The Notes of Lu Heng

Who decides the future of the Internet?

Who gave the Internet’s recordkeepers the power to govern it? These Notes follow that question from everyday analogies to a different design for the network.

Explore the complete collection Why these Notes exist

All Notes

Explore the complete collection

Follow a question, find a particular Note, or read how the argument develops.

Who controls the value?

IP addresses, markets and the difference between owning and asking permission.

15 Notes found · Page 2 / 2

Clear
  1. Note 15Who controls the value?

    Unlocking the Hidden Value of IPv4

    Why are the owners of IPv4 absent from the rooms that decide its rules?

    IPv4 is the Internet’s most important service enabler. A device or cloud server cannot be online without an IPv4 address. Yet IPv4 is priced as if it were negligible. At roughly $0.30 per month per IP, it enables services worth around $300 per month per server—about 0.1% of the value it makes possible. In any other market, critical enablers capture a meaningful share of the revenue they enable: city-center rent is often ~30% of a shop’s revenue because location is the enabler. By that logic, IPv4’s upper valuation potential is vastly higher than today’s.

  2. Note 14Who controls the value?

    On the Upper Potential of IPv4 as an Investment Asset

    Why is an address that enables a $300 server priced at cents?

    IPv4 addresses remain one of the most undervalued assets in the global digital economy. Their suppressed valuation is not accidental; it is structural. And that suppression directly translates into suppressed valuations for ISPs and infrastructure businesses worldwide.

  3. Note 7Who controls the value?

    Why Buying IP Addresses Today Is a Scam — and How Telecoms Could Become Trillion-Dollar Companies

    What do companies actually own after spending billions on IPv4 addresses?

    IPv4 addresses are widely treated as assets, traded for billions of dollars by cloud giants and telecom operators. Amazon alone has acquired close to one hundred million IPv4 addresses. Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, and others have spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, doing the same. Yet there is a detail most boards and CFOs miss: none of those companies actually o