AWS: IPv4 addresses cost too much.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), a prominent player in the cloud industry, has announced plans to introduce charges for public IPv4 addresses starting next year. The decision is attributed to the growing scarcity of available IPv4 addresses, necessitating cost recovery measures. AWS aims to incentivize users to adopt IPv6 as a more sustainable alternative.
Since the official exhaustion of IPv4 ranges four years ago, obtaining new public IPv4 addresses has become increasingly challenging. Organizations seeking these addresses have had to rely on recovered address ranges from defunct entities or those transitioning to IPv6.
According to AWS's cloud division, the difficulty in acquiring public IPv4 addresses has resulted in a staggering 300% rise in the cost of obtaining a single address over the past five years. As a response to this financial burden, AWS has chosen to pass on these costs to its customers.
The new pricing model, set to take effect on February 1, 2024, entails a charge of $0.005 (half a cent) per IP address per hour for all public IPv4 addresses. This fee applies regardless of whether the address is connected to a service or not. Although seemingly nominal, these charges can accumulate over time, particularly for users employing numerous IPv4 addresses.
The pricing adjustment affects all AWS services, encompassing EC2, Relational Database Service (RDS) instances, Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) nodes, and applies to all AWS regions.
However
Customers utilizing Amazon's BYOIP (Bring Your Own IP) feature will be exempt from these charges for IP addresses they already own and bring to AWS. AWS also offers a free tier for EC2, which includes 750 hours of public IPv4 address usage per month during the initial 12 months, starting from the same date as the introduction of the charges.
To help customers understand the impact on their AWS bills, the company plans to include information on public IPv4 addresses in the AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR). Additionally, AWS introduces a new feature, Public IP Insights, within Amazon VPC IP Address Management (IPAM), aimed at simplifying analysis and auditing of public IPv4 addresses. This measure will assist users in managing their IPv4 resources effectively and migrating towards the more sustainable IPv6 standard.
Conclusion
AWS's decision to charge for public IPv4 addresses underscores the urgency of adopting IPv6 in light of the diminishing availability of IPv4 addresses. Embracing IPv6 is a crucial step towards building a more sustainable and future-proof internet infrastructure.
