Your own IP addresses and AS number

PI, provider independent, address space is registered directly to your organization through a sponsoring LIR, so the addresses stay with you no matter which ISP carries your traffic. PA, provider aggregatable, space belongs to the ISP: if you leave, you hand the addresses back and renumber every server, firewall rule and DNS record, which in a live network is a slow and error prone project. The trade-off is that PI requires a sponsoring LIR contract and an annual RIPE fee, so it is a deliberate investment in stability rather than a free alternative. If your services depend on fixed addresses, or you plan to multihome later, PI is the sensible choice, and we can advise on block sizing.

An autonomous system number gives your network its own identity in global routing. With it you can run BGP and announce your PI addresses to several providers at the same time, a setup known as multihoming: if one upstream fails, the announcements over the others keep your services reachable without any manual switching. Your own AS also gives you control over how traffic enters and leaves your network. If you have a single uplink and no plans for a second one, you can postpone the AS. We run our own network under AS58269, register AS numbers for customers and help bring the BGP sessions up to working announcements.

Plan for 1 to 3 weeks from the moment the documents are signed. The timeline is mostly in RIPE NCC's hands: they verify the organization, the request and the sponsoring LIR contract, and they sometimes come back with questions, which we answer on your behalf. You can speed things up by having your company registration details ready and responding quickly when a signature is needed. IPv4 takes longer than that in practice, because before the registration can even start we have to find a suitable block on the transfer market and agree the terms. We keep you informed at every step, and the BGP work can be prepared in parallel.

Every independent resource, a PI block or an AS number, carries an annual charge from RIPE NCC that is paid through the sponsoring LIR, and it is what keeps the resource registered in the RIPE database with your organization listed as the holder. The current figures are in the table on this page: an IPv6 /48 costs 100.00 EUR to register and 100.00 EUR per year in support, an AS number 150.00 EUR to register and 150.00 EUR per year, and IPv4 support is 100.00 EUR per year, all without VAT. RIPE can adjust its fees over time, so the final quote we send always reflects the current rates and your block size.

You can, just not from a free pool: RIPE's IPv4 stock ran out years ago, so blocks now change hands on the transfer market or are leased, always at market prices that move with demand and block size. That is why we quote IPv4 individually instead of publishing a fixed price. A transfer makes your organization the registered holder of the block, while a lease gives you use of the addresses for a recurring cost without holdership, so the right choice depends on your budget and on how long you need them. Tell us the size you need and whether you prefer to buy or lease, and we will check what the market currently offers.

Yes. If your PI addresses or AS number are currently sponsored by another LIR, moving them to us is an administrative change in the RIPE records, not a technical one: nothing is renumbered, your BGP announcements stay up and your services keep running throughout. We prepare the new sponsoring LIR contracts, coordinate the transfer paperwork with RIPE NCC and confirm with you once the records show us as the sponsoring LIR. From that point the annual RIPE fees for those resources run through us. To get started, send us a list of the resources you hold and we will outline the steps, the timeline and the cost.

You need a router that can speak BGP, and that no longer means expensive carrier equipment: MikroTik and many other widely used platforms handle it well. What matters more than the brand is whether the device suits your setup, for example how much routing information it has to hold and how many upstream sessions you plan to run, so the right model follows from your network rather than from a price tag. Our engineers configure the sessions together with you on your own equipment and stay involved until the announcements are visible and traffic flows. If you are unsure whether your current router is up to the job, send us the model and we will tell you.

Yes, and it is the easy part of the order. IPv6 PI blocks are still freely available from RIPE NCC, so there is no market to search and no scarcity pricing: the registration and annual fees are fixed, and they are small next to what an IPv4 block costs on the market. Registering IPv6 together with your IPv4 request means one round of paperwork instead of two, and your network is ready for dual-stack operation, serving users over both protocols. The honest caveat is that IPv6 does not yet replace IPv4 for most audiences, so treat it as an addition rather than a substitute. Both protocols can be announced from the same AS number.