alibarber

You're absolutely correct - it's an incredibly valuable asset.

It's a really interesting piece of internet history. The whole 44.0.0.0/8 was assigned for loose 'amateur radio use' back in the 80s. For the most part it was used for building mesh networks over RF in different locations.

Then IP addresses became quite valuable. Now, I feel that what was really going to happen is that, with no real organisation around it, and not that much use of a very valuable asset, it would have been not unthinkable for the whole lot to have been taken away [by ARIN/ICANN/whoever] and assigned for general use. Certainly easier than taking it away from the US military. So, about a third of this space was sold to AWS and the money used to fund an actual organisation with staff - but mainly to issue grants to amateur radio projects around the world.

They therefore really do have [tens of thousands - sorry I don't remember how to calculate it right now] of /24s available. Internally - they allocate it how they want, some are only used on mesh networks, some are used for infra, some only private networks, but plenty for people to announce.

When they assign it to you, they're only giving you a Letter of Authorisation, and creating a route in a routing DB saying that your ASN is allowed to announce that allocation. They can withdraw that at any time which means the routes will be ignored by others.

Having the ham radio licence requirement is a reasonably accessible, yet robust entry barrier. The catch is you can't use the addresses for commercial purposes. They have staff and volunteers pretty much full time so if they find that they just cut you off.

An interesting parallel is the ham radio frequencies themselves. I love messing around with building equipment and transmitting, but actually getting an exclusive licence for a chunk of spectrum would cost me an impractical amount.

No that would only be if you were to use actual packet radio across the amateur bands with these. Some of them are used for that purpose indeed.

But the ones I’m referring too are just internet addresses you use on the public internet. Eg, ssh-ing to a raspberry pi, setting up an SDR, or just leaning BGP and suchlike.

I wrote this as a European (British) who is living in another European country (Finland). People happily write ‘in Europe’ whilst being quite selective in their definition of Europe - usually their very close neighbourhood, and it usually means North and Central Europe. If that.

I’ve seen some truly unhinged takes here, my favourite ever being something along the lines of European cars not having cup holders because we don’t have drive-throughs in Europe… I have driven my Volkswagen across this continent and enjoyed many a hot beverage on the move.

I’ve come to learn that discussions on a lot of things, in English, usually end up as a comparison to the States, especially if it involves the healthcare sacred cow.

Annoyingly, this will not work over CGNAT as far as I know - the tunnel needs 'both ends' to be accessible directly from each other I think.

On HN, 'In Europe' means in one person's particular locale based on their experience and generalised across a continent of about 30 countries. But it's always better than in the US of course.

The _rioters_ aren't concerned with anything other than looting.

KLM have been doing so in Europe for a couple of years now from my memory.

I read this as:

'[the] actual telecommunications agencies [under defined circumstances have] .. legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues'

No, OFCOM in the UK or Traficom in Finland (the two I'm familiar with) don't have armed units going door to door but if circumstances & the law deem it so then they can show up with the police and the necessary warrants/orders and do so.

People say 'Europe', speak as if their experience is the same across the continent, and anyone with a different experience is somehow not in the Europe they mean. It's very annoying.

European healthcare is run very differently across the continent. 'Insurance' can mean a [state] social insurance institute that the doctor must bill. Some countries would employ the doctor directly as part of a nationalised health system. Some places it might be the municipality or city that would then get some subsidy from central government. Some it is a mix of all of this. 'Free' healthcare might actually mean a few hundred Euros, or literally nothing.

The irony of these documents being (allegedly) backdated, and this response, is not lost on me.

Any IP address could one day change where it is being announced from, or become anycast, or change the number of hops between you and it.

I don't think people are using `ping 1.1.1.1` as a stable API, rather as a yes/no test of the network segment that they control.

For some reason, I sneak 'Magical Trevor' into code as an easter egg / test string when I can (instead of things like 'Foo'/'Bar')

And I am saddened to this day that no one I've worked with professionally has gotten the reference. One day.