments from adopters and implementers of IPv6 as well as any other interested stakeholders to share information on the benefits, costs and challenges they have experienced, as well as any insight into additional incentives that could aid future adoption, implementation, and support of IPv6. After analysing the comments, the Department intends to aggregate input received into a report that will be used to inform domestic and global efforts focused on IPv6 promotion, including any potential NTIA initiatives.

Vint Cerf: If I Recreated Internet, I’d Include IPv6 And Public Key Cryptography

Vint Cerf imageEven the father of the internet would do things differently if he were creating the internet all over again. At a recent conference, Vint Cerf said he would have started with 128-bit addresses from the start

Vint Cerf imageEven the father of the internet would do things differently if he were creating the internet all over again. At a recent conference, Vint Cerf said he would have started with 128-bit addresses from the start.

“If I could have justified it, putting in a 128-bit address space would have been nice so we wouldn’t have to go through this painful, 20-year process of going from IPv4 to IPv6,” Cerf, who is now Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, told an audience of journalists during a press conference on 22 September at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany, according to the IDG News Service. Cerf said in hindsight he would have also like to have added public key cryptography.

“I doubt I could have gotten away with either one,” said Cerf according to the report, who won a Turing Award in 2004 and is now vice president and chief internet evangelist at Google. “So today we have to retrofit.”

While it couldn’t have been envisaged at the time, it soon became obvious the 32-bit addresses were inadequate.

The report continued:
The 128-bit address space, for instance, “wouldn’t have seemed realistic back then,” he said. Particularly given the effort’s experimental mind-set at the time, “I don’t think we could have forced that.”

There actually was debate about the possibility of variable-length addresses, but proponents of the idea were ultimately defeated because of the extra processing power associated with them, he explained. “Because computers were so expensive back then, we rejected the idea.”

As for public key cryptography, the notion had only recently emerged around the time the internet protocols were being standardized back in 1978.

“I didn’t want to go back and retrofit everything, so we didn’t include it,” Cerf said. “If I could go back and put in public key crypto, I probably would try.”

US Government Seeks Stakeholder Experiences Of IPv6 Implementation

NTIA logoHas your organisation implemented IPv6? If so, the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) wants to hear from you. The NTIA wants to hear from all stakeholders, particularly those who have implemented IPv6, about the factors and circumstances that influence the decision to adopt and use the protocol and what NTIA can do to promote greater adoption of IPv6

NTIA logoHas your organisation implemented IPv6? If so, the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) wants to hear from you. The NTIA wants to hear from all stakeholders, particularly those who have implemented IPv6, about the factors and circumstances that influence the decision to adopt and use the protocol and what NTIA can do to promote greater adoption of IPv6.

The consultation has come about as the NTIA notes “we are on the verge of an explosion in the number of Internet-connected devices, from smartwatches to connected refrigerators, furniture and thermostats. Some experts predict that there will be as many as 200 billion connected devices around the world by 2020, or about 25 devices per person.”

ipv6Some of the questions the NTIA is asking are: What are the benefits of and obstacles related to implementing IPv6? What factors contribute to an organization’s decision to implement IPv6? What is the anticipated return on an IPv6-related investment? How long does the planning process for IPv6 implementation take, and what are the different types of costs involved?

A posting on the NTIA website by Ashley Heineman, Telecommunications Policy Specialist, Office of International Affairs goes on to say:
Many of those devices will need an IP address to connect to the Internet, but the legacy Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) supports only about 4.3 billion IP addresses. Current demand has all-but-exhausted the global supply of IPv4 addresses. Luckily, the Internet technical community has been developing the next-generation Internet Protocol for nearly two decades. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) offers 2128 IP addresses – that’s more than 340 undecillion addresses, or 340 followed by 36 digits.

The pace of IPv6 adoption has picked up recently, but only about a third of the Internet services in the United States are IPv6 capable. As IPv4 addresses become more scarce, companies and other organizations that have yet to transition to IPv6 may find it difficult to expand their Internet presence.

Many of those devices will need an IP address to connect to the Internet, but the legacy Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) supports only about 4.3 billion IP addresses. Current demand has all-but-exhausted the global supply of IPv4 addresses. Luckily, the Internet technical community has been developing the next-generation Internet Protocol for nearly two decades. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) offers 2128 IP addresses – that’s more than 340 undecillion addresses, or 340 followed by 36 digits.

The pace of IPv6 adoption has picked up recently, but only about a third of the Internet services in the United States are IPv6 capable. As IPv4 addresses become more scarce, companies and other organizations that have yet to transition to IPv6 may find it difficult to expand their Internet presence.

