[Techtalk] Buying/leasing IP addresses

[Daniel Pittman]

Kelly Jones <kelly.terry.jones at gmail.com> writes:

> My webhosting provider gave me an IP address when I signed up + will
> give me more for an extra fee.
>
> Question: can I buy/lease an IP address directly from someone else
> instead of going through my provider?

Not unless you want a something like a /22 or larger block, and you can
afford tens of thousands of dollars on a routine basis to pay for it.

> In other words, I want to get an IP address and then update all
> routers (including my provider's own router) to route traffic for that
> address to a MAC address/machine I specify?
>
> Do-able? Easy?

Yes and no respectively.  You need to apply to your local RIR, or
regional Internet registry[1], or perhaps a LIR under them, for portable
address space.

You then need to arrange peering with your upstream service providers
including a BGP (or equivalent) feed, to announce your AS to the wider
Internet, and everything will just work(tm).

None of that is practical for a small service, and even a /22 is going
to be trouble when it comes to BGP announcements, because it is such a
long prefix.

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Internet_Registry