To my knowledge, you cannot trade IP address space. First of all, you dont own the addresses, but lease during your contract with your ISP.

Moreover Classful addressing is not used anymore, now all the ISPs use CIDR blocks (Classes Inter Domain Routing) and classless IP addressing.

If you are a subscriber, you are assigned with the IP addresses based on your subscription level and requirements as part of the service. If you cancel those services, you need to surrender the IP addresses. If you change your provider, you will get a new set of addresses.

If you obtained your addresses from the registry, you can take the addresses to a new provider if you change.

Transfer is possible during merger & aquisitions, but not trading. During M&A you need to provide proper documemtation to the ISP and should be approved for proper routing updates to take place before you can use those addresses.

And also with use of RFC 1918 (private IP addressing) and ongoing IPv6 implementation, we are not in IP address crunch anymore.

"The concept of legal "ownership" of IP addresses as property is explicitly denied by ARIN and RIPE policy documents and by the ARIN Registration Services Agreement." per Wiki.

There is also an RFC on Implications of Various Address Allocation Policies for Internet Routing available for further reading at

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2008

here is the policy update from ARIN:

https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#eight

"Number resources are nontransferable and are not assignable to any other organization unless ARIN has expressly and in writing approved a request for transfer."

Additional info if you are in Europe.

http://www.ripe.net/info/faq/rs/general.html#4

"Can I buy IP addresses from the RIPE NCC?

In short: No. IP addresses are a shared public resource and are not for sale. Effective management of this resource is vital to maintain the ongoing health of the Internet. If you obtain IP addresses from the RIPE NCC, then you will have the right to continue using those addresses provided that you use them in accordance with the allocation and assignment policies set by the RIPE community and provided that your membership remains current (or, in the case of non-members, that you continue to pay the required maintenance fees).

More information can be found in the RIPE Document 'IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment Policies in the RIPE NCC Service Region' located at:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ipv4-policies.html

How much do IP addresses cost?

The RIPE NCC does not sell IP addresses. Use of IP addresses is subject to membership fees being paid and renewed. For more details see the current version of the RIPE document "RIPE NCC Billing Procedure and Fee Schedule".
Source(s):
http://www.ripe.net/info/faq/rs/general.html#1

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