Because back in the early days you could get one just by asking and they did?

The internet was just a research project to connect some universities, government sites, and a handful of companies. No one realized where it was going.

By the time it was clear the IPv4 address space would be exhausted it was also clear reclaiming those IP blocks (for which there is no legal basis) would merely temporarily delay the exhaustion - likely by a year or two at best.

This [0] is a really interesting page.

Companies that have an entire /8 block are AT&T, Apple, Ford, Cogent, Prudential Financial, USP and Comcast.

For some reason the US Department of Defense has 13 /8 blocks.

All others belong to regional internet registries (AFRINIC, ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC, RIPE NNC).

I really don't know why anyone other than the registries needs/deserves/got /8 blocks.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addre...

Wow Prudential and Ford (if USP is supposed to be UPS, that too) are the odd ducks. At least the others have the internet as a core competency.

My guess as to the answer of “why” is power and leverage. It’s the same as nations claiming physical land. “Maybe we’ll need it, maybe we won’t. But either way, now it’s ours to decide.” Writing that out, do they own those? Can someone take those back?

USP is supposed to be USPS i.e. the U.S. Postal Service. It's still an odd one for sure.

> For some reason the US Department of Defense has 13 /8 blocks.

I did a bit of digging and looks like they're looking to sell:

https://datacentrereview.com/content-library/opinion/1522-th...

They probably don't, but there are weirder cases. Ford was allocated 17.0.0.0/8, Prudential 48.0.0.0/8, USPS 56.0.0.0/8

You can use those IPs for something other than webservers.

But yeah, that a bit much for one company. I'll give hosting providers a pass on owning a million IPs, because they're for the lending out to customers.

a /8 is actually 16M addresses, not 1M.

They don’t, they just got in early.

#letthemeatipv6