I did this back in the 00s, got the /24 immediately. Wish I’d kept it going today.

almost a /25 of IPs

How in the hell are you already using almost 126 public IPs?? Surely you condense some of those services? That must cost more than you like…

This is an awesome series, but that 20 month wait for a /24 IPv4 subnet would be unbearable to me. I’d rather just go mostly-IPv6 and maybe run NAT64 or something on a VPS to cover legacy uses.

I say this because while some are fine with waiting, I view self hosting as an act of self sufficiency and resilience, which really shouldn’t be on someone else’s timeline. If IPv4 subnets are the only thing holding someone who’s willing and able to run an AS, I would genuinely recommend ditching IPv4 and the scarcity that comes with it, even with the translation costs elsewhere. Perfection must not become the enemy of good-enough.

Fun writeup. For anyone considering the same route, the ongoing realities after you get the ASN + /24:

• Recurring costs don’t stop at the block: ARIN annual fee (~$250+/yr for this resource class), transit (a 1Gbps BGP session with a real provider runs $50-300/mo depending on who you know), and either your own router that can carry a full table or a manageable VPS as a looking-glass/export point.
• Do the RPKI ROA for your prefix the same day it’s assigned, and set up a bgp.tools/PeeringDB presence early — it’s how network ops will decide whether to accept your announcements, and an unfiltered new origin gets caught in route filters fast.
• Start announcing with conservative communities so you can back out cleanly; and keep the static fallback mentioned in the post because BGP origination outages are silent — the failure mode is “the internet can’t see you,” not an alarm.
• Also worth noting for most readers: you get 95% of the fun (your own ASN visible in bgp.tools, learning BGP hands-on) by renting a cheap VPS from providers that offer BGP sessions on a /48 or even a /24 you lease monthly. Owning the /24 outright is mainly for the permanence.