Saturday 17 September 2016

Purchase IP Blocks

  • Now a days we are commonly using both IPv4 and IPv6 versions of IP addresses. This have finite pools of numbers.
  • For IPv4,  this pool is 32-bit (2^32) in size and contains 4,294,967,296 IPv4 addresses.
  • For IPv6,  this pool is 128-bit (2^128) in size and contains 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 IPv6 addresses.
  • From this IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, some IP addresses are assigned to access the internet and some are used in private networks.
  • This means the total number of IP address available for allocation in less than the total number in the pool.

What is IP Block?
  • Every IP address is divided into two parts, one is networks and other is hosts.
  • IP addresses are assigned to networks in different sizes is called "Blocks". 
  • The size of the block assigned is written after an oblique (/), which shows the number of IP addresses contained in that block.
  • For example, if an Internet Service Provider(ISP) is assigned a IP as "10.10.16.10/16". Here it provides 32-16 = 16 which means the it has 2^16 (65,536) addresses in IPv4.
Purchase IP Blocks:

If you want to purchase IP Blocks then you need to contact one of the five "Regional Internet Registries" (RIRs).

  • American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).
  • Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Center (LACNIC).
  • RIPE Network Coordination Center (RIPE NCC).
  • Africa Network Information Center (AFRINIC).
  • Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC).
The below image shows which RIR belongs to which region: