What's really offensive about this is that AWS does not have good enough IPv6 support for most customers to migrate off of IPv4, even if they want to.
ALB uses 2-4 IPv4 addresses. It supports dualstack, but not IPv6-only.
CloudFront does not support IPv6 origins.
All APIs except for a handful are IPv4-only, so you either need a VPC endpoint (priced per month per AZ per API) or an IPv4 address to communicate with them.
It frustrates me that I'll be paying for a bunch of IPv4 addresses that I don't need for any business reason, I only have them because they're necessary within the AWS ecosystem.
I find the lack of IPv6 support for their own APIs the most insulting. In my case, I would end up paying more for VPC Endpoints than I would for IPv4 addresses. There is no escaping from this new fee. I really hope they resolve this soon.
It's also pretty ridiculous their reverse proxy (ALB) "dual stack" mode can't serve IPv6 clients unless your backend app server is also IPv6. This is so much worse than anything you'd set up yourself.
What's interesting to me is that they always had this cost, but in the past it was always baked into the cost of anything that used a public IP (namely EC2).
The prices for IPv4 addresses finally got so high that they had to break it out into a separate charge because otherwise it would be too much to bake into the cost of everything. I also completely believe them when they say they are doing it to force people to be more intentional about their use of public IPv4.
And of course it's a great way to get people to move to IPv6, since those are still "free" (in quotes because those prices are still baked into the things that support them).
> And of course it's a great way to get people to move to IPv6, since those are still "free" (in quotes because those prices are still baked into the things that support them).
They are basically free because there is no shortage of them.
Money is a terrible discriminator unless you want to advantage the rich. This would fuck up connectivity for everyone that relies on affordable hosting long before it'd force a rusted old enterprise to adopt IPv6.
> So the approximate value of Amazon's IPv4 estate today is about:
$4.6 Billion dollars!
> AWS will likely make anywhere between $400 Million and $1 Billion dollars a year with this new IPv4 charge!
In other words, it's not clear AWS is "making" anything at all. It might take them over 10 years to pay back the cost of what it would take to acquire them today.
Now I assume Amazon is making some level of profit on them, but the article seems to confuse income with profit. "Making" money is generally understood to mean profit, not income.
The IPv4 space almost certainly did not cost them $4.6 billion to acquire. They acquired it much cheaper, and they can’t reasonably sell it because they need it for users. So charging for it when they previously did not nets them revenue they were leaving on the floor before.
They already own those IPs and there is no ongoing fee to keep owning them. So everything they make is profit since they costs have already been accounted for.
Like if you already owned a piece of land and let people rent houses on the land, and now you're charging them extra rent per square foot of land. You already own the land, so it's pure profit, because before you were including the cost of land in the houses. But of course the metaphor breaks down because at AWS you can move to IPv6 to avoid the cost, but you can't move the house off the land.
> Now I'm sure Amazon is making some level of profit on them, but the article seems to confuse income with profit. "Making" money is generally understood to mean profit, not income.
Common clickbait tactic, hence avoiding the use of falsifiable terms like net income or profit.
What is raging is to know that IP v4 address ranges are provided at no cost to organisations. And even if they still had to acquire some from other organizations at a cost, there certainly don't have to pay a regular fee to keep them.
So in the end, they take a public good that is basically free, a lot lot lot of it, and like a hold up they make a lot of money racketeering you monthly because you are too insignificant to be allowed to own your own ips...
This is not true at all, at least in the ARIN service region.
* Aside from a very minimal amount of space allocated for v6 transition technologies[1] and from the waitlist[2], organizations do have to pay market rates for IP addresses.
* Organizations do need to pay a yearly fee to keep them, which scales with the amount of address space held.[3]
* You are not too insignificant to be allowed to own your own IPs - anyone can establish at least 2 peering relationships, ask ARIN for an ASN, and acquire some IPs.
I wouldn't be surprised if AWS are holding back on implementing this financial change for a future raining day quarter ... because it'd have a bigger impact than IPv4 billing.
Jeez. Eventually someone is going to break down and invent a new IP solution that doubles the number of addresses that we have now.
I mean if I were doing it, I'd probably make it more like 1,028 times bigger but maybe it would present as hubris. Addresses would be so plentiful they'd basically be free.
And since I am using magic to do all of this, I'd invent it over 20 years ago, so that it'd have been decades since we were still talking about it.
This ongoing "IPv4 with more bits" meme needs to die.
There was no way to change IPv4 to have more address space while maintaining compatibility with existing routers. Routers are hardware-accelerated so can't just support new protocols with a software update.
If you need a new protocol, why just lengthen the address without fixing other weaknesses, since you'll never be able to change it again? This is IPv6, and while you can argue some changes weren't necessary, it is simply not true say that IPv4 with extra bits would have been easy.
And I would make sure it had complete feature parity with IPv4 (DHCP, VRRP etc) instead of embarking on a religious crusade to reinvent the way devices connect.
It took over a decade to get feature parity from the non-network-operators that overtook the IETF, and that seriously delayed IPv6 adoption.
I know you're joking & making fun of glacial IPv6 adoption, but if IPv6 was just IPv4 + more address bits, I'm sure it'd be fully adopted by now and IPv4 would be something kids taking computer networking courses would be taught about in the "history" section.
