The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire /8

[george.herbert at gmail.com (George Herbert)]

As the subsequent discussion here shows, "unused" is a press inaccuracy.

The nets are in active use; much of that use is not publicly advertised, but it's still in use.

George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 19, 2012, at 1:35 PM, "Robert Guerra" <rguerra at privaterra.org> wrote:

> Am I correct in assuming that the unused IP block would not be sold as is mentioned in the article, but instead  be returned to RIPE to be reallocated?
> 
> Robert
> 
> 
> On 18 Sep 2012, at 10:07, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> 
>> http://paritynews.com/network/item/325-department-of-work-and-pensions-uk-in-possession-of-169-million-unused-ipv4-addresses
>> 
>> Department of Work and Pensions UK in Possession of 16.9 Million Unused IPv4
>> Addresses
>> 
>> Written by  Ravi Mandalia
>> 
>> Department of Work and Pensions UK in Possession of 16.9 Million Unused IPv4
>> Addresses
>> 
>> The Department of Work and Pensions, UK has an entire block of '/8' IPv4
>> addresses that is unused and an e-petition has been filed in this regards
>> asking the DWP to sell it off thus easing off the RIPE IPv4 address space
>> scarcity a little.
>> 
>> John Graham-Cumming, who found this unused block, wrote in a blog post that
>> the DWP was in possession of 51.0.0.0/8 IPv4 addresses. According to Cumming,
>> these 16.9 million IP addresses are unused at the moment and he derived this
>> conclusion by doing a check in the ASN database. ?A check of the ASN database
>> will show that there are no networks for that block of addresses,? he wrote.
>> 
>> An e-petition has been filed in this regards. ?It has recently come to light
>> that the Department for Work and Pensions has its own allocated block of
>> 16,777,216 addresses (commonly referred to as a /8), covering 51.0.0.0 to
>> 51.255.255.255?, reads the petition.
>> 
>> The UK government, if it sells off this /8 block, could end up getting ?1
>> billion mark. ??1 billion of low-effort extra cash would be a very nice thing
>> to throw at our deficit,? read the petition.
>> 
>> Cumming ends his post with the remark, ?So, Mr. Cameron, I'll accept a 10%
>> finder's fee if you dispose of this asset :-)?.
>