pro/cons of virtual hosting services

In a previous message Heikki Suonsivu wrote:
/> - most companies seem very reluctant to allow service provider name to be
/> visible in their name, both for image reasons and the simple fact that it
/> gives too much control to service provider: The company can't simply switch
/> the service provider if they aren't pleased with the one they have been
/> using.
/> 
/> It seems to me to be an overkill to save single IP numbers, in particular
/> when they are only consumed one per company?

There are other reasons why people choose this option, which shouldn't
be overlooked.

1. Leased Line customers who simply don't have enough bandwidth to run
their big & popular web server over. They don't, however, want to
resort to a tacky URL again - they want a host on the providers
network.  Most easily achieved using a virtual host.

2. Companies who don't, as yet, have a leased line, but may have a
significant web *site* (I'm personally annoyed at the number of
one-page "web sites" that are nothing more than a waste of DNS and
doomed to a short life). They want, again, a machine on your network,
and a virtual host is the easiest way of doing this.

In both these cases, that IP address only replaces a real machine.

I would quite like to see some documentation of "valid uses of an IP
address", especially if providing a web service is not considered to be
such [no, you don't see my personal opinion there, you see my
curiosity]. Why does a network of 60 PC's (which do nothing other than
browse web and communicate with the local smart host) warrant a /24 or
/25, when by using SOCKs, to get dynamic addressing for the network,
and a web proxy, you could use a /30 or /29. If they were dialup hosts,
they would be told that using static IP is wrong.

Maybe if the RIPE community could produce a public-domain and reliable
SOCKs based platform, we could reclaim large numbers of /24's and
bigger which are currently only used by "browsers" and have no real
excuse not to be in 1597 space.

This can only be fair if RIPE are going to question the validity of the
use of an IP address...


Oliver