IP assignment for virtual webhosting

Dear LIR-WG,

We would like to hear your opinions on the issue of IP assignments for
virtual webhosting. The current policy is rather old and in the meantime
a lot of things have changed; most importantly the market for webhosting
products, as well as the development of the HTTP protocol and related
software.

TERMINOLOGY

Before we begin, however, we would like to address the issue of terminology
for this subject. The term 'virtual webhosting' is being used a lot but it 
is often not clear in which way it should be interpreted. We suggest the
following terminology:

Server: A physical computer with an operating system installed on it. This
could be UNIX, Windows, Mac, or something else. The webserver runs as an
application on this OS.

Webserver: An application program that accepts connections in order to
service requests by sending back responses. That is, a piece of software
that runs on a physical server. Examples of webservers are Apache, IIS, and
Stronghold.

User agent / Client: The client that initiates a request. These are often
browsers, editors, spiders (web-traversing robots), or other end-user
tools.

Hostname: A nameserver entry that resolves to an IP address. This could be
an A or a CNAME record.

Virtual host: A hostname resolving to the IP address of a server, the
webserver of which handles several hostnames.

IP-based virtual hosting: Many hostnames hosted on the same server, one IP
address for each hostname.

Namebased virtual hosting: Many hostnames hosted on the same server, all
hostnames resolve to the same IP address.

OUR SUGGESTION

The RIPE NCC has followed the deployment of HTTP 1.1 closely over the past
year. According to recent surveys, a vast majority of clients now support
HTTP 1.1 (namebased HTTP requests). It is our belief that the majority of
webserver applications support namebased webhosting as well.

In recent years we have seen a boom in the registration of second-level
domains. This has led to a great demand for webhosting services. Using one
IP address per domain uses an enormous amount of IP addresses. With HTTP
1.1 this is no longer necessary. We therefore suggest to promote namebased
webhosting and to change the current policy so that IP addresses can no
longer be assigned for IP-based webhosting.

Please provide us with any feedback or comments you might have.

Kind regards,

Nurani Nimpuno (Registration Services Manager) and 
Simon Skals (Hostmaster)
RIPE NCC