IP assignment for virtual webhosting

> The importance of enforcing name-based hosting is high, but I
> also get the feeling the amount of wasted address space
> elsewhere on the Internet (/16s allocated to big institutions
> years ago that are firewalled other than a handful of /24s?)
> should be a higher priority - not saying that RIPE did these
> allocations of course!

The past sins of others is no excuse to continue sinning.

Besides, there was a time before "classless" technology became
widespread or even available, and there actually existed prior IP
address allocation policies from the registries (or back to when
there only was a single registry) which were substantially different
from the ones we have in use today.

Regards,

- Håvard