Microsoft pays $7.5 million for IPv4 addresses
2011-03-25 09:59 by DanielaTags: Microsoft, IPv4, Nortel
With the net running out of old-style IPv4 addresses, those that remain available have value - and Microsoft has agreed to buy a big block of them for $11.25 each.
It's paid $7.5 million for 666,624 IPv4 addresses held by the now-defunct Canadian network hardware vendor Nortel. Microsoft will be able to use around two-thirds of the addresses immediately, with the remainder being released when Nortel's bankruptcy proceedings are completed.
The deal prices an IP address at something approaching the cost of the average domain name - and they may be of only temporary value to Microsoft, with the industry expected to switch over to new IPv6 addresses over the coming months and years.
Last month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that the pool of available IPv4 address blocks had run dry.
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