nanog mailing list archives

Re: IPv6 Thought Experiment


From: Nick Hilliard <nick () foobar org>
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2019 22:04:09 +0100

Antonios Chariton wrote on 02/10/2019 17:33:
What if, globally, and starting at January 1st, 2020, someone (imagine a government or similar, but with global reach) imposed an IPv4 tax. For every IPv4 address on the Global Internet Routing Table, you had to pay a tax. Let’s assume that this can be imposed, must be paid, and cannot be avoided using some loophole. Let’s say that this tax would be $2, and it would double, every 3 or 6 months.

Interesting idea. Let's say it started off at $2 / month and doubled every 3 months. At the end of month 12, it would be $32/month. After 5 years, we'd be talking about just over $2 million per IP address per month, i.e. a little over half a billion dollars per /24. In 10 years, that would increase to 562 trillion dollars per month for a /24.

Soon, you'd be talking about real money.

Please let me know if you wish to push ahead with this idea and I'll humbly offer to act as middle-man for taxation for a very simple and modest 1% of all transaction fees, or 0.94% if you can guarantee an exclusive deal. Serious replies only please.

Nick


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