In the world of technology, connectivity has always been an essential aspect of daily life and business operations. Over the past decade, internet usage has skyrocketed, and with the increasing demand for data, IPv4 addresses, and their limitations have become a challenge. IPv6 was introduced as a potential solution, but is it ready to replace the aging IP standard protocol or are there better alternatives?
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After what seems to have been the longest bear market in IPv4 History, we are starting to see signs of life again. Aside from February of this year, 2023 has shown positive IPv4 demand trends with no signs of extreme volatility. Most noticeably, the last 3 months have demonstrated a much more stable demand trend. Let’s dive into demand trends and then determine how it will affect the remainder of 2023.
Once again, the IPv4 demand seems to be following the roller coaster pattern going up and down every month. However, the delta of the demand decrease in April seems to be showing a positive sign as compared the previous dips over the last 6 – 9 months.
The IPv4 transfer marketplace twists and turns continue to pave the way for what might be an unpredictable year. The last 12 to 15 months have demonstrated a whirlwind of changes, in what was an otherwise a predicable asset class for over 5 years prior. As we look to the future, we can only hope to expect more predictability we had grown accustomed to from the inception of the IPv4 market.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank caused significant setbacks in tech company budgets and could further deepen the recession. A downturn in IPv4 transfer requests suggests a decreased demand due to these grim economic conditions. However, this presents a good opportunity to buy IPv4 addresses at discounted prices as they continue to be vital for network expansion.
The IPv4 address transfer market started out on a positive note in January 2023. As in any market, there are ebbs and flows in demand which affects pricing. We just so happen to analyze an extremely unique industry that caters to a rare commodity that has a valuable use case in the global economy.
The six years leading into 2022 have painted a picture of a continuous bull market in the IPv4 industry. Prices for IPv4 address blocks had an average increase of around 25% every year due to limited availability and increased demand. However, this year has proven that even the IPv4 market can’t always be resilient to economic conditions.
We are finally seeing some good news on the IPv4 demand front. As of September 2022, we have 2 months in a row of positive IPv4 demand trends that parallel previous years, prior to the IPv4 crash in May of 2021. We aren’t out of the woods just yet, however, the indicators could be great for the remainder of the year.
So far, 2022 has shown a stable yet low level of IPv4 demand as compared to the previous three years. This is largely attributed to a massive increase in demand and the shortage of IPv4 inventory back in 2021, which in turn caused the prices to increase by 100% in just 1 year.
The IPv4 transfer market was born when ARIN, RIPE and APNIC created policy to allow IPv4 address to be transferred from one owner to another. According to the transfer logs from the three internet registries, there have been over 360 million IPv4 addresses transferred between private parties since 2016