Hartwick College
“Working with the knowledgeable and professional folks at IPv4 Global was a terrific experience as well as a very nice windfall for the college.”
– Pete Mizera of Hartwick College
Located in upstate New York, Hartwick College delivers a future-focused education through its distinctive FlightPath approach to over 1,100 students. Offering a distinctive blend of curricular, co-curricular, real-world and global experiences, Hartwick’s 45 courses of study, four pre-professional programs, several cooperative programs, certifications and personalized experiences, give students everything they need to soar.
IPv4.GLOBAL’s research discovered that Hartwick held a large number of IPv4 addresses. Over 65,000 of them, in fact. Many older educational institutions have holdings of this sort because IP addresses were distributed in large blocks, free during the early days of the internet. Plus, almost none of these addresses had ever been put to use. Hartwick, like many smaller institutions, relies on a local internet service provider to supply user IP addresses so that none must be provided by the college. Only a handful of the 65,000 were actually deployed.
IPv4.GLOBAL approached Hartwick with a suggestion to sell its unused addresses. When it was pointed out that their current value was over $3 million, the college was interested. However, Hartwick’s administration had several concerns – and challenges – in order to take advantage of this opportunity.
First, Hartwick wanted to retain a number of addresses and continue to utilize those in use. However, breaking up a large IPv4 “block” reduces the value of each address in it. This is because the marketplace puts a premium on the largest blocks. To address this need, IPv4.GLOBAL offered to include a much smaller block with the transaction as part of the payment for the larger block.
Second, renumbering devices to use the new addresses from the replacement block can be costly and complex. IPv4.GLOBAL offered to advance the purchase price of the entire transfer before it took place so that Hartwick would have both the time and money to renumber their network and pursue other projects.
Third, that process was estimated to take three months. To provide flexibility and some security in the exchange, it was agreed that – if renumbering required more than the anticipated time – IPv4.GLOBAL would lease the entire block to the school until the process and transfer could be completed.
And finally, showing no small measure of financial savvy, the college expressed concern that they might be selling their asset below market price. They were also concerned that they may be doing so in a fluid market for a considerable period of time before the actual closing of the deal. So, it was agreed that any subsequent sale of the addresses by IPv4.GLOBAL, over a certain reasonable profit level, would trigger an equal division of the windfall returns, splits 50/50 between Hartwick and IPv4.GLOBAL.
These considerations were addressed to everyone’s satisfaction and an agreement to proceed was reached. A significant payment was advanced to the school, renumbering began, and this Oneonta NY-based institution had options it hadn’t imagined just months before.
“Like many universities and colleges that were assigned large blocks of IPv4 years ago, we knew that we had an abundance of unused addresses. However, we did not realize just how valuable those addresses were,” said Pete Mizera of Hartwick College. “IPv4 Global brought the value of those addresses to our attention and helped us with the sale of them. Overall, working with the knowledgeable and professional folks at IPv4 Global was a terrific experience as well as a very nice windfall for the college.”
Sometimes, good things happen to deserving people.