guideline for name-based web hosting justification

[Greg Rumple]

* Shane Kerr (shane at ripe.net) [000913 14:18]:
> Stacey D. Son said: 
> > Shane Kerr said:
> > > I hate to stick my neck out here, and I recognise that the technology 
> > > doesn't really exist, but creating an Apache mod to record the number 
> > > of bits sent to/from a given virtual domain should be straightforward. 
> > > Perhaps ARIN could fund the appropriate work at Apache for this (IIRC 
> > > ARIN has plenty of money for this kind of work right now).  I can't 
> > > imagine it would cost in excess of $100k, and might help everybody 
> > > concerned.
> > > 
> > > It could even produce output that looks like MRTG.  :)
> > 
> > Please note that other protocols would need to be considered as well
> > (e.g. FTP, IMAP/POP, SMTP, streaming, chat, etc.).  In short, HTTP is
> > only one of many protocols used by web hosters that require usage
> > accounting.  
> 
> However, FTP, IMAP, and POP do not currently support virtual hosts 
> (there may be extensions to these, but I don't think there are any 
> standards).

Yup, and this is what will allow the BIGGER more established Web Hosters
such as Verio Web Hosting (ex-Hiway (yeah I worked there)) to continue
to gobble up space, and provide their users with IP based hosting.  I
have no clue what Verio's policys are on that now (as I haven't been
there in two years), but a whole lot of the product offering was IP
based (POP, SMTP relay, FTP, SSL, RealPlayer, etc..), and there is no
immediate obvious answer on how to do this on a shared IP efficiently
(the POP and SMTP stuff could be worked out, but not FTP, nor SSL).  Now
everyone realizes that not everyone requires SSL, but let's look at it
from a large provider's standpoint.  If a customer reachs the point that
he needs SSL, and now you have to change his IP from a shared IP to a
non-shared IP (most likely different machines), there is a transition
time and cost involved (to do it smoothly), and this is why bigger
providers already give them a non-shared IP.  It removes the cost and
transition time (as well as allows them to bundle all the value add
services that they do).

Just my $0.02 on the matter...

Greg

-- 
Greg Rumple
grumple at zaphon.llamas.net