Broadband ISP Olilo launches UK ASN and IPv6 PI sponsorship service
Broadband provider Olilo has informed ISPreview that they’ve launched an Autonomous System Number (ASN) and IPv6 Provider-Independent (PI) sponsorship service, allowing individuals, businesses, hosting providers and smaller network operators to obtain their own internet resources without needing to maintain their own RIPE NCC LIR relationship.
Just for a bit of context. A Local Internet Registry (LIR) in the UK, such as your broadband provider, a web hosting company or a major business enterprise, typically receives allocations of public IP addresses (IPv4 and IPv6) and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) from the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia (RIPE NCC). But this can be very expensive.
The new solution, which is clearly intended to serve a particular niche, sees Olilo act as the customer’s Sponsoring LIR, handling the associated RIPE administration and paperwork. “An ASN is what turns ‘my connection’ into ‘my network’. It shouldn’t need a RIPE membership or an enterprise budget. Tell us what you want to build and we’ll handle the paperwork,” said Aydan Abrahams, Co-Founder of Olilo.
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Olilo states that there are no setup fees, and they also offer sponsorship transfers for organisations that already hold an ASN or IPv6 PI resources.
Service pricing
➤ ASN sponsorship: £99/year incl. VAT
➤ IPv6 PI /48: £125/year incl. VAT
➤ ASN + IPv6 PI /48: £199/year incl. VAT
➤ Existing Olilo Broadband customers: from £59/year
Included with every plan
➤ Preparing and submitting the request to the RIPE NCC.
➤ Holding the end-user agreement as your Sponsoring LIR.
➤ Creating aut-num, inet6num, route6 and maintainer objects.
➤ ROAs for your PI space, so your routes pass RPKI validation.
➤ RIPE’s per-resource fee (currently €50 per ASN assignment).
➤ Yearly admin, audits, and database changes.
The new service is clearly being aimed at smaller networks, homelab/networking enthusiasts, hosting providers, developers and businesses that want their own network identity or provider-independent IPv6 space, without the overhead of running their own LIR relationship.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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And my wishlist just became longer.
There’s guy called Apalrd on YouTube that has a good video on this.
Niche yes, but this was quite common amongst UK ISPs many years ago.
However the way this is being productised I think is bad.
RIPE guidance is that a /48 is to be allocated to an individual site. We don’t need “enthusiasts” with an ASN and /48 for their single broadband connection. That will just lead to growth in the global routing table for no benefit. If this starts happening at scale I wouldn’t be surprised if other networks start filtering /48s. At least the cost for IPv4 addresses should help prevent take up.
You need to have or be planning to be dual homed, so this isn’t something that lots of people are going to be doing. Very few residential ISPs let you advertise your own PI space through them. Besides, this sort of thing has been going on for ages, Olilo are just adding their offer to the market.
In terms of BGP usage, IPv6 has an advantage that because the address space is so large, ISPs can be allocated far fewer blocks. A typical ISP will have multiple blocks of IPv4 to advertise, but only 1-2 IPv6 blocks. That makes BGP far more efficient in practice, so a few extra enthusiasts isn’t really going to change anything.
Olilo’s launch is an interesting development for the UK networking community because it makes resources that have traditionally involved significant administrative and financial overhead much more accessible to smaller operators, businesses, hosting providers, and serious homelab enthusiasts. The combination of ASN sponsorship, provider-independent IPv6 space, RIPE administration, and RPKI support could make it easier for people to build networks with greater independence and portability without needing to maintain their own LIR relationship. The relatively straightforward pricing also lowers the barrier to experimenting with BGP and developing a proper network identity, which could encourage more technically minded users to move beyond conventional ISP setups.
Is that spam I can smell?