
Ask HN: How do VPS providers issue dedicated IPv4 IPs? - octosphere
Excuse me, I&#x27;m a bit of a networking newbie, but I heard from various sources that the IPV4 address space is exhausted. I went to create a new Digital Ocean VPS (Virtual Private Server) &#x2F; &#x27;droplet&#x27;, and it gave me a dedicated IPV4 address. How are they able to do this if the address space is exhausted? Do they own particular subnets that they use specifically for their customers?
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switch007
AIUI "address space exhaustion" (the main event) refers to the depletion of
IANA's /8 blocks. At the lower levels (/22-/24), companies stocked up on
these, bought companies etc, now I think there are proper broker
organisations.

Digital Ocean running out of IPv4 addresses to assign to VMs is down to many
factors, only one of which is being unable to get an allocation from the RIR
because the RIR can not get any more from IANA.

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iDemonix
Exhaustion refers to allocation. For example, my company has several very
large subnets (we're a UK ISP), that are entirely unused, as we bought them by
the million when they were cheap back in the 90s.

We could sell smaller subnets (we often do...), or we could use them for
things like VPS hosting. Digital Ocean will own several blocks/subnets, and
allocate from those pools.

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detaro
Yes, VPS providers own IP space for that (which is also why you sometimes can
get VPS without IPv4 addresses for cheaper, since if you're running low
obtaining new IPv4 addresses is becoming more and more expensive)

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studentolife221
Yep. And, additional IPs cost like $1/month

