How leasing IPv4 works, from first message to live addresses

Leasing IPv4 means using address space registered to someone else, with the right to announce it from your own network or a provider's. Nothing moves at the registry, which is why a lease can be live within a day. What does happen is a contract, some registry work by the holder, and an announcement by you or your provider. This is how it runs with us, step by step.

1. You say what you need

The useful facts are short: how many addresses, for how long, and where they will be announced. The last one matters most, because it decides the registry work:

• From your own network, with your own AS number: we need the ASN.
• From a cloud or hosting provider under bring your own IP: we need the provider, because the ROA usually has to name its ASN, and a few providers, such as Oracle Cloud and Azure, may not accept leased space (BYOIP guides).
• Over a tunnel from us, if your provider does not take your space or you need fewer than 256 addresses: we need to know where the server is (GRE tunnels).

Say too if the addresses will send mail. It changes nothing in the process, but it is worth knowing before the reverse DNS is set.

2. The quote

We usually reply in 1-3 business hours with a price for the size and term. Lease rates are published per /24 per month, lower on longer terms, from €99 on four years to €139 month to month (pricing). Larger blocks are a multiple of the /24 rate up to a /21, and quoted above that.

3. The contract

Nothing moves before it is signed. The contract sets out what you get, the price, the term and the notice, and it outranks the Terms of Service where the two differ. Read two things in any lease contract: what happens to the block at renewal, and when the lessor may take it back (what a lease contract should contain).

4. Payment, then the registry work

Once the invoice is paid, the holder does the work only the holder can do, because the block is registered to it:

• The registry record. The block, or your part of it, is shown in the registry with your organization as the user.
• The ROA, naming the ASN that will announce the block: yours, or your provider's (RPKI and ROAs).
• The route object, which upstreams build their filters from.
• Reverse DNS, with the names you ask for (reverse DNS).
• A letter of authorization (LOA), if your upstream or provider asks for one (the LOA).

With us, all of that is usually in place within hours of payment, so leased space is usually live within 24 hours.

5. You announce it

Your network, your provider or our tunnel announces the block, and traffic starts to arrive. Check it from outside your own network: a looking glass shows whether the route has propagated, and an RPKI validator whether it comes back valid.

6. During the lease

• Changes. A new ASN, a new provider or new reverse DNS names are a request away. Change the ROA in the same window as the routing change, never after.
• Reputation. The block is checked against 10+ blocklists before delivery and the major lists are monitored during the lease. Abuse reports that reach us are forwarded to you, without a fee (keeping a block clean).
• Your own customers. You may sublease the space to your own clients without asking us first.
• Room to grow. When you need a larger or smaller block, it is a new quote, not a new start.

7. Renewal and the end

At renewal you keep the same block. Our Terms put that in writing as the Block Continuity Guarantee: we do not reclaim, reissue or renumber a block we lease to you, during the term or on renewal, and it costs nothing extra. If you end the lease, give the notice in your contract and stop announcing the block on the last day; we remove the ROA, the route object and the reverse DNS.

Where RTM Networks fits

We lease IPv4 out of our own RIPE NCC address space, from a single /24 upward, with the Letter of Authorization, the ROA, the route object, reverse DNS, blacklist monitoring and abuse forwarding included in the price (lease IPv4). Tell us the size, the term and where you will announce it, and we will come back with a quote.