This really is a non-issue. Apart from customer expectations, the addresses typically come from under-populated C LANs anyway. Increasing utilisation of those LANs would mean subnetting, which in itself would send large amounts of space out the window. And if one forces customers to get their own machine to get their own address, it will have to go on a separate ethernet segment (security, ethernet eavesdropping). This means even more and worse subneting. Apart from that, I don't expect virtual servers ever to be an even measurable part of address space consumption. Customers who are savvy enough to ask for it are likely in short order to migrate to a separate server and soon thereafter to an Internet connection for the whole company. That obviously doesn't mean it should be encouraged and I believe most people are (or at least should be) gently discouraging it, by charging more for it. But hammering on this issue as something terribly wasteful is way off track. Worry about AS number depletion, route flaps, and junk routes and what not from wannabe ISPs instead -- these things will bring the Internet to its knees long before we run out of address space. By way of example, yesterday somebody was announcing net 0; I sent a note to their upstream provider, who Cc'ed me on the note they sent downstream. The note reads:
To: XXXXXXXX Subject: Announcing default Cc: bilse@EU.net, noc@UPSTREAM-PROVIDER.NET
XXXXXXXXXX, please handle this as soon as possible. There is some bgp config setting that says "advertise the default" and you need to turn that off.
"The blue button, the blue button." -- ====== ___ === Per G. Bilse, Mgr Network Operations Ctr ===== / / / __ ___ _/_ ==== EUnet Communications Services B.V. ==== /--- / / / / /__/ / ===== Singel 540, 1017 AZ Amsterdam, NL === /___ /__/ / / /__ / ====== tel: +31 20 6233803, fax: +31 20 6224657 === ======= 24hr emergency number: +31 20 421 0865 === Connecting Europe since 1982 === http://www.EU.net; e-mail: bilse@EU.net