How to cancel an IP lease

To cancel an IP lease, open a ticket with the prefix, whether you announce it or we do, and the date you want it gone. An IP lease is a monthly subscription with no contract, so you can leave when you are done. We stop the invoice, withdraw the announcement, and reverse the LOA, WHOIS, rDNS, IRR, RPKI, and geolocation that went with it. Give us a few days before the 1st when you can, so registry objects have time to catch up.

What stops when you cancel

Three pieces end together: billing, routing, and the registry record. Billing is simple. Routing is BGP. We withdraw the prefix if we announce it for you. If you route on your own ASN, withdraw first so we are not both originating. WHOIS/RDAP, rDNS, IRR route objects, and the ROA take a few days of careful updates on purpose. That keeps the rest of the internet from holding a stale origin. Pulling the announcement while a ROA still names you as origin is how you get a mysterious invalid.

If you send mail from the space, treat cancel as a mail cutover. PTR records go away, and receivers that already trusted the IP will start bouncing. Finish the campaign or move sending before you ask us to pull the prefix.

You cannot take the prefix with you

A lease is not a transfer. You cannot move the prefix to another ASN, another host, or a LOA you write yourself. The holder at the RIR stays us, or the lessor we represent. On a lease, ROAs and WHOIS move back to us, not onto your ASN at another provider. If you already announced the space from a new session, you now have two origins, and RPKI will mark one invalid. That looks like an outage, and it is a paperwork race you started. Need the same size of space next month somewhere else? Order a new lease there. Do not try to keep the numbers. If the space must move with you, that is a purchase or a new lease elsewhere, not a cancel ticket.

Steps that actually finish the cancel

1. Tell us a few days before the 1st when you can. Mid-month cancel is allowed. You prepaid the month, and we do not claw back a day count, but ROA and WHOIS still need clock time.
2. If you route on your ASN, withdraw first so we are not both originating. If we announce for you, we withdraw.
3. We then cancel the LOA and update WHOIS, rDNS, IRR, RPKI, and geo.

A looking glass should stop showing the prefix from the old origin. dig -x on a former address should not still return your mail hostname. WHOIS/RDAP should no longer list your abuse contact as the end user. If any of those still show you, the cancel is not finished. Reply on the same ticket rather than opening a new one. There is no single shell command that cancels a lease. The invoice, the announcement, and the registry objects are the proof. Write down the prefix and the UTC time you asked. Include the prefix, whether you BGP on your ASN or we announce, and the date you want it gone. If mail still leaves from that space, say so. Packets follow the announcement you have, not the invoice you meant to cancel. See leasing versus buying if the next move is a purchase instead of a new lease. IP leasing is the product you are leaving.