Questions, answered.
New to IPv6, or wondering what membership gets you? Start here. The questions below explain what membership includes, what account verification involves, and how IPv6 differs from the IPv4 world you already know.
About isp6
What is isp6?
isp6 is a Local Internet Registry (LIR) and a member of the RIPE NCC. An LIR is where a network gets IP addresses of its own: the RIPE NCC allocates space to registries like ours, we assign it to you, and it is registered in the RIPE Database with you as the holder. Unlike addresses borrowed from a hosting provider, you can announce it from AWS, Azure, a colocation cage or your own rack, and move between them without renumbering.
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Membership
What does membership cost, and what’s included?
isp6 has one membership: £60 / €72 a year. Your first year is half price, £30 / €36: the introductory price, applied for you at checkout with no code to enter. There is no tier ladder and no plan to choose between.
It includes a portable IPv6 PA assignment (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. Add-on blocks are ordered from the platform once you have joined: an extra /48 for £15 / €18, or a /44 (sixteen /48s) for £50 / €60. Provider Independent space and your own ASN are different: they are sponsored RIPE applications, open to any verified account, no membership needed.
I already have a verified account. What does joining as a member add?
Your verification carries over. Nothing is checked a second time, and the £20 / €24 verification fee is not charged again.
What membership adds is PA space. For £60 / €72 a year you get a /48 assigned to you and registered in your name in the RIPE Database, with RPKI, reverse DNS and route objects managed from the dashboard. Extra /48s at £15 / €18 and /44s (sixteen /48s) at £50 / €60 are one-off purchases. Buy as many as your network needs: the annual fee is the same whether you hold one block or twenty.
PA is the quicker and cheaper of the two routes to address space. isp6 assigns a membership /48 itself, with no RIPE NCC application; a PI assignment is a RIPE NCC application and is measured in weeks. Which one fits is a question about your network, not about tiers.
Membership does not rule sponsorship out. A member can apply for PI space and an AS Number on the same terms as anyone else, and the verification behind that application is already done. The two combine: PA for the everyday, PI for the systems that must not depend on a provider.
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 block is a separate one-off charge, paid only when you provision it. There’s no recurring per-subnet fee. Your first /48 is included 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?
Neither, exactly. Each block you hold is assigned to you in the RIPE Database, with your certificate on the record, for as long as your membership runs. If the membership lapses, the blocks come back to isp6. A block you’ve announced is retired, never handed to anyone else.
What you pay for a block is a one-off fee. Your first /48 comes with membership; another /48 is £15 / €18, and a /44 (sixteen /48s) is £50 / €60. After that, a block has no charges of its own:
- 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.
Do I need my own ASN to use isp6 IPv6 space?
No. Most customers announce their isp6 /48 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. If you want your own ASN, isp6 can sponsor one: it is its own application, open to any verified account, with no membership needed.
What’s the difference between the space I get and “Provider Independent” space?
isp6 issues Provider Aggregatable (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 if you move to another sponsoring LIR.
PI (and ASN registration) are applications made to the RIPE NCC on your behalf. They carry the RIPE NCC’s End User contract regime, so the legal-entity checks for them happen as part of the application rather than at signup. Your PA /48 is assigned as soon as onboarding is complete; PI and ASN are measured in weeks, depending on the complexity and size of the request. isp6 acts as your sponsoring LIR for PI, and it needs no membership: a verified account is enough.
I need address space registered to my own organisation that I can take to another LIR. Can isp6 do that?
Yes. That’s Provider Independent (PI) space, and it needs no membership: a verified account is enough. isp6 acts as your sponsoring LIR: the assignment is registered directly to your organisation at the RIPE NCC. It is independent of isp6 and goes with you if you move to another sponsoring LIR. PI always needs a sponsor. 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. An isp6 account 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 legal-entity checks for it are collected as part of the application. That application runs on the platform as a guided journey, isp6 reviews and files it, and RIPE NCC staff evaluate it, so PI and ASN are measured in weeks, where a PA /48 is assigned as soon as onboarding is complete. 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 assignments 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 assignments 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 assignments are deprovisioned. A later membership always starts with a fresh /48, not your previous prefix.
