IPv4 in 2026: Three Opportunities for Network Operators
What to do with the IPv4 you hold, the IPv4 you need, and the leasing business you could run yourself - for RIPE-region ISPs, telecoms, data centers, and hosting providers.
Artem Kohanevich
Co-Founder & CEO at IPbnb
Last updated
Table of Contents
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Two operators, one room
A regular NOG meeting, two engineers talking over coffee.
One runs a regional ISP that rebuilt its core behind IPv6 and CGNAT a few years ago. Sitting in its RIPE registration is a hidden /18 - kept announced just enough to hold the allocation, but carrying no real traffic and earning nothing since a 2021 redesign. It is clean, it is theirs, and it is doing nothing useful.
The other runs a growing access network next door. It is out of address space. New subscribers land behind CGNAT, and the support queue fills with the usual tax: broken inbound connections, gaming and IPsec complaints, mail reputation problems. RIPE offers only a place in a queue.
These two are each other's answers. One holds exactly the space the other needs, and they are in the same room. The only thing missing is the infrastructure to connect them - contracts, routing, reputation checks, billing, compliance. That gap is the whole story of the IPv4 secondary market.
If you operate a network in the RIPE region, you are probably closer to one of these two operators than you think - often you are both. Here are the three positions you can take.
1. Monetize the IPv4 you are not using
Many RIPE members hold legacy allocations that went quiet after a redesign or an IPv6 migration. At current platform rates of about $80 a month for a /24 (roughly $0.31 per address), a hidden /20 (4,096 addresses) earns around $1,270 a month and a /16 around $20,300 - passive revenue on infrastructure you already own and pay to register. With sale prices at multi-year lows, leasing beats selling: it earns income now, keeps the asset, and adds no registry cost under RIPE's flat fee.
This applies just as much to IP owners who already lease - whether they run it themselves or through a broker. Their problem is not whether to monetize, but the operational load it brings: renter onboarding, LOA and ROA handling, abuse and reputation monitoring, billing, renewals, contracts. Run it yourself and it becomes a side business you did not plan for; hand it to a broker and you lose visibility, control, and margin. White-label removes that load while keeping the relationship and economics in your hands, and the hidden-deal option lets you lease without your name on the public listing - useful if you would rather competitors and customers not see you leasing, or want better economics than when a broker leaves you.
The usual worries - blacklist history, a messy RIPE record, pricing - are routine to resolve. Readying an idle subnet to earn usually starts with an audit and reputation check, then cleanup: correcting RIPE and whois records, setting up RPKI with valid ROAs, and clearing blacklist history. That is preparation, not a barrier - none of it is a reason to leave revenue idle.
2. Lease the IPv4 you need
RIPE's free pool has been gone since November 2019. The waiting list is not a real supply channel: one /24 (256 addresses), only for LIRs that have never held an allocation, a 12-to-24-month wait, many hundreds of LIRs in the queue, and no guarantee on timing. For an operator adding subscribers this quarter, that is not a plan.
CGNAT fills the gap at a real, customer-facing cost - port exhaustion, broken applications, abuse attribution, geolocation problems, and the support tickets that follow. Leasing has become the standard OPEX answer: fast to deploy, scalable, and on the network it behaves exactly like owned space - you announce the prefix with a valid ROA and LOA, and routing treats it no differently. There is no 24-month transfer hold, and no large up-front payment locked into an asset while prices are still moving. It turns address space from something you queue and wait for into a line item you control.
3. Resell IPv4 leasing under your own brand
This is the distinctive position, and the one almost nobody else offers. NOG-member operators already have what an IP leasing business needs: client trust, billing and support that already run, and regional relationships - and many already hold their own address space. What they lack is the platform underneath: listing and matching, compliance, reputation and delisting tooling, support.
That is the split a white-label partnership makes. IPbnb provides the platform, compliance, and support; the partner provides the brand and the clients. Together you run an IP leasing business under your own name - leasing to your customers, bundling space with connectivity or hosting, and keeping the margin instead of referring it out. You are not a buyer or seller in someone else's marketplace; you are the marketplace.
Data centers and large hosting providers fit this exactly. They run their own network, act as a connectivity provider to their tenants, and often hold their own space - so white-label leasing is a natural extension of what they already sell, offered to their hosting and colocation customers under their own brand. Rather than treating RIPE members purely as supply or demand, it lets them run an address business of their own.
The operators in the room
The organizations best placed for this market are not hyperscalers or brokers - they are the people already in NOG rooms. They hold the legacy subnets, serve the customers who need space, and run the routing every day. None of the three positions requires becoming an IPv4 specialist: the registry cleanup, compliance, routing, and abuse monitoring are the same work whichever direction you enter from, and they can sit with a platform partner rather than on your own team. The market has never been more workable. The only real question is whether you work it actively - monetizing what sits idle, leasing what you need, or building a leasing business of your own - or keep reacting to it.
