Questions, answered.
New to IPv6, or wondering what membership gets you? Start here. Most customers are up and running within minutes. The questions below explain what membership includes, what verification you’ll need, and how IPv6 differs from the IPv4 world you already know.
Membership
What does membership cost, and what’s included?
isp6 has one membership: £60 / €72 a year, or £5 / €6 a month, billed yearly. There is no tier ladder and no plan to choose between.
It includes a portable IPv6 PA allocation (a /48) that you can announce from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, a colocation facility, or your own network, plus RIPE Database registration, RPKI and reverse DNS management, and registry support. Everything else is ordered from the platform once you have joined: an extra /48 for £30 / €35, a /44 (sixteen /48s) for £120 / €140, and, when you need them, Provider Independent space and your own ASN.
If I add more subnets, does my membership cost go up?
No. Your membership is a flat annual fee and it stays the same no matter how many address blocks you hold. The number of subnets you run never changes your renewal price.
Each new allocation is a separate one-off charge, paid only when you provision it. There’s no recurring per-subnet fee. Your first /48 is included free when you join; additional /48 or /44 blocks are ordered from your dashboard whenever you need them.
Am I leasing the address space, or is it mine to keep?
It’s not leased. Each block you hold is registered to you in the RIPE Database for the duration of your membership. It isn’t rented from a pool by the month, and there’s no meter on how much of it you use.
The space itself is a one-off purchase. Your first /48 is included free when you join; add another /48 for £30 / €35, or a /44 (sixteen /48s) for £120 / €140. Once you’ve bought a block, there are no further charges relating to it:
- no monthly or annual rental on the addresses,
- no per-address or per-subnet fee, and
- nothing that scales with how much of the block you announce.
The only recurring cost is your flat annual membership, which keeps your registrations live and your dashboard active. Pay once for the space, and keep it for as long as you’re a member.
Do I need my own ASN to use isp6 IPv6 space?
No. Most customers announce their isp6 allocation through their cloud provider’s existing ASN (AWS, Azure and Google all support this), or through their hosting or colocation provider’s network. You get fully routable, portable IPv6 without operating BGP yourself. Running your own ASN is a separate add-on, ordered from the platform when you need it.
What’s the difference between the space I get and “Provider Independent” space?
isp6 issues Provider Assigned (PA) space drawn from our RIPE NCC pool. It’s pristine, portable across any network, and yours to announce for the life of your membership. No inherited reputation, no vendor lock-in. Provider Independent (PI) space is registered directly to your organisation at the RIPE NCC and stays with you independently of any LIR.
PI (and ASN registration) are off-platform applications made to the RIPE NCC on your behalf, and they carry the RIPE NCC’s End User contract regime, so the business verification for them happens as part of the application itself, not at signup. Your PA /48 is live in minutes; PI and ASN typically complete within one to four weeks, depending on the complexity and size of the request. isp6 acts as your sponsoring LIR for PI, so it’s there when you genuinely need it (see below). For nearly everyone, though, the included PA space is the simpler, faster, equally portable option.
I need address space registered to my own organisation, independent of any LIR. Can isp6 do that?
Yes. That’s Provider Independent (PI) space, and it’s available to members as an add-on. isp6 acts as your sponsoring LIR: the assignment is registered directly to your organisation at the RIPE NCC and stays with you independently of any LIR, isp6 included, while we handle the RIPE NCC application, the addressing-plan justification, and the ongoing compliance obligations on your behalf. The same applies to your own ASN if you need one.
Verification effort scales with registry independence. Joining isp6 needs an identity check on you; a PI assignment is registered to your organisation at the RIPE NCC under the End User contract regime, so the business verification for it is collected as part of the PI application. Because that application is made off-platform on your behalf, PI (and ASN) typically complete within one to four weeks, rather than the minutes a PA /48 takes. The exact lead time depends on the complexity and size of the request.
/48 or /44: what size should I order?
A /48 is the right choice for a single site or cloud Region, and it still gives you 65,536 /64 subnets to structure however you like. Choose a /44 when you have multiple sites or Regions that each need to announce their own routable /48.
What happens to my IPv6 space if I cancel or my membership lapses?
Your allocations stay with you for as long as your membership is active. Cancelling doesn’t take your space away straight away. It stops auto-renewal, and you keep everything until the end of the year you’ve already paid for.