For more information and the source of the above, see:
https://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2016/ntia-seeks-input-it-develops-initiatives-increase-ipv6-adoption

Global Connection Speeds and Broadband Adoption Trending Upward; Belgium Leads On IPv6, According to Akamai ‘First Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report’

[news release] Akamai Technologies, Inc., the global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services, today released its First Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report. Based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform™, the report provides insight into key global statistics such as connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, notable Internet disruptions, IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 implementation

[news release] Akamai Technologies, Inc., the global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services, today released its First Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report. Based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform™, the report provides insight into key global statistics such as connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, notable Internet disruptions, IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 implementation.

Akamai Technologies logoData and graphics from the First Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report can be found on the Akamai State of the Internet site and through the Akamai State of the Internet app for iOS and Android devices. State of the Internet Report-related discussions are also taking place on the Akamai Community.

“Live sports will be at the forefront this summer as we prepare for the games in Brazil, with expectations that this year’s events will be watched by more online viewers than ever,” said David Belson, editor of the State of the Internet Report. “Global connection speeds have more than doubled since the summer of 2012, which can help support higher quality video streaming for bigger audiences across even more connected devices and platforms.”

Highlights from Akamai’s First Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report:

Global Average Connection Speeds and Global Broadband Connectivity

  • Global average connection speed increased 12% from the fourth quarter of 2015 to 6.3 Mbps, a 23% increase year over year.
  • Global average peak connection speed increased 6.8% to 34.7 Mbps in the first quarter, rising 14% year over year.
  • Global 10 Mbps, 15 Mbps, and 25 Mbps broadband adoption also grew significantly in the first quarter of 2016, posting year over year gains of 10%, 14% and 19% at each threshold, respectively.

IPv4 and IPv6

  • The number of unique IPv4 addresses connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform declined 0.2% to 808 million.
  • Belgium remained the clear global leader in IPv6 adoption with 36% of its connections to Akamai occurring over IPv6, down 3.1% from the previous quarter.

Mobile Connectivity

  • Average mobile connection speeds ranged from a high of 27.9 Mbps in the United Kingdom to a low of 2.2 Mbps in Algeria.

About the Akamai State of the Internet Report

Each quarter, Akamai publishes a “State of the Internet – Connectivity” report. This report includes data gathered from across the Akamai Intelligent Platform about attack traffic, broadband adoption, mobile connectivity and other relevant topics concerning the Internet and its usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time. For additional information on the metrics in the report and how they are analyzed, please visit akamai.me/sotimetrics. To learn more and to access the archive of past reports, please visit https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/global-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-reports.jsp. To download the figures from the First Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report, please visit: wwwns.akamai.com/soti/soti_q116_figures.zip.

About Akamai

As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company’s advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

This Akamai news release was sourced from:
https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2016-press/akamai-first-quarter-2016-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.jsp

ARIN Allocates Last Of North America’s IPv4 Addresses

The last of North America’s IPv4 addresses has been allocated from the “free pool”, the body responsible for allocating internet protocol addresses in North America, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) announced.

The last of North America’s IPv4 addresses has been allocated from the “free pool”, the body responsible for allocating internet protocol addresses in North America, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) announced.There are addresses that will continue to become available, and ARIN will continue to process and approve requests for IPv4 address blocks. Those approved requests may be fulfilled via the Wait List for Unmet IPv4 Requests, or through the IPv4 Transfer Market.On the transfer market, there are reports that IPv4 addresses have been selling for $10-12 each according to IDG.But the depletion of IPv4 addresses is spurring on IPv6 adoption. The latest State of the Internet report from Akamai shows that in the second quarter of 2015 “reversing the trend seen in the first quarter, the number of unique IPv4 addresses worldwide connecting to Akamai dropped by about 8.6 million in the second quarter. Six of the top 10 countries saw a quarterly decline in unique IPv4 address counts in the second quarter, compared with three in the previous quarter.”On IPv6 growth, the report shows “European countries continued to dominate the 10 countries/regions with the largest percentage of content requests made to Akamai over IPv6 in the second quarter of 2015. Similar to previous quarters, Belgium maintained its clear lead, with 38% of content requests being made over IPv6. Switzerland (23%) saw the largest increase, enjoying a 168% jump over the previous quarter, moving into second place globally, with nearly a quarter of content requests coming over IPv6. As with the previous quarter, the only two non-European counties among the top 10 were the U.S. and Peru, both of which saw significant double-digit quarterly improvements to adoption rates of 19% and 17%, respectively.”Further, BT announced that by the end of 2016 its entire network will be able to use IPv6 according to BBC News and in India, the Kerala government has rolled out a roadmap to implement Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) across the state, reported the Financial Express.