How does one go about doing that? Getting an ASN I mean?

Edit: did some reading [1]. Clearly it's not easy to get an ASN. Not something a private person would do.

1: https://www.apnic.net/get-ip/faqs/asn/

It can be done.

It's easy if you get sponsored. APNIC is not the only option.

I am personally looking at AFRINIC for their sweet IPv4 space :-)

The smallest range that providers are willing to deal with are /24 (256 IPv4 addresses), and each IP is around $20, so that's a minimum of $5,000 [0].

But I only need one IP address, and I'm willing to pay $500 for it. Is there a way to make this happen?

[0] https://www.ipv4connect.com/products/-buy-ipv4-Arin-24/484

You can buy a single ip but it won't be routable on the internet. All major routers on the internet drop any routes smaller than a /24.

Find 256 friends?

Let's say I buy a /24 IP address block and port it to AWS. My friend Bob and I are both on AWS. Would it be possible to share some of my IP addresses with Bob in a secure way?

I know that VPC peering[0] is possible across separate AWS accounts, what I don't know is that:

1. Whether or not my /24 block is "compatible" with VPC peering or not

2. How to prove to Bob that I'm not potentially MitMing him (assign my /24 block to VPC1, peer with Bob using VPC2, and MitM between VPC1 and VPC2 since they're both under my control). Would creating an IAM user with read-only VPC permissions work for this?

AWS is just an example. I would be happy to do this at any major provider (AWS and GCP are the two I know that allows bring-your-own-ip).

[0] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/peering/what-is-vpc-p...

Yes it is, and using routing the IP can arrive everywhere in a tunnel, not just AWS.

You only need a good system administrator. I can get you in touch with friends who specializes in that. They will certainly recommend your /24 to be pointing to a more friendly provider of your choice, like one with a flat rate!

/24 with ASN -> friendly provider -> any ip goes where you want (digital ocean, aws, etc.)

But no, you can't prove you aren't MiM. Who has control of the /24 at any point could (ex: the 'friendly' provider)

IP space is getting pretty pricey these days, unless you want to go IPv6-only. And whatever the evangelists say, that's still to un-realistic for most people.