IP Address Policy

IP Address Ownership

All IP addresses assigned to customers by SoftLayer remain sole and permanent property of SoftLayer, and are to be used exclusively on equipment located in the SoftLayer datacenters and connected to the SoftLayer network. If a customer cancels their services, they may not take the IPs that they used with them, rather they will be reclaimed and re-issued to other customers in the future.

Customer-Provided IP Addresses

Customers may provide their own RIR-issued IP addresses, subjected to certain technical limitations and verification of ownership that will be assessed by the networking department at time of request. IP prefixes owned by customers must be specified on a Letter of Authority (LOA) presented to SoftLayer, and once approved will be announced via BGP on the customer's behalf and routed to the customer's servers. They remain the property of the customer at all times. At the customer's request, or should the customer cancel their services, SoftLayer will cease to announce and route those IPs. While SoftLayer will make reasonable efforts to ensure BGP prefixes are accepted by all upstream ISPs, we cannot guarantee global reachability for customer-owned IPs.

Review / Justification / Efficiency Guidelines

Because IPv4 addresses are a scarce resource, RIRs require ISPs to document that they are efficiently utilizing existing assigned addresses and are planning efficient utilization of any addresses being requested. RIR policies and RFC2050 promote conservation and deter wasteful use or stockpiling of IP space. SoftLayer is required to abide by these policies when we go to the RIRs to request more IP addresses to allocate, which means we must collect this information from our customers; failure to do so could result in any future requests we make to our RIRs being denied.

All customer IP address requests are subjected to review by SoftLayer to ensure efficient utilization and are not guaranteed to be approved. During the review, customers will be required to provide details about how each IP address will be utilized and technical justification as to why additional unique IP addresses are needed. When applicable, SoftLayer may take steps to verify the validity of the information provided, including network scanning and server configuration inspection.

An initial review may take up to 2 business days, and depending on size and complexity may require additional time for completion. Accounts with open abuse tickets will have their IP requests held for processing until all abuse issues have been resolved.

Customers may continue to use assigned IP addresses as long as the usage information presented remains valid. SoftLayer may request a review of customer IP utilization at any time, and will reclaim resources no longer found to be efficiently utilized.

Privacy of IP Address Information

SoftLayer is required to provide customer reassignment information for all IP addresses, and does so via publishing publically viewable 'rwhois' records. Details provided by customers during the IP address request process may be shared privately with the RIRs when needed to demonstrate SoftLayer's adherence to policies of efficient utilization.