Verification
What is account verification, and why do you need it?
Verification establishes who holds a resource. It runs once, during signup, and covers three things: your email address, your mobile number, and a government-issued photo ID checked by KYCAID, our identity provider. On a membership, the mobile and ID checks come straight after payment.
The requirement comes from the registry rather than from us. isp6 is an LIR and a RIPE NCC member, and the RIPE NCC holds LIRs responsible for knowing who each assignment and each sponsored resource belongs to, and for keeping those records accurate. Know Your Customer checks are how that obligation is met, and every LIR carries the same one.
A verified account on its own costs £20 / €24, charged once. That is what lets you apply for PI space or an AS Number without joining as a member. Members do not pay it separately: verification is part of joining, so the fee never appears on a membership.
What do I need for onboarding (KYC)?
A mobile number that can receive a text message, and one government-issued photo ID. Any one of:
- a driving licence,
- a national ID card, or
- a passport.
You photograph your document during onboarding, and KYCAID, our identity provider, checks it. A membership also asks you to make a signing key in your browser and save it, as the last step.
How long does verification take?
Your part is short: a code sent to your mobile, then photographs of your ID. KYCAID makes the identity decision, and the next step opens once it arrives.
If a check is declined, you can try again, up to three attempts. After a third decline, contact support and we will look at it with you.
When do I pay?
After you have verified your email, added your contact details and signed the service agreement, and before the mobile and photo ID checks. You pay first, then verify. That is the same for a membership and for a verified account on its own (£20 / €24, for PI space or an AS Number).
A membership’s /48 is assigned once the checks and your signing key are done.
Which countries can join?
Accounts are open to customers in 32 countries: the UK, the 27 EU member states, Switzerland, Norway, the US and Canada. We can’t open an account anywhere else yet.
The country is the account holder’s. Where you use the address space is up to you: RIPE policy puts no limit on where an IPv6 assignment is used.
Are you based in the EU?
isp6 is a UK company. The platform, and your data, sit in the EU.
The registered entity is SPIDEE CONSULTANTS LTD, England and Wales, company number 15952257. Everything it runs is hosted in Ireland, inside the EU: the application, the database, and the backups.
We host and process your personal data in the UK and EU, including the identity documents you provide during onboarding. Personal data is handled under the GDPR, and the privacy policy sets out who we share data with and why, along with your rights over it.
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 /48 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 assignment 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, independent of isp6 and movable to another LIR, that’s Provider Independent (PI) space, sponsored by isp6. It does not need a membership: you can get verified and apply without joining.
How quickly will my /48 be live?
Once payment, the mobile and photo ID checks and your signing key are done, your PA assignment is registered in the RIPE Database automatically, and your subnet dashboard gives you control of RPKI/ROA, route objects, and reverse DNS.
Trust & continuity
Can I move PI space or an ASN I already hold to isp6?
Yes. A transfer in changes your sponsoring LIR; nothing new is assigned. There is no setup fee. Your account verification, £20 / €24, is the only charge before the RIPE NCC records isp6 as your sponsoring LIR. Your first annual sponsorship fee (£150 / €175 for a PI block, £90 / €105 for an AS Number) is charged on 1 January after that, and every 1 January from then on. Verify your account, then tell support which resources you hold. We check the RIPE Database shows you as the holder, you sign the sponsorship agreement with us, and we file the change. The RIPE NCC then notifies your current sponsor, so tell them first and settle anything you owe them.
Can I move my prefix to another sponsoring LIR later?
For PI space and ASNs: yes, always. That right is guaranteed by RIPE NCC procedure, 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.
One thing to plan: line up the new sponsor before this sponsorship ends. Once a sponsorship ends, RIPE NCC procedure gives you ten working days to establish a new one, then a notification and another ten, after which the RIPE NCC begins deregistering the resource. We never end our side before the new sponsor is in place, so the space is not left without one while it moves.
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.
Join isp6 for a /48 of your own, or explore the full knowledge base first.