[arin-ppml] /20 initial allocation for single-homed server?

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> we've got pretty much an entire /22 pointing into a single load-
> balancer
> cluster. what's your definition of a single device?

My definition of a single device, which is actually obsolete for several
weeks
if not longer, is a 1U rackmount server with 4 quad-core cpus (16 cores)
and 
64G of RAM supporting 12 virtual machines per core (using something like
XEN)
and therefore, a total of 192 virtual machines. Of course each virtual
machine
could, in turn, support some number of SSL websites, each requiring a
unique
static IP address.

It is easy to imagine a service (not web hosting) that would require a
/20 per device. And next year, that will be a /19, and a year after that
it will be a /18 per device. Unless of course, the world comes to its 
senses and we settle down to a nice simple standard of a /48 per device,
no questions asked. If you want to replace that device with an entire
rack, the /48 block will handle that as well, etc. IPv6 addressing is
rather more scalable with its classful addressing.

--Michael Dillon