If the membership then lapses, we send renewal reminders and hold your allocations through a short grace period. Renew within that window and nothing changes: your subnets, RIPE registrations and configuration are all preserved.
If it isn’t renewed, the allocations are deprovisioned. A later membership always starts with a fresh allocation, not your previous prefix.
Verifying your identity
Why do I have to verify my identity?
As a RIPE NCC accredited LIR, isp6 is required to confirm who holds each allocation. Verification is built into onboarding and takes only a few minutes.
What do I need for onboarding (KYC)?
One government-issued photo ID. Any one of:
- a driving licence,
- a national ID card, or
- a passport.
That’s it. You’ll photograph your document during onboarding and you’re done.
How long does verification take?
Typically a few minutes. Photograph your ID and you’re done. Most members have a live allocation the same session they join.
Coming from IPv4
I already run IPv4. Why do I need IPv6 at all?
Four reasons that compound:
- Exhaustion. The RIPE NCC ran out of freely available IPv4 in 2019. New IPv4 is now leased on a scarce, costly secondary market.
- Cost. IPv6 ends that scarcity. You get effectively unlimited address space without per-address lease fees.
- Reach & parity. A growing share of mobile carriers and networks are IPv6-only, and AWS, Azure and Google Cloud all support IPv6 natively. Running IPv6 keeps you reachable and on a par with cloud-native peers.
- Sovereignty. Owning portable address space reduces your dependence on any single provider’s pool and removes inherited IP reputation.
Do I have to switch off IPv4? Can I run both?
You can run both. Almost everyone deploys dual-stack (IPv4 and IPv6 side by side) and migrates gradually. Nothing breaks on day one.
Do I still need NAT with IPv6?
No, and this trips up most people arriving from IPv4. IPv6 restores end-to-end addressing; your firewall, not NAT, provides the security boundary.
Can I take my isp6 addresses to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud?
Yes. That’s the core of what isp6 offers. You bring your allocation to any provider via BYOIP and announce it there; move it whenever you change providers, with no renumbering.
If I leave isp6, do I keep the addresses?
Your PA allocation is portable across networks (cloud, colo, on-prem) for the life of your membership, but it’s registered under isp6’s LIR, so it’s tied to your isp6 membership, not to a single provider. If you need address space registered to your own organisation independently of any LIR, that’s Provider Independent (PI) space, sponsored by isp6 and available to members as an add-on.
How quickly will my allocation be live?
Once payment and verification are complete, your PA allocation is registered in the RIPE Database within minutes, and your subnet dashboard gives you immediate control of RPKI/ROA, route objects, and reverse DNS.
Trust & continuity
What happens to my address space if isp6 shuts down?
A PA assignment lives inside isp6’s parent allocation at the RIPE NCC, so its registration depends on that allocation staying registered. That is true of PA space at any LIR. Here is exactly what we commit to.
A minimum of twelve months’ written notice of any voluntary wind-down, with the registry function (RIPE Database objects, ROAs, reverse DNS) maintained throughout. Before any deregistration, we commit to pursuing a transfer of the parent allocation, member assignments intact, to a successor RIPE NCC member using the RIPE NCC’s established transfer procedures. And if succession ever failed, the floor is assisted renumbering: help obtaining replacement space and engineering guidance for the move.
If you hold PI space or an ASN through us, you don’t need any of the above: those resources are registered to you, and RIPE NCC policy guarantees your right to switch sponsoring LIR at any time. As the membership grows, these commitments will strengthen: first a ring-fenced reserve covering years of RIPE NCC fees, then a named successor arrangement. We’ll publish each step when it lands.
Can I move my prefix to another sponsoring LIR later?
For PI space and ASNs: yes, always. That right is guaranteed by RIPE NCC policy, not by us, and we process transfer-out paperwork within five business days, with no exit fees and no obstruction. A graceful exit is part of the product.
For PA space: no. PA assignments cannot move between LIRs, at isp6 or anywhere else. Their portability is across networks (clouds, carriers, colocation) via BGP and BYOIP: announce your prefix from any provider and move it whenever you change networks, with no renumbering.
Ready when you are.
Claim your free IPv6 /48 with isp6 membership, or explore the full knowledge base first.