6 ms·

In regions where IPv4 addresses are scarce, you may not even have a single public IPv4 address. I'm fortunate to have one, but still needs NAT.

hdgvhicv 17d ago
IPv4 costs are tiny compared to the cost of providing an internet connection.
- Sha1rholder 17d ago
  Not every place is the same.
  - TZubiri 16d ago
    Do you have any example where leasing an ipv4 block from a NIC directly costs more than 5$ per IPv4 address per year?
    - litoE 16d ago
      Yes. My ISP will rent me a single IPv4 address for $10 per month. Or I can use DHCP, where my IPv4 address can change at their whim.
      - TZubiri 16d ago
        > Yes. My ISP will rent me a single IPv4 address for $10 per month. At that price point you can get a small vm, but if you have a dedicated server you want to use on-prem, 10$/mo seems like a reasonable price. > Or I can use DHCP, where my IPv4 address can change at their whim. Check the dhcp.lease to make sure, I used to think that, then I looked at the dhcp lease and the IP was being reserved for up to 48 hours of disconnection. I went years without it ever being released. Phone operators won't necessarily transmit this information to you, the true ISP operator is the DHCP server. Not only is it more knowledgeable, but DHCPd has no incentive to upsell you, just provides you with what it is configured to. I'd even go as far as checking if you can send parameters during the dhcp lease request, maybe you can request a longer lease on the IP. There's a right way to do things, it's not trivial to discern from the wrong way to do it, but once you see it, you notice that you lose almost nothing, it's not like the 'wrong' way is simpler, it's just 'wronger', all the way through. I guess the reason they persist is sunk-cost fallacy, the businesses and people that went with NAT then developed STUN, and then they developed ICE, and then they develop Tailscale, every time you need to invent a bigger spade to dig you out of the hole and into a deeper one. Or you can just use IPv4. But aghast, you have to pay 10$/month (or learn DHCP)
        vel0city 15d ago
        > or learn DHCP There's nothing to learn here in the end. Its just rules imposed by the ISP. I've had places where the leases expired weekly, and I'd often get a different public IP address when renewed. No amount of learning will change this. If I want out of that, I'd have to pay extra money every month. I've also had ISPs where I've had the same IPv4 address for years. So long as I was online around the time of the lease renewal, I was pretty much guaranteed to get the same IP. YMMV. > At that price point you can get a small vm, but if you have a dedicated server you want to use on-prem, 10$/mo seems like a reasonable price. So I can spend $10/mo for each IP address I want, or I can just use IPv6 where my ISP gives me 295,147,905,179,352,825,856 IP addresses (a /60) by default for free. Hmm...which to choose...
        hdgvhicv 15d ago
        An ISP should be giving you a /56. If they are giving you a /60 that the sign of a terrible ISP anyway.
        vel0city 15d ago
        No argument from me here on the /56 vs a /60, I play the cards I'm dealt. AT&T being the same shitbags they've always been. But its multi-gigabit fiber from them or questionable DOCSIS from Spectrum, and I've never met an honest Spectrum representative. I refuse to do business with them after all the fraud they've given me over the years. In the end its still a bajillion-ish IPv6 addresses I have to play with versus the one-ish I have with IPv4.
      - hdgvhicv 15d ago
        So change ISP. Your isp is making a fortune from you as part of price segregation, nothing to do with demand.
    - Hizonner 16d ago
      Counting the cost of creating the company so you can actually deal directly with a NIC? Every. Single. Individual. End. User. Device. Should. Be. Addressable. Given that there are more such devices out there then there are IPv4 addresses to begin with, cost doesn't even come into it.
      - TZubiri 16d ago
