The internet may be borderless – until someone tries to trade an IP address internationally. Today, IP addresses are digital real estate and can be bought, sold, and leased. Yet their regulatory systems still operate like a post office in the 1990s – almost comically slow and outdated.
Regional Internet Registries, which were established as address stewards, not owners, in the early 1990s, were never designed to manage today’s high-value IP addresses.
To date, IP address ownership is ambiguous and largely untested in courts. RIRs insist that holders are not owners, but only rent rights, which can be reversed if policies change.
As markets and technology become more complex, RIR policies need to change – and fast – or risk slowing down internet growth and innovation.
This isn’t an obscure tech company problem anymore – it impacts everyone using the internet.
Legacy RIR policies increase internet costs in underserved geopolitical areas. A small or new Southeast Asian or African startup could find it much harder or more expensive to get an IP address than a larger, more established company.
These higher costs are passed on to consumers, slowing rural connectivity and discouraging other tech startups and local jobs.
Fewer local and clean IPs force internet providers to use workarounds like tunnelling and NAT, causing dropped video calls, slower websites and unreliable services, while mismanaged or hoarded address blocks lead to users getting flagged or blocked.
What’s Broken Now
IP address transfers and markets are no longer taboo – so why do many of their regulatory conditions still feel like holdovers from a different era?
Needs tests are one such relic, originally used to justify a need for IPv4 address space and ensure that addresses are actually used and not speculated on or hoarded.
While this may have made sense when IPv4 scarcity was only a distant prospect, in today’s highly dynamic market, they’re an efficiency bottleneck.
RIPE has done away with needs tests, but registries like APNIC, ARIN and LACNIC still enforce them.
Another roadblock is regional usage requirements. Different transfer conditions, documentation needs, and approval procedures all slow IP address transfers. Add in long wait times, and some organizations could wait months or even years.
How RIRs Need To Adapt
It’s time RIR policies acknowledged the obvious: IPv4 addresses are tradeable commodities now.
Better leasing, transfer, and cross-border usage policies are needed, without compromising on interoperability. Governance needs to catch up too: quicker and more inclusive, balancing technical stability seamlessly with current markets.
Leaders need to steer clear of over-commercialization, which can cause fragmentation and threaten interoperability.
This is the time for a more agile and iterative policy making approach, supporting experimentation and adaptation. More diverse voices and stakeholders, especially commercial ones, should be welcomed too.
While community-led governance models are helpful, scalability and ethical concerns remain.
RIRs have to focus more on integrating emerging technologies, like edge computing, while enhancing stability and security.
Barriers To Policy Changes And Possible Solutions
One of the biggest blockers of RIR evolution currently is slow policy change. Decisions are usually taken by leaders from niche technical communities, making it more challenging for newcomers, especially commercial ones, to have a seat at the table.
Significant bureaucracy can bury new ideas, with current policies strengthening the status quo, while deterring competition and complicating new technology adoption.
By including more commercial stakeholders in key policy decisions and prioritising transparency, RIRs can actually align with current markets, especially if more referendum-like or democratic systems are implemented.
This will ensure policies stay flexible and relevant, evolving with internet usage itself, instead of getting stuck in legacy hurdles.
Vincentas Grinius, Co-Founder at IPXO: Vincentas Grinius is a co-founder at IPXO, an all-in-one automated IP address platform offering secure, compliant, and flexible solutions to drive internet sustainability and help businesses scale. Vincentas has a long track record and 10+ years of experience combining today’s technologies and making IPXO the first IPv4 lease and monetization platform in the market. The platform brings RIRs, LIRs, and small to large enterprises together to share IPv4 resources and to make the Internet much more sustainable.
