Squatters

A British agency is squatting on some very valuable property. Back when internet addressing was first being kicked around (RFC 791 in 1981), the IPv4 standard was developed -- this is the (in)famous dotted quad: 92.68.0.255 kind of address that identifies each computer with a unique address. This ranges from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 with 4.294 Billion unique addresses. In those heady days, we thought that we would never ever run out of IP Addresses. Guess what folks... So we now have the IPv6 which offers a gajillion (technical term here) more unique addresses but the problem is that IPv4 still handles the major majority of internet traffic and that is just not going to change. The interesting news today is that the British agency -- the UK Government Department for Work and Pensions is sitting on a /8 block -- 16.8 Million unique IP addresses just sitting there and not being used. From John Graham-Cumming:

The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using
If you take a look at the list of IPv4 allocated /8 blocks there's one interesting block in there:

51.0.0.0/8 UK Government Department for Work and Pensions 1994-08 whois.ripe.net LEGACY

That block of addresses, all 16.8 million of them, is completely unused. A check of the ASN database will show that there are no networks for that block of addresses. Right when IPv4 is running out there's a huge block sitting unused.

That's an extremely valuable asset. One recent article valued an entire /8 at between "$500 million to $1.5 billion".

So, Mr. Cameron, I'll accept a 10% finder's fee if you dispose of this asset :-)

And should Mr. Cameron discover this bit of information by reading this post, my finders fee is only 0.01% -- works for me. The cruft on IPv4 numbering is like the Democratic Party Graveyard Voter Registration. There is a lot that could be cleared out.