There are plenty of reasons. One of my clients (as an example) has a particularly obnoxious phone provider they work with that absolutely refuses to have their mini asterisk phone server box behind a router.
Because your client doesn't want their device behind a router at the client site, or doesn't understand that they will use a router on the other side of that line, is a fine example of "not my problem".
In my case I had my trusty old (~12 years) FreeBSD router die and was down for a few hours while it was replaced.
Because you have 12 year old hardware and can't be down for a few hours, an ISP should support a /29? I fail to see the logic.
That's an odd question. As an ISP, are you willing to lose customers (assuming you're not a monopoly) by not improving your services?
I have had 1 customer in 20 years ask about IPV6. She had no idea what it was and only asked because her router (Netgear or something) setup asked for it. You're also suggesting that IPv6 would improve services. As someone that's tried IPv6 in the office, I found it only caused downtime and frustration and offered 0 benefit. Why would I torture my customers with this v6 mess as it only frustrates the end user - they just want their Netflix to work!
Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single national provider that doesn't have dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc...they've all had it for years.
Metronet/Tmobile. Charter/Spectrum. Centurylink. If Comcast and Charter combine, you will lose that example. AT&T doesn't have it everywhere, see their 2023 article: https://www.att.com/support/article/u-verse-high-speed-internet/KM1148998/ Verizon looks to be at 6% back in 2022: https://community.verizon.com/t5/Fios-Home-Internet-Archive/IPv6-expanding-F... On Mon, Dec 1, 2025 at 10:26 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
As a small operator I would ask why you need a /29 the first place.
There are plenty of reasons. One of my clients (as an example) has a particularly obnoxious phone provider they work with that absolutely refuses to have their mini asterisk phone server box behind a router.
In my case I had my trusty old (~12 years) FreeBSD router die and was down for a few hours while it was replaced. Given a /29, I can set up two and make them redundant. Plus I have an internal kubernetes cluster and am sick of having to manually set up port forwards on my router to map to the private "external IP" of the cluster.
Are you willing to pay more to support v6?
That's an odd question. As an ISP, are you willing to lose customers (assuming you're not a monopoly) by not improving your services? Both Qwest/CenturyLink/whatever they're called today and TDS are in the neighboring town, and they're still plugging along with 5 down / 1 up DSL for $80/mo. They've lost a lot of customers over the last few years to StarLink even though it costs a bit more. No one's asking those customers to justify why they *need* higher bandwidth.
Imo v6 is a joke because you still need v4 for a working Internet. I understand there are benefits but this is 2025 and you can't get by without v4.
I don't even know how to respond to that. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single national provider that doesn't have dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc...they've all had it for years.
-A
On Mon, Dec 1, 2025 at 7:07 AM Josh Luthman <josh@imaginenetworksllc.com> wrote:
Aaron,
As a small operator I would ask why you need a /29 the first place. Second why don't you just get your own ASN?
Are you willing to pay more to support v6? Or do you think the ISP should add that service for free?
Imo v6 is a joke because you still need v4 for a working Internet. I understand there are benefits but this is 2025 and you can't get by without v4.
On Mon, Dec 1, 2025, 10:03 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
I wish they were dropping in my area. I called my backwoods ISP last week (they are a monopoly with ~4,000 fiber customers) to go from a single static at my office to a /29 and they said "It's $300/mo". I asked why it was so high and they said "My boss doesn't like configuring them, so he set the price really high". Then I asked when IPv6 would be available and got the same answer I got back in 2019: "My boss said he was thinking about looking into it next year".
-A
On Sun, Nov 30, 2025 at 6:12 PM Tom Mitchell via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
v4 addresses have been dropping rapidly. They were as high as $65 last year. Now, there are offers for $11. Average market price now is in the mid-$20's. All the NA ISPs have been selling much of their inventory. Why not.
- Tom
On Sun, Nov 30, 2025 at 11:23 AM Mike Hammett via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
What are you using for guides for IPv4 pricing? There are a bunch of undated blogs, which don't mean much if there's no date.
Hilco's blog says somewhere around $27 for a /22 to /24: https://www.ipv4.global/reports/october-2025/ but then fast forward a month on their auction page and it's down to $22: https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales
These guys stopped updating in June: https://ipv4market.eu/ipv4-market-average-sale-prices-2025/
----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com
Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com
_______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/UWJDG6X3...
_______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/2DP5TTAH... _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/5D2RDOWM...