> What’s stopping a hedge fund from buying up a /12 block and renting it out?
This is basically what Amazon does.
I don’t see an easy way for a hedge fund to rent out the IP space unless they are a cloud provider. The problem is that to participate in BGP/the Internet, the smallest allocation that can advertised is a /24. You need to own the space you advertise before an ISP would allow this. The hedge fund would need to transfer the a minimum of a /24 to you and I guess you would have a contact to pay the hedge fund a monthly fee and give the space back when you’re done? Seems a bit messy to me.
This is basically what Amazon does.
I don’t see an easy way for a hedge fund to rent out the IP space unless they are a cloud provider. The problem is that to participate in BGP/the Internet, the smallest allocation that can advertised is a /24. You need to own the space you advertise before an ISP would allow this. The hedge fund would need to transfer the a minimum of a /24 to you and I guess you would have a contact to pay the hedge fund a monthly fee and give the space back when you’re done? Seems a bit messy to me.