You can always trust The Register to go for a sensationalist headline, so here goes… The article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/dwp_ipv4_addresses_unused/ gives us the headline that the UK Department of Work and Pensions are supposedly sitting on a gold mine after someone apparently discovered that DWP has a /8 block of IPv4 which it is not advertising to the Internet (This story is orignally based on this blog post) . Outrage followed, and the comments sections of several web sites were bunged up with demands for .gov.uk to return the block immediately to RIPE sell it for £millions and renumber it to 10.0.0.0/8 addresses.
There’s a few problems with this. First, this is the British Government we’re talking about. Even if they could sell the block, it would probably cost them more to renumber it than the profit they’d supposedly make from doing so. Secondly, they’re entitled to have this block of addresses (which predate the ARIN/RIPE/APNIC/AfriNIC/LACNIC system – they were allocated by IANA as an “early registration”) and they are also entited not to advertise them, if they so choose. There’s nothing that I know of in the rules that states they must advertise them. Thirdly, I don’t even think they can sell the block under RIPE NCC rules anyway, and even if they did return the block, it wouldn’t actually help because I believe RIPE have stated that any returned blocks would be allocated under the “final /8” rules anyway. Fourthly, as someone amusingly pointed out in this mailing list posting, no-one’s complained at all about 25.0.0.0/8 which is another .gov.uk block, allocated to the Ministry of Defence. And of course, finally, finding another /8 down the back of the sofa as it were would only delay IPv4 exhaustion by another month or so anyway.
And then just when you thought it had all blown over, we then see a tweet from the Cambridge MP Julian Huppert informing us that he’s tabled a question (which, who knows, might get asked at the next Prime Minister’s Question Time) about what is going on with 51.0.0.0/8. Probably the first time IPv4 has ever been mentioned in Parliament. And in the same tweet, he helpfully provides a link to an ePetition calling for the Government to sell the block! I won’t be signing that!
Whatever next? I need a lie down …