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Multinational ISP Offers $206M In Secured Notes Backed By IPv4 Addresses - Slash...

 1 month ago
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/05/04/2122251/multinational-isp-offers-206m-in-secured-notes-backed-by-ipv4-addresses
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Multinational ISP Offers $206M In Secured Notes Backed By IPv4 Addresses

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Multinational ISP Offers $206M In Secured Notes Backed By IPv4 Addresses (circleid.com) 14

Posted by EditorDavid

on Saturday May 04, 2024 @05:25PM from the master-of-your-domains dept.

CircleID reports that Multinational internet service provider Cogent recently announced that it was offering $206 million in secured notes (a corporate bond backed by assets). "The unusual part is what it's using as security: some of its IPv4 addresses and the leases on those IPv4 addresses."

All internet service providers (ISPs) give IP addresses to their users, but Cogent was among the first to lease those addresses independently of internet access. (Internet access customers normally require a unique address as part of their service.) Sources are hard to find, but prevailing wisdom is that they have over 10M addresses leased for about $0.30 per month, or $36M per year in revenue. The notes are expected to be repaid in five years. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader penciling_in for sharing the article.

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Here [circleid.com] is the article. The link in the summary seems broken.

The future cost of IPv4 addresses seems like an interesting economic study. If the price goes up a lot then that will encourage some companies to sell off part of their ranges and move towards more NAT and/or IPv6. Also if IPv4 addresses get costly then cloud providers will start changing more [theregister.com] for IPv4 access to encourage IPv6 instead. On the other hand, people might pay more so they don't have to migrate a working setup.

  • Re:

    If I understand correctly, selling the IP addresses and their market value isn't the matter here. They lease those IP addresses so it's like owning a building and giving your leases, the money you collect from your tenants as collateral.

    • Re:

      True, I wasn't really very specific with "cost of IPv4 addresses" as to whether I meant leasing or owning. I think those two costs will be somewhat linked, just like real estate prices and rents.

      Personally I would tend towards leasing rather than owning. They don't seem like a long-term investment as there is a lot of scope for people to reduce their IPv4 usage if prices get high (unlike property renters, who have to live somewhere).

  • I don't know why anyone would want to use ipv4 on the backend. Cloud providers should default to ipv6 only and push us through this final hurdle.

    • Re:

      Cloud providers are competing with each other. "No IPv4 for you!" sounds like a way to lose market share.

      • Yeah. And some ISPs don't support IPv6 at all, or not properly. Currently I have 3 WANs and Comcast is the only one with a proper IPv6 implementation.
        All 3 are giving me a public IPv4 address, though. No CG-NAT.


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