2011’s Y2K. The Internet Address and Naming Agency (IANA) rolled out 40 billion 32-bit IPv4 addresses roughly 40 years ago, but after that much time, and 2 billion internet users later, we ran out of the precious commodity. This is where the presumably bumpy transition to IPv6 comes in, but Microsoft just spent $7 million on buying exactly 666,624 IPv4 addresses from the bankrupt networking vendor Nortel Networks, for $11.25 per unit.

The last batch of IPv4 addresses have already been issued, and they are now a scarce resource.  According to court filings from Nortel’s bankruptcy case, the value of IPv4 addresses will slowly decline, but for now they hold their value:

“Because of the limited supply of IPv4 addresses, there is currently an opportunity to realize value from marketing the Internet Numbers, which opportunity will diminish over time as IPv6 addresses are more widely adopted.”

IPv4 is still hot. So much so Microsoft and 3 other bidders fought to get their hands on Nortel’s 32-bit gold.

The transition to the 3.4 × 10³⁸ IPv6 addresses, due to release very shortly, is getting a lot of attention from all across Silicon Valley, including Akamai. The company has displayed an interest in helping its customers to “bridge the gap” between v4 and v6, and provide some sort of support to ease the journey.  Akamai may be planning for the dawn of the next gen 128-bit IP addresses, but it’s not doing so well thus far. Its shares skidded by 16 percent after it said it has been forced to lower its prices due to increased competition.

In addition to Microsoft and Akamai, Juniper network is also trying to monetize the transition. The company announced support for Dual Stack Lite / DS-Lite to help simplify the deployment of IPv6.