How can MIT people use IPv6 when it hasn't been rolled out on campus yet? How does it make any sense to put the campus (Ethernet) network behind a NAT, when MIT still has 18.0.0.0/9, half of what MIT has before but more than plenty to go around?

NAT will make future sales of IPv4 blocks easier? As you say, MIT doesn't need all those 8 million IP addresses, and eventually will adopt IPv6 anyway. Might as well sell surplus v4 space while it's still valuable.

But why is MIT making money on those addresses more valuable than giving its students an opportunity to experiment and innovate? Why would selling those "unused" spaces to Amazon further the cause of IPv6?

Also MIT hasn't even rolled out IPv6 yet...

Would the logic not be that the money will be spent on more useful things for students?

Perhaps. I haven't seen public discussion on the plans to use the fund though, other than vague promise that it will be used on Internet things.

> Net proceeds from the sale will cover our network upgrade costs, and the remainder will provide a source of endowed funding for the Institute to use in furthering its academic and research mission.

Source: https://gist.github.com/simonster/e22e50cd52b7dffcf5a4db2b8e...

When the two are in direct conflict, is it more important for MIT to maximize the value it can extract out of its properties, or for it to promote adoption of improvements to technology?