Those who argue that IPv4 addresses must be reclaimed seem to have forgotten that even for small organizations, converting IPv4 address space to RFC1918 addresses, or IPv6, is a huge task given the fixed IP addresses of many devices (printers, copy machines, etc.), and even worse, the many key business application programs that use hard-coded IP addresses instead of DNS resolution. Many of these application programs were written many years ago, and are poorly supported, such that making code changes places a company's business success on the line. Of course, unused /8 prefixes appear to be an abuse, but as some have noted in this thread, many large organizations were assigned /8s decades ago, and have used them for IP addressing for key business functions.
David On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 7:07 AM, Eugen Leitl <eu...@leitl.org> wrote: > > > http://paritynews.com/network/item/325-department-of-work-and-pensions-uk-in-possession-of-169-million-unused-ipv4-addresses > > Department of Work and Pensions UK in Possession of 16.9 Million Unused > IPv4 > Addresses > > Written by Ravi Mandalia > > Department of Work and Pensions UK in Possession of 16.9 Million Unused > IPv4 > Addresses > > The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire block of '/8' IPv4 > addresses that is unused and an e-petition has been filed in this regards > asking the DWP to sell it off thus easing off the RIPE IPv4 address space > scarcity a little. > > John Graham-Cumming, who found this unused block, wrote in a blog post that > the DWP was in possession of 51.0.0.0/8 IPv4 addresses. According to > Cumming, > these 16.9 million IP addresses are unused at the moment and he derived > this > conclusion by doing a check in the ASN database. “A check of the ASN > database > will show that there are no networks for that block of addresses,” he > wrote. > > An e-petition has been filed in this regards. “It has recently come to > light > that the Department for Work and Pensions has its own allocated block of > 16,777,216 addresses (commonly referred to as a /8), covering 51.0.0.0 to > 51.255.255.255”, reads the petition. > > The UK government, if it sells off this /8 block, could end up getting £1 > billion mark. “£1 billion of low-effort extra cash would be a very nice > thing > to throw at our deficit,” read the petition. > > Cumming ends his post with the remark, “So, Mr. Cameron, I'll accept a 10% > finder's fee if you dispose of this asset :-)”. > > >
