Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

You have assigned to you a Class A block of Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses, the range from 51.0.0.0 to 51.255.255.255 containing approximately 16 million addresses. This is listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ass... and can be confirmed by a WHOIS query.

The information that I would like to request is:

1. Please confirm that this IPv4 address block is assigned to and owned by the DWP or a subsidiary department.

If the answer to that is "yes",

2. Are any addresses or address ranges within this block in use on the public Internet for departmental IT, communications or other functions? If so, please indicate approximately how much of the address space is in use.

3. Are any addresses or address ranges within this block in use within any internal infrastructure (i.e. not accessible from the public Internet) for departmental IT, communications or other functions? If so, please indicate approximately how much of the address space is in use.

4. Please indicate whether any consideration has been given, if practical (depending on the answers to the two previous questions) as to whether this address block, or part of it, could be released for reassignment.

The reason that I am making this request is that, at present and increasingly so as time goes on, IPv4 address allocations on the Internet are becoming exhausted and therefore difficult to obtain. A large block of addresses such as this is therefore a valuable asset and could potentially be traded either for money or goodwill.

Yours faithfully,
James Marten