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A tech expert claims the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions is sitting on a massive stash of unallocated IPv4 internet addresses, which could be valued at around £1billion. We could sell them to Germany to help reduce the deficit.
The claim comes via IT expert John Graham-Cumming, who discovered the unused block of 16.8m IP addresses while rummaging about through RIPE’s records. At a time when the world is rapidly running out of numbers to make our internets work (layman’s description), this waste of IPv4 ranges by the government seems a little shameful.
However, a previous freedom of information request [PDF] about the IP address stash has been filed with the DWP, which claims the address block is “used internally” by government networks, and is therefore unlikely to be sold on.
But, given how we have no money any more to pay for roads, bins, pavements, trees or houses, an online petition has been set up to encourage the government to sell this potentially valuable block of numbers, so it might pay for something useful instead. [The Register]
Image credit: World IPv6 Day
This is actually a demonstratively UK business-stifling move by the DWP, but having said that, how much would they be worth if we held onto them for a few more months?
Does this meen my Feline Shenanigan Photo Fetish may be once again safe Gary? or was your Ban more about Personal feelings towards Kitteh?
I reckon we can do them a deal for 30 million IPv6 addresses and then make a killing!
Feet-Ground. will you NEVER learn PrinterElf!!
They’ve got 16.8 million IPv4 addresses, you suggested 2:1, I’m rounding down in our favour!
Look, what we spoke about initially was you trading back the Bajillions of internets you foolishly and haphazardly handed out on whimsy and frivolity. you were to offer 2:1 on those so that i could get enough internets back on the market so that Gary wouldn’t ban Cats from the internet. Thats all i care about and if the UK Gov has 16,800,000 internets then, knowing Dave, Nick & Ed as i do and sharing their love of feline tomfoolery, I’m pretty sure they’re on the phone, right now, to the Lord High Sir Gary of Cutlack ensuring that the Mischievous Maru gets to keep his paws in Cyberspace!
In recent discussions i myself have had with the Right Reverend Lord High Sir Gary of Cutlack, it has been made clear and crystal that his ban on Cattish High Jinks is born from a deep seated Hatred of Cats and an irrational fear of the Parasites they may or may not pass on to us, so even if we did manage to get all those wasted internets you dished out like rusty pennies then there’s anything between a 63% and 84% chance that His Right Honourable Very Reverend Lord High Sir Gary of Cutlack will STILL BAN MY BELOVED CATS OFF THE FLUFFING INTERWEBS!!!
DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Even if we sold HMG’s bounty for just the £1 billion suggested above, I’m sure you could maintain your own personal feline interweb far from the jurisdiction of His Right Honourable Very Reverend Lord High Sir Gary of Cutlack which surpasses even your seemingly insatiable need for cattish high jinks until the EU pull out their collective garlic infused olive oiled fingers and enable the IPv6 internets for all!
I feel like i need to apologise for mr previous outburst, it’s very unbecoming and unladylike. I am, of coarse, no lady, but i like to model my behaviour on Mart Steenburgen’s Character Clara from off of the Back to the Future Part Three, but thats a different story for a different day.
If you think it’s possible, if you can help me escape from the Autocracy of the The Dark Tyrant His Right Honourable Very Reverend Lord High Sir Gary of Cutlack so that i can create my own cat filled haven, my own milky oasis, my own portion of the interwebs that Mad Gary cant get to me at, then i will agree to your cunning and potentially genius protoplan. But i will need a full and indepth presentation and information pack outlining how you would achieve such a Kitty Utopia for me before i could sign off on your plan to sell the 1.6bn IPv4 addresses.
I feel like we’ve broken new ground here.
So your aim is to eventually have a ravine named after you, only to have the dream snatched from you by a tall man, with great big brown puppy dog eyes and long silvery flowing hair?
I’d suggest that with even £1 million, let alone £1 billion, you should be able to purchase around 30,000,000GB storage for your kitteh media, add in for sake of argument triple the amount of money to network and pipe it to wherever you happen to be located at the time, and you’re sorted!
I think you’re over-estimating our potential stash – 1.6bn IPv4 addresses would be 37% of the global total….
I quote Mad Gary ‘The claim comes via IT expert John Graham-Cumming, who discovered the unused block of 16.8m IP addresses while rummaging through Sir Tim Berners-lee’s Knickers’
Ok, i may have changed it a bit, but the general gist is correct.
I think we’ve got ourselves a kitteh fuelled business venture!
Sir Gary of Cutlack is a Great name! I wish mine sounded as awesome when said like that
Brick is such an unusual name.
Unless you’re going by Troy these days……
The Lord High Sir Troy of Sherwen?? Sounds fine to me!
Haha where was it that I had my name down as Brick Tamland?!
Rooster Teeth, took a while but i found ya! I’m all over as Spatchmo, not too hard to find that i’m The Lord High Sir Iain of Buchanan
Haha I haven’t been over to RoosterTeeth in ages! I should go see if they have a new season out yet.. And I am hiding on G+ somewhere
You should join us on Google Plus, if your not already??
Tsk, Spatchmo, he joined before you did (I think), but is hampered by his OS choice from joining a lot of the fun and games.
They must be holding on to it for a very good reason. I wouldn’t call it shameful at all. That’s prime real estate, and I owned them, I’d sit on them until the everyone feels the squeeze before selling them for billions. I doubt 1billion would do anything to the defecit. Maybe if they sold it later for 10s of billions… a difference could be made.
I blame all them internet enabled fridges…
That’s so bloody typical of you. Wherever something goes wrong you just blame the white goods.
White goods will bring the world wide web to it’s knees… you don’t see an esky or a Coolgardie safe hooked into the ‘net! No!
Fancy shmancy white goods… what have they ever done for the country… dirty bludgers.
Just wait til Microsoft starts releasing their internet enabled Fridge-Toasters!
Immediately reminds me of an internet-enabled toaster I found that burned the weather into your toast.
Well, we could always trade them in for some of that gold bullion we sold off. We may as well keep something for a rainy day. We’re hardly global competitors when it comes to reserves of precious metals, minerals and gems.
Petitions dont do diddly >.<
If we get 10,000 likes for this comment, the government will take notice and wave a piece of paper in our general direction. Share it round people, we can do this!
If they’re being used internally then why are people expecting them to be sold?
I think you’re missing the point. You *can’t* sell IP addresses, they’re a public resource. I’m not saying people wouldn’t want to buy them, especially as RIPE will now only allocate a final /22 (1,024 addresses) per ISP/LIR, but its a bad idea to set a precedent like that when addresses are so scarce.
At best, the government will release them back to RIPE (the regional internet registry that handles IP allocation in Europe) who will then be able to allocate them properly. Stamford University did a similar thing in 2000.
This doesn’t solve the problem though. At the moment RIPE’s existing /8 will be gone in a year. Another /8 will last another year. It might take that long for ISPs and the like to put some serious effort into IPv6.
Using them internally is just poor network design, especially when there are large chunks of private address space specifically designed for the purpose. They’re probably just too lazy to renumber.