        >Counting the cost of creating the company so you can actually deal directly with a NIC? No, the question was taking the price that the NIC sells the IP blocks at. Understanding that in order to get 1 IPv4 address you will be buying from a distributor at a markup, but still, with Wholesale prices at 0.6$ (LACNIC) to 2.5$ (ARIN) per IP address per year, even with a markup of 300%, we are still at filthy cheap prices (2.4$/year to 10$/year) >Every. Single. Individual. End. User. Device. Should. Be. Addressable. Given that there are more such devices out there then there are IPv4 addresses to begin with, cost doesn't even come into it. Oh, ok, I was writing mostly about server side IPv4 assignment. I guess your position is a much stronger stance than mine, I argue that all servers should have an IP(v4) adress, you argue that every client device should. In that sense, consider that there's a lot of users, on this website even, that insist on running hosts without a dedicated IP address. There's lower hanging fruit.
        vel0city 15d ago
        > I argue that all servers should have an IP(v4) adress, you argue that every client device should. In the IP world, there is no difference between an "client" and a "server". There are just two things communicating. Things which may be clients may also behave like servers from time to time and from circumstance to circumstance. My home PC is sometimes a "client". Its a "client" when I'm talking to this website. Its also a "server" when I'm connecting to its file shares. Its also a "server" when I'm wanting to stream games from it. A game console is sometimes a "client" when its downloading games and updates, its also sometimes a "server" when I play games online and do matchmaking. My phone is a "client" when its talking to the messaging app servers, it is also a "peer" when I make a phone call to my friend. Thinking that things are only ever "clients" or only ever "servers" is an overly simplistic view of the world. Devices aren't purely "servers" or "clients", applications/services are what make such a distinction, and even then that can change depending on the context.
    - Sha1rholder 16d ago
      China has very few IPv4 addresses per capita. Here in Hangzhou, China, I have to pay China Telecom 850 CNY per year just to get an IPv4 address. That's not a trivial amount of money for us. And among the three major telecom operators, only one even offers this service.
      - TZubiri 16d ago
        IPv4 in China must be complicated, I would probably look into IPv6 if I were based in China, or China specific protocols, or perhaps there's some IP addresses that China has embargoed and reserved for their own? Such that inside China they resolve to china but outside China they resolve somewhere else? On the other hand, it's not really that complicated. Cost seems to be around 10USD per month, which is what another user mentioned. And the GDP per capita of china is around 12000 USD per year, so it works out to a bit more than 1% of a salary, not sure if my maths are wrong, but from the perspective of a service provider, it still sounds like a sensible price point. India has a lower GDP per capita, but I know that they make non profit collective efforts to massively lower prices. Note also that a substantial part of the value and purpose of IP addresses comes from their cost. There is a PoW/PoS mechanism that associates some cost to some identity (similar to domain names), and this is part of the mechanism by which networks filter malicious traffic and defend against sybil attacks. So 10$/month might be expensive, but it's probably the right price. If it were much cheaper than that, like 1$/month, or even 0.1$/month, abuse would rise, especially in China which, no offense, but doesn't seem to value the notions of civil law like contracts, Terms of Service or copyright dearly. At least they don't do it out of malice like Russia, it's just a difference of values, but it's probably for the better that IPv4 addresses are 10$/month, if it were 0.1$/month, I would probably just block the whole country.
- Dylan16807 16d ago
  It's free money to your ISP. A lot of ISPs us CGNAT.
  - kazen44 16d ago
    CGNAT is also not cheap and very complex from a architectural point of view. Vendors have been pushing it though, because implementing IPV6 only somehow is still a very, very scary thing for large ISP's to pull off. what should happen is it should be very easy to deploy ipv6/4 translation mechanisms in ipv4 only networks, this would allow easy interopability and make it easier for the large networks to push IPV6.

