Ask HN: What would you do with a Class C IP block?

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/22/what-would-you-do-wi-1.html#comments

by rms • 17 years ago

20 22 17 years ago

profquail2• 17 years ago

If you lived in a small neighborhood (or some apartment buildings, if the walls aren't too thick) you could start a little ISP. Or you assign all of the devices in your house an IP address, and even break down the ranges (e.g. N to M are for kitchen appliances.)

uninverted• 17 years ago

Why would thick wall be a problem? (I'm not being sarcastic, I really don't know)

nudded• 17 years ago

because he's probably talking about doing it over wifi, which happens to degrade fast if it needs to traverse thick walls.

tsally• 17 years ago

Rent them out?

diN0bot• 17 years ago

devise a numeric code so that users navigating across the ip's are receiving an "important" message. the website navigation plays along with this "choose your own adventure" game.

jdeseno• 17 years ago

This is the technical equivalent of: "Hey, I found $100 what should I do with it"? 255 addresses ... woo-hoo.

profquail2• 17 years ago

"What would you do with a Class C IP block?"

"I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man."

gaius• 17 years ago

You don't need a Class C to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's on dynamic IP, don't do shit.

eli2• 17 years ago

Sort of... I'm not sure what I'd do with 256 IP addresses without 256 public-facing servers...

I'd much rather have a few hundred servers and 1 IP address.

mburns• 17 years ago

1 server with an extra $500 in RAM can do some pretty fancy stuff with virtualization.

Dilpil• 17 years ago

It seems a bit closer to a quarter than $100.

mrtron• 17 years ago

I would use one for my personal use and take the remaining 254 and offer reverse dns services.

trafficlight• 17 years ago

Give it back. If you can't use it, you don't need it.

jrockway• 17 years ago

255 IPs is a drop in the ocean.

Companies with Class As (16,777,214 addresses) are the problem.

Kadin• 17 years ago

The legacy Class As really aren't a significant issue either. By the time you subtract out all the effort that the clawback itself would involve (nontrivial reconfiguration of quite a few major corporate and government networks), it would probably be a wash or quite close to it versus just trying to work on IPv6 -- which finally seems to be getting some traction.

At best I've heard a few extra months added at current burn rate estimates. Hardly worth the knock-down, drag-out fight that it would involve.

jetsnoc• 17 years ago

Hrm, I've found it rather easy to obtain IP space from ARIN so this article seems a little humorous to me.

ddemchuk• 17 years ago

You could always build a 255 site SEO network and interlink them all for SERP purposes. Class C blocks are big for people building link farms in order to take over the top ten results for different search terms.

eli2• 17 years ago

This would be trivial for Google to detect, no?

stanley• 17 years ago

Google already checks if sites belong to the same c-block, so the link value is significantly diminished.

lamby• 17 years ago

Just so you can feel smug - a class C block gives you 254 usable IP addresses, not 256.

nailer• 17 years ago

Reminds me of joining IBM Global Services a few years ago:

'The IPs that start with 9 are ours.'

'Sure? What's the full netblock you own?'

'9. All of it.'

abalashov• 17 years ago

I suppose that would depend on what ISPs you're buying transit through.

Technically, the smallest block you can announce that won't be filtered is still /24, and many do, including networks that punch holes in their own aggregates, or their upstream ISPs' aggregates for redundancy, etc.

However, with the global BGP table coming in at just shy of 300,000 routes now, there's pressure to filter small prefixes more and more. There's kind of a de facto gentleman's agreement among the sorts of folks that are in NANOG that /22 should be the new de facto "smallest prefix" wherever possible. I really think getting your /24 announced and propagated (if it's truly a provider-independent block from a RIR, e.g. ARIN, and not just a Class C subnet from an ISP network) might be encumbered by hemming and hawing from routing administrators that are constantly keeping the dwindling capacity of existing routers to hold full BGP views - especially multiple full views from multiple peers - in mind. You can definitely do it, but the appeal of a /24 is slightly diminished in light of that.

Ask HN: What would you do with a Class C IP block?

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