
Ask HN: What would you do with a Class C IP block? - rms
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/22/what-would-you-do-wi-1.html#comments
======
jdeseno
This is the technical equivalent of: "Hey, I found $100 what should I do with
it"? 255 addresses ... woo-hoo.

~~~
profquail
"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
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.

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

------
nailer
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.'

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

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

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

~~~
jrockway
255 IPs is a drop in the ocean.

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

~~~
Kadin
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.

------
abalashov
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.

------
tsally
Rent them out?

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

------
diN0bot
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.

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

------
ddemchuk
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.

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