hdgvhicv 17d ago

IPv4 costs are tiny compared to the cost of providing an internet connection.

Sha1rholder 17d ago
Not every place is the same.
- TZubiri 16d ago
  Do you have any example where leasing an ipv4 block from a NIC directly costs more than 5$ per IPv4 address per year?
  - litoE 16d ago
    Yes. My ISP will rent me a single IPv4 address for $10 per month. Or I can use DHCP, where my IPv4 address can change at their whim.
    - TZubiri 16d ago
      > Yes. My ISP will rent me a single IPv4 address for $10 per month. At that price point you can get a small vm, but if you have a dedicated server you want to use on-prem, 10$/mo seems like a reasonable price. > Or I can use DHCP, where my IPv4 address can change at their whim. Check the dhcp.lease to make sure, I used to think that, then I looked at the dhcp lease and the IP was being reserved for up to 48 hours of disconnection. I went years without it ever being released. Phone operators won't necessarily transmit this information to you, the true ISP operator is the DHCP server. Not only is it more knowledgeable, but DHCPd has no incentive to upsell you, just provides you with what it is configured to. I'd even go as far as checking if you can send parameters during the dhcp lease request, maybe you can request a longer lease on the IP. There's a right way to do things, it's not trivial to discern from the wrong way to do it, but once you see it, you notice that you lose almost nothing, it's not like the 'wrong' way is simpler, it's just 'wronger', all the way through. I guess the reason they persist is sunk-cost fallacy, the businesses and people that went with NAT then developed STUN, and then they developed ICE, and then they develop Tailscale, every time you need to invent a bigger spade to dig you out of the hole and into a deeper one. Or you can just use IPv4. But aghast, you have to pay 10$/month (or learn DHCP)
      - vel0city 15d ago
        > or learn DHCP There's nothing to learn here in the end. Its just rules imposed by the ISP. I've had places where the leases expired weekly, and I'd often get a different public IP address when renewed. No amount of learning will change this. If I want out of that, I'd have to pay extra money every month. I've also had ISPs where I've had the same IPv4 address for years. So long as I was online around the time of the lease renewal, I was pretty much guaranteed to get the same IP. YMMV. > At that price point you can get a small vm, but if you have a dedicated server you want to use on-prem, 10$/mo seems like a reasonable price. So I can spend $10/mo for each IP address I want, or I can just use IPv6 where my ISP gives me 295,147,905,179,352,825,856 IP addresses (a /60) by default for free. Hmm...which to choose...
        hdgvhicv 15d ago
        An ISP should be giving you a /56. If they are giving you a /60 that the sign of a terrible ISP anyway.
        vel0city 15d ago
        No argument from me here on the /56 vs a /60, I play the cards I'm dealt. AT&T being the same shitbags they've always been. But its multi-gigabit fiber from them or questionable DOCSIS from Spectrum, and I've never met an honest Spectrum representative. I refuse to do business with them after all the fraud they've given me over the years. In the end its still a bajillion-ish IPv6 addresses I have to play with versus the one-ish I have with IPv4.
    - hdgvhicv 15d ago
      So change ISP. Your isp is making a fortune from you as part of price segregation, nothing to do with demand.
  - Hizonner 16d ago
    Counting the cost of creating the company so you can actually deal directly with a NIC? Every. Single. Individual. End. User. Device. Should. Be. Addressable. Given that there are more such devices out there then there are IPv4 addresses to begin with, cost doesn't even come into it.
    - TZubiri 16d ago
      >Counting the cost of creating the company so you can actually deal directly with a NIC? No, the question was taking the price that the NIC sells the IP blocks at. Understanding that in order to get 1 IPv4 address you will be buying from a distributor at a markup, but still, with Wholesale prices at 0.6$ (LACNIC) to 2.5$ (ARIN) per IP address per year, even with a markup of 300%, we are still at filthy cheap prices (2.4$/year to 10$/year) >Every. Single. Individual. End. User. Device. Should. Be. Addressable. Given that there are more such devices out there then there are IPv4 addresses to begin with, cost doesn't even come into it. Oh, ok, I was writing mostly about server side IPv4 assignment. I guess your position is a much stronger stance than mine, I argue that all servers should have an IP(v4) adress, you argue that every client device should. In that sense, consider that there's a lot of users, on this website even, that insist on running hosts without a dedicated IP address. There's lower hanging fruit.
      - vel0city 15d ago
        > I argue that all servers should have an IP(v4) adress, you argue that every client device should. In the IP world, there is no difference between an "client" and a "server". There are just two things communicating. Things which may be clients may also behave like servers from time to time and from circumstance to circumstance. My home PC is sometimes a "client". Its a "client" when I'm talking to this website. Its also a "server" when I'm connecting to its file shares. Its also a "server" when I'm wanting to stream games from it. A game console is sometimes a "client" when its downloading games and updates, its also sometimes a "server" when I play games online and do matchmaking. My phone is a "client" when its talking to the messaging app servers, it is also a "peer" when I make a phone call to my friend. Thinking that things are only ever "clients" or only ever "servers" is an overly simplistic view of the world. Devices aren't purely "servers" or "clients", applications/services are what make such a distinction, and even then that can change depending on the context.
  - Sha1rholder 16d ago
    China has very few IPv4 addresses per capita. Here in Hangzhou, China, I have to pay China Telecom 850 CNY per year just to get an IPv4 address. That's not a trivial amount of money for us. And among the three major telecom operators, only one even offers this service.
    - TZubiri 16d ago
      IPv4 in China must be complicated, I would probably look into IPv6 if I were based in China, or China specific protocols, or perhaps there's some IP addresses that China has embargoed and reserved for their own? Such that inside China they resolve to china but outside China they resolve somewhere else? On the other hand, it's not really that complicated. Cost seems to be around 10USD per month, which is what another user mentioned. And the GDP per capita of china is around 12000 USD per year, so it works out to a bit more than 1% of a salary, not sure if my maths are wrong, but from the perspective of a service provider, it still sounds like a sensible price point. India has a lower GDP per capita, but I know that they make non profit collective efforts to massively lower prices. Note also that a substantial part of the value and purpose of IP addresses comes from their cost. There is a PoW/PoS mechanism that associates some cost to some identity (similar to domain names), and this is part of the mechanism by which networks filter malicious traffic and defend against sybil attacks. So 10$/month might be expensive, but it's probably the right price. If it were much cheaper than that, like 1$/month, or even 0.1$/month, abuse would rise, especially in China which, no offense, but doesn't seem to value the notions of civil law like contracts, Terms of Service or copyright dearly. At least they don't do it out of malice like Russia, it's just a difference of values, but it's probably for the better that IPv4 addresses are 10$/month, if it were 0.1$/month, I would probably just block the whole country.
Dylan16807 16d ago
It's free money to your ISP. A lot of ISPs us CGNAT.
- kazen44 16d ago
  CGNAT is also not cheap and very complex from a architectural point of view. Vendors have been pushing it though, because implementing IPV6 only somehow is still a very, very scary thing for large ISP's to pull off. what should happen is it should be very easy to deploy ipv6/4 translation mechanisms in ipv4 only networks, this would allow easy interopability and make it easier for the large networks to push IPV6.