IPv6 involved too many other changes to make it a straightforward upgrade. I agree that it's ridiculous that we still don't have universal v6 support, but let's not pretend the protocol designers made it easy.
You could do that, and if you did, I think you'd find a lot of success with your new solution, as people the world over would switch to using it.
Just make sure you make it as user-friendly & functional as its predecessor and don't stuff a whole bunch of nonsensical half-baked features into it. Otherwise, people may have no choice but to keep using the older solution.
That's awesome. I have no doubt you would use common sense and make the addresses in this new system simple, recognizable, and just an extended version of what everybody is already used to, like 111.222.33.44.55.66
Can't they provide an anycast ip's like fly.io does to all their customers.
Most of the things are anyhow behind dns entries and i doubt people direct hit IP addresses.
luhn|2 years ago
ALB uses 2-4 IPv4 addresses. It supports dualstack, but not IPv6-only.
CloudFront does not support IPv6 origins.
All APIs except for a handful are IPv4-only, so you either need a VPC endpoint (priced per month per AZ per API) or an IPv4 address to communicate with them.
It frustrates me that I'll be paying for a bunch of IPv4 addresses that I don't need for any business reason, I only have them because they're necessary within the AWS ecosystem.
kichik|2 years ago
fulafel|2 years ago
zokier|2 years ago
yeah, that's a sad table. AWS has gazillion services and handful have even basic dual-stack support and even fewer have ipv6-only support :(
jedberg|2 years ago
The prices for IPv4 addresses finally got so high that they had to break it out into a separate charge because otherwise it would be too much to bake into the cost of everything. I also completely believe them when they say they are doing it to force people to be more intentional about their use of public IPv4.
And of course it's a great way to get people to move to IPv6, since those are still "free" (in quotes because those prices are still baked into the things that support them).
jenny91|2 years ago
They are basically free because there is no shortage of them.
spott|2 years ago
bombcar|2 years ago
asmor|2 years ago
dig github.com AAAA
crazygringo|2 years ago
> AWS will likely make anywhere between $400 Million and $1 Billion dollars a year with this new IPv4 charge!
In other words, it's not clear AWS is "making" anything at all. It might take them over 10 years to pay back the cost of what it would take to acquire them today.
Now I assume Amazon is making some level of profit on them, but the article seems to confuse income with profit. "Making" money is generally understood to mean profit, not income.
akerl_|2 years ago
jedberg|2 years ago
Like if you already owned a piece of land and let people rent houses on the land, and now you're charging them extra rent per square foot of land. You already own the land, so it's pure profit, because before you were including the cost of land in the houses. But of course the metaphor breaks down because at AWS you can move to IPv6 to avoid the cost, but you can't move the house off the land.
lotsofpulp|2 years ago
Common clickbait tactic, hence avoiding the use of falsifiable terms like net income or profit.
Elective1565|2 years ago
greatgib|2 years ago
So in the end, they take a public good that is basically free, a lot lot lot of it, and like a hold up they make a lot of money racketeering you monthly because you are too insignificant to be allowed to own your own ips...
greyface-|2 years ago
* Aside from a very minimal amount of space allocated for v6 transition technologies[1] and from the waitlist[2], organizations do have to pay market rates for IP addresses.
* Organizations do need to pay a yearly fee to keep them, which scales with the amount of address space held.[3]
* You are not too insignificant to be allowed to own your own IPs - anyone can establish at least 2 peering relationships, ask ARIN for an ASN, and acquire some IPs.
[1]: https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/nrpm/#6-5-3-1-subseq...
[2]: https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/nrpm/#4-1-8-arin-wai...
[3]: https://www.arin.net/resources/fees/fee_schedule/
ChrisArchitect|2 years ago
AWS to begin charging for public IPv4 addresses
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36989798
tiffanyh|2 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39199841
I wouldn't be surprised if AWS are holding back on implementing this financial change for a future raining day quarter ... because it'd have a bigger impact than IPv4 billing.
digitalsushi|2 years ago
I mean if I were doing it, I'd probably make it more like 1,028 times bigger but maybe it would present as hubris. Addresses would be so plentiful they'd basically be free.
And since I am using magic to do all of this, I'd invent it over 20 years ago, so that it'd have been decades since we were still talking about it.
ericpauley|2 years ago
There was no way to change IPv4 to have more address space while maintaining compatibility with existing routers. Routers are hardware-accelerated so can't just support new protocols with a software update.
If you need a new protocol, why just lengthen the address without fixing other weaknesses, since you'll never be able to change it again? This is IPv6, and while you can argue some changes weren't necessary, it is simply not true say that IPv4 with extra bits would have been easy.
anyfactor|2 years ago
hn8305823|2 years ago
It took over a decade to get feature parity from the non-network-operators that overtook the IETF, and that seriously delayed IPv6 adoption.
kelnos|2 years ago
IPv6 involved too many other changes to make it a straightforward upgrade. I agree that it's ridiculous that we still don't have universal v6 support, but let's not pretend the protocol designers made it easy.
steve918|2 years ago
bastardoperator|2 years ago
VoodooJuJu|2 years ago
Just make sure you make it as user-friendly & functional as its predecessor and don't stuff a whole bunch of nonsensical half-baked features into it. Otherwise, people may have no choice but to keep using the older solution.
listenallyall|2 years ago
planet_1649c|2 years ago
overstay8930|2 years ago
notwhereyouare|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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