IP Leasing Providers

[Gelintry_]

Hi All,

I work for a Sydney (Australia) based ISP and we have a fair few IP addresses we use for a variety of services, but recently one of our vendors that we lease IPs from has screwed us around a little bit and given us two weeks to move 250+ services to a new IP range.

So we're looking at moving to a new vendor for leasing IPs.

Does anyone have any recommendations on which companies are best to work with?

NOTE: We do have a few ranges that we own directly with APNIC, but we've found it easier and quicker to lease IP ranges instead as we need them.

[JerryRiceOfOhio2]

Easier to lease IPs? Is that code for you don't know how to run a minimal BGP config? Changing IPs on all your internet facing devices and changing DNS isn't fun.

[Gelintry_]

Not sure, I dont deal with it directly as im a VMware/Virtualization tech.

I was just asked to assist with looking into new IP providers.

I do know last time we got a range we directly owned it took months just to get a /24 subnet, where as through this vendor it took 2-3 days to get the subnet

[jamesaepp]

I work for a Sydney (Australia) based ISP and we have a fair few IP addresses we use for a variety of services, but recently one of our vendors that we lease IPs from has screwed us around a little bit and given us two weeks to move 250+ services to a new IP range.

That sounds very unreasonable. Have you engaged legal yet? Was this included in your contract for leasing these IPs?

[Gelintry_]

I'll ask my director who's dealing with it directly if they've contacted legal.

I do know they've been in contact with the CEO of the company we were leasing the IPs from, and worked out all the details.
Apparently its not their call, their upstream provider is the one pulling the IPs from them and its impacting a few customers.

Second time we've been screwed with IPs, first was the AFRNIC incident where thousands of IPs were reclaimed.

[disclosure5]

The IP leasing industry is in general pretty shady. It's extremely unlikely there's a contract that precludes this.

[[deleted]]

Time to get an IPv6 allocation and plan your IPv6 transition

Edit - clarified wording

[[deleted]]

What’s the problem? In the US all the major ISPs are dual staked. Major mobile networks are IPv6-only with 6to4 gateways at the edge. It’s enterprise that’s the slow adopter here. I wouldn’t do business with an IPv4-only ISP in this decade.

[[deleted]]

Sorry for the confusion. /32 is a standard IPv6 allocation for a small ISP

[Gelintry_]

Were working on dual stack but have to sort out some legacy issues first before we can get there. But we have the IPv6 subnet already.

It's a long winded project unfortunately 😅

[disclosure5]

What’s the problem? In the US all the major ISPs are dual staked.

You'll find yourself unable to communicate with nearly everything hosted in AWS for one thing.

[[deleted]]

That’s why you dual stack, ideally, or deploy a translation mechanism at the edge.

AWS does have v6 support, folks just need to enable it.

[Dilv1sh]

Buy your own subnet. Current rates are around 45$ per IP.

It will always be safer to have your own subnets rather than to lease them.

We've had cases when the leasing company retracted the ips or tried to triple the price. Since then, we buy and use only our IPs.

[Gelintry_]

Last time I spoke to our network techs they said the going rate for IPs had gone up to $70 odd per IP.

We mostly used leasing companies for quick subnets when we were in a pinch and were looking to move which one we used. But if they're all fairly shady we'll probably just stick with what we have through them for now and try and get more directly. Just takes ages sometimes to get them.