[tor-relays] Looking for a ipv4 block and strategy

[Osservatorio Nessuno]

Hi everyone,
our organization is working to add more physical nodes, in our little 
Italy headquarter[1]. We have reached an agreement with one of the 
available fiber reseller there, where we will pay for L2 transport to a 
datacenter, where we will buy our uplink separately and announce and 
route our public IP addresses independently.

It is actually a very nice opportunity to remove a point of trust in the 
chain and get back control to a part of infrastructure that is usually 
delegated to commercial ISP. Similarly, as this list knows well, by 
announcing our IPs we will be the direct recipients of any abuse.

We have now two options: either look for someone willing to lease a /24 
to Tor operators, which is not an easy task since the block reputation 
will be tainted and depreciate the block. We have found someone willing 
to, for $119/mo, but it is hard to tell how long that will last.

An alternative would be to buy it, for around ~7k$ (~28-31$ per IP, via 
a broker). We do not have the budget for this now, but an organization 
member has offered to lease the money and get paid back without interest 
at a similar rate that a lease would cost (around $1k year). In all 
phases, the block will be in the org ownership. We have someone who can 
LIR sponsor at RIPE so we would not have other recurring expenses.

Buying is more sustainable in the long-term: in around 6 years we will 
stop to have to pay the lease. At the same time, we will not have any 
chances to change those IP ever later, while in a lease, we could 
eventually move to other blocks.

Does anybody in the community have contacts for lease or sale? Is there 
any foreseeable issue in sticking to the same range for the next ~10 years?

Especially at the beginning, it will be unlikely that we will use even 
1/4 of them, but given how the fiber infrastructure is built, we can 
eventually use the same announcements even for other physical locations.

Thank you



[1] - 
https://osservatorionessuno.org/blog/2024/07/we-have-a-headquarter-and-it-is-soon-to-become-a-small-datacenter/