pro/cons of virtual hosting services

This really is a non-issue.  Apart from customer expectations, the
addresses typically come from under-populated C LANs anyway.
Increasing utilisation of those LANs would mean subnetting, which in
itself would send large amounts of space out the window.  And if one
forces customers to get their own machine to get their own address,
it will have to go on a separate ethernet segment (security, ethernet
eavesdropping).  This means even more and worse subneting.

Apart from that, I don't expect virtual servers ever to be an even
measurable part of address space consumption.  Customers who are
savvy enough to ask for it are likely in short order to migrate to a
separate server and soon thereafter to an Internet connection for the
whole company.

That obviously doesn't mean it should be encouraged and I believe
most people are (or at least should be) gently discouraging it, by
charging more for it.  But hammering on this issue as something
terribly wasteful is way off track.  Worry about AS number depletion,
route flaps, and junk routes and what not from wannabe ISPs instead
-- these things will bring the Internet to its knees long before we
run out of address space.  By way of example, yesterday somebody was
announcing net 0; I sent a note to their upstream provider, who Cc'ed
me on the note they sent downstream.  The note reads:

> To: XXXXXXXX
> Subject: Announcing default
> Cc: bilse at EU.net, noc at UPSTREAM-PROVIDER.NET
> 
> XXXXXXXXXX, please handle this as soon as possible.
> There is some bgp config setting that says "advertise the default"
> and you need to turn that off.

"The blue button, the blue button."

-- 
====== ___                        === Per G. Bilse, Mgr Network Operations Ctr
===== /     /  /   __   ___  _/_ ==== EUnet Communications Services B.V.
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=== Connecting Europe since 1982  === http://www.EU.net; e-mail: bilse at EU.net