IPv4 Shorts Blog

Short answers to basic questions, at your fingertips.

What is RIPE NCC?

The RIPE NCC is the Regional Internet Registry serving Europe and the surrounding areas.   It issues and registers IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, and AS Numbers to organizations operating networks in its service region. It was […] Read more

What is LACNIC?

LACNIC is the Regional Internet Registry serving Latin America and parts of the Caribbean.   It issues and registers IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, and AS Numbers to organizations operating networks in its service region. It was […] Read more

What is DHCP?

How does a device know what IP address it should use when it connects to a new Wi-Fi network? DHCP is the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. It is a protocol that lets a device ask […] Read more

What is GeoIP?

The internet shrinks the distance between people. A web page hosted in Los Angeles can be viewed in Singapore in under a second. But some organizations want to restrict who can access specific pages or […] Read more

What is RPKI?

Several well-known internet service outages happened when one network announced addresses belonging to another. Pakistan Telecom accidentally announced addresses belonging to YouTube in 2008. People lost access to YouTube for around two hours and Pakistan […] Read more

Blocklists and Reputation

Most networks on the internet are reachable from most other networks on the internet. This has led to some networks using that reachability to send spam, host malicious downloads, or actively attack other networks. Blocklists, […] Read more

What are Legacy IPv4 Addresses?

The RIRs were created between 1992 and 2005. Addresses issued before they were created had no governing policy. The RIRs respected the distinct policy status of those addresses by not charging fees for basic services, […] Read more

IPv4 Address Prices

IPv4 addresses used to be valued at about US $11 each. But that was before the RIRs had run out of more addresses to allocate. Prices rose to about US $60 per address in 2021 […] Read more

Smallest Transfer and Transfer Types

The smallest block that can be transferred is a /24 (256 IPv4 addresses) except in the RIPE NCC service region. They do not have a minimum size on a transfer. But blocks smaller than a […] Read more

Address Transfer Fees

Some RIRs charge fees to transfer address blocks. The fees vary between the RIRs. They aren’t standardized because the RIRs have different membership sizes, preferences, and cost bases. Fees can change each year. In 2024, […] Read more

Address Transfer Market

RIRs have policies to help organizations transfer addresses when they no longer need them. Some organizations got large blocks of addresses when the technologies for routing addresses were less flexible. Some organizations got blocks for […] Read more

Who Owns IPv4 Addresses?

IPv4 addresses are probably not property. IPv4 addresses are numbers and numbers can’t be owned. However, they are useful as communication tools only if they are used exclusively. That means a single organization controls how […] Read more