How to Sell your IPv4 Blocks? Secondary Marketplace for IPv4 Addresses
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Posted at 2020-10-29 16:56:00
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By Prefixx Team
If you want to do anything the right time to do it is now, especially when it comes to selling IPv4 blocks. All five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) are almost depleted or facing a shortage of these addresses.
Companies still need extra IPv4 addresses, even if it isn’t available from the final /8 pool. As long as the demands for IPv4 addresses continue to grow, they often turn to secondary marketplaces. Third-party vendors who facilitate these deals have been offering this type of service, long before there was a shortage of IPv4 addresses.
Demand for additional IPv4 blocks
Microsoft spent $7.5 million to purchase over 600,000 IPv4 addresses from Nortel Networks in 2011. In 2017, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) made the headlines, as they sold 8 million IPv4 addresses.
The shortage of available IPv4 addresses, coupled with the increase in demand, is causing the price for these blocks to rise. If you have additional address spaces and want to sell them, it is essential to understand how to go ahead with this process.
How to Sell IPv4
To sell your existing IPv4 addresses, you need to find a marketplace such as Prefixx, which will help facilitate the deal. When it comes to selecting an appropriate vendor, make sure you find an entity that has sufficient experience in this market.
This is essential especially when you need to get IPv4 addresses from RIRs who serve other regions. After you select the intermediary, the next step is to create an account on their platform. In most markets, there are two ways you can sell your IPv4 blocks.
One is private negotiation, where the intermediary will facilitate the deal. They will give you the best price for your IPv4 addresses and find potential buyers. You will need to draft the asset purchase agreement, assignment agreement, and non-disclosure agreement for this type of deal. Fortunately, most of the intermediary who facilitates IPv4 address sales will assist at every stage of the transaction.
Another option is to sell your blocks of different sizes via online auctions. There are two ways for this deal to go through. You can set a fixed price, which the buyer will match. There is also the option of having a traditional auction.
Here you set a minimum price that every buyer has to match if they want to get your IPv4 addresses. Any business who wants ownership of your blocks has to place a bid, which can help you get better prices.
When you decide to auction your IPv4 addresses, you will receive payment for your blocks after the intermediary registers the buyer ownership under the applicable RIR. Keep in mind that you don’t have to free up the entire block for the sale.
Is it legal to sell IPv4?
When the secondary marketplace for IPv4 addresses was at its infancy, not many businesses knew they could sell their address blocks. The common misconception among vendors was that this was an illegal practice.
However, there aren’t any laws in place which declare this type of activity to be unlawful. When RIRs realized the demand for buying and selling IPv4 addresses, they decided to step in and regulate the market.
There weren’t any rules or regulations, which would allow companies to transfer these blocks to another organization. As a result, there weren’t any policies governing the entire transaction.
In 2009, this changed as the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) added rules, to help transfer these addresses between organizations. They also made it possible to show a change in ownership of these blocks. As the market started to mature, intermediaries such as Prefixx stepped in, to help facilitate these deals.
These days, the selling of IPv4 addresses takes place frequently. You can transfer ownership of your IPv4 addresses to another entity. However, you need to make sure you meet the RIR’s requirements for the deal to be successful.
If you want to sell your IPv4 blocks to interested buyers, get in touch with Prefixx, a registered IPv4 broker. They will help identify the right buyers through their verification process, draft all the necessary paperwork, and provide secure payment services. They have network administrators with more than 12 years of experience in this industry conducting these types of transfers. Prefixx makes the process of selling IPv4 blocks a seamless and simplified process.
