Bankrupt Borders flogs 65,536 IP addresses at $12 a pop

[J65nko]

From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12...gs_ipv4_addys/

The bankrupt bookseller Borders wants to sell its stash of 65,536 IP addresses to healthcare software vendor Cerner for $12 per address.

The bust high street chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, and has been selling off its assets to pay its creditors ever since. The address sale is one of its last assets to be disposed of.

[Ninguem]

Strange how the number of IP addresses corresponds to one greater than the number of available ports on a machine.

[rocket357]

Funny things like that happen in a base-2 world...

But seriously, 65536 is 2^16 (16 bits). Why 16? Because it's base 2, of course...so it's really 2^(2^4), which is 2^(2^(2^2)). (Ok, so I'm making that part up even if it is mathematically correct).

So why is the number of ports the same number minus one? Truth is, there aren't "more" ip addresses than ports. Ports are zero-based (port 0 is reserved), whereas the count of ip addresses is one-based. They hold the same number of items.

[phoenix]

IPs are also 0 based.

There are 65536 ports available on a system, and 65536 IPs in the block being sold.

The highest port number is 65535 since the first port is 0, but there are still 65536 ports available.

Same goes for IPs.