John Orthoefer and I (and dozens of other BBN folks on this list) both worked for BBNPlanet at the time that 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 were assigned. John was one of the folks who built and ran that system. 

So when he said "I wish we could have used 4.4.4.4" and my comment of "I think the dial modem folks beat us to..." was referring to the fact that when 4/8 was first being deployed on AS1 we started assigning blocks to various groups and they realized that 4.4.4.0/XX had already been delegated to another internal group (I think it was the dial group). 

On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 8:45 PM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:

4.0.0.0/8 has been GTE/Level3 forever. 

4.2.2.1 - 6 have been L3 DNS as far back as I can remember. 

On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 8:32 PM Todd Underwood <toddunder@gmail.com> wrote:

google used 4.4.4.4 for DNS in the past (2010, IIRC).

t

On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 8:21 PM Steve Meuse <smeuse@mara.org> wrote:

I think it was the dial modem team that beat us to 4.4.4.0/24? 

-Steve

On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 7:44 PM John Orthoefer <jco@direwolf.com> wrote:

I wish we could have used 4.4.4.4. Although at the time I suspect we would have used 4.4.4.[123]. 

Johno 

On Nov 8, 2018, at 18:58, Matt Erculiani <merculiani@gmail.com> wrote:

So it looks like GE will be solvent for a few more years and 3.3.3.3 DNS is incoming.

-Matt

On Thu, Nov 8, 2018, 17:54 Eric Kuhnke <eric.kuhnke@gmail.com wrote:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18407173

Quoting from the post:

"

Apparently bought in two chunks: 3.0.0.0/9 and 3.128.0.0/9. Previous owner was GE. Anecdotal reports across the Internet that AWS EIPs are now being assigned in that range. https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-3-0-0-0-1.html https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-3-128-0-0-1.html

"