We disagree with recent restrictions on ip allocation aimed at attacking the "littlehosts"

[Mark McFadden]

Gene:

One of the things that the AveHost folks pointed to was the following situation:
suppose you host a site that sells something that someone finds objectionable.
If a rating company then filters using an IP mask rather than using the DNS, all
the sites using the virtual host headers are affected.  This seems a likely
scenario to me, when you worked at the small ISP did it happen to you?

mark

Mark McFadden
Chief Technology Officer
Commercial Internet eXchange
mcfadden at cix.org  v:  (+1) 608-240-1560  f:  (+1)  608-240-1561
http://www.cix.org

-----Original Message-----
From: policy-request at arin.net [mailto:policy-request at arin.net]On Behalf
Of Gene Jakominich
Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2000 8:47 AM
To: info at avehost.com
Cc: policy at arin.net
Subject: Re: We disagree with recent restrictions on ip allocation aimed
at attacking the "littlehosts"



I used to work for a small ISP.  Two years ago we switched all our
statically addressed sites to virtual host headers.  The sites experienced
no down time and we reclaimed a bunch of address space which we used for
expansion.  Switching to virtual host headers can be done with NO down time
at all for the site if it is done correctly.  If anything, this will be
more of a burden on the larger ISP's than the small ones.  (they have many
more sites to renumber)  There are only a few reasons why a site needs its
own address.  (SSL...etc.)I feel that it is a necessity to switch to
virtual host headers to conserve address space.

If you would like to know how to properly switch your sites from static to
virtual with no downtime please e-mail me off list.


-gene

-------------------------------
Gene Jakominich
Systems Engineer, ISP Operations
Broadview Networks
http://www.broadviewnet.com
genej at broadviewnet.com
--------------------------------




AveHost.com Staff writes:

>
> We feel the recent policy change regarding ip allocations for web hosting
> activities is unfair to the smaller web hosts of the world which do not have
> all the technological capitalization to smoothly implement host header
> routing without putting undue burdens on the consumer.  Therefore, we feel
> this policy change is directed at protecting the larger hosts from loosing
> clients as fewer potential clients are going to be willing to experience
> "downtime" as a result of switching hosts if the move will not be a seamless
> one--it will NOT be seamless if IP-less hosting is forced upon smaller web
> hosts because there will not be enough free IP's for potential clients to
> post the website they are moving to the new host byway of an IP address,
> but, rather, they will have to wait for the domain name to be transferred
> via the NSI registry before they can even publish the website files; and
> then their site will be visible in some places in the world and not others
> over that 24-48 hours that it takes the Internet's DNS system to propagate.
>
> Hmmm, my dad was a class action plaintiff's attorney and the one thing I
> picked-up from him was when you can spot a great class action suit
> in-the-making!!!!!!!!!
>
> AveHost.com Staff
> AveHost.com, a service of RegSearch International
>