Dear LIR-WG, We would like to hear your opinions on the issue of IP assignments for virtual webhosting. The current policy is rather old and in the meantime a lot of things have changed; most importantly the market for webhosting products, as well as the development of the HTTP protocol and related software. TERMINOLOGY Before we begin, however, we would like to address the issue of terminology for this subject. The term 'virtual webhosting' is being used a lot but it is often not clear in which way it should be interpreted. We suggest the following terminology: Server: A physical computer with an operating system installed on it. This could be UNIX, Windows, Mac, or something else. The webserver runs as an application on this OS. Webserver: An application program that accepts connections in order to service requests by sending back responses. That is, a piece of software that runs on a physical server. Examples of webservers are Apache, IIS, and Stronghold. User agent / Client: The client that initiates a request. These are often browsers, editors, spiders (web-traversing robots), or other end-user tools. Hostname: A nameserver entry that resolves to an IP address. This could be an A or a CNAME record. Virtual host: A hostname resolving to the IP address of a server, the webserver of which handles several hostnames. IP-based virtual hosting: Many hostnames hosted on the same server, one IP address for each hostname. Namebased virtual hosting: Many hostnames hosted on the same server, all hostnames resolve to the same IP address. OUR SUGGESTION The RIPE NCC has followed the deployment of HTTP 1.1 closely over the past year. According to recent surveys, a vast majority of clients now support HTTP 1.1 (namebased HTTP requests). It is our belief that the majority of webserver applications support namebased webhosting as well. In recent years we have seen a boom in the registration of second-level domains. This has led to a great demand for webhosting services. Using one IP address per domain uses an enormous amount of IP addresses. With HTTP 1.1 this is no longer necessary. We therefore suggest to promote namebased webhosting and to change the current policy so that IP addresses can no longer be assigned for IP-based webhosting. Please provide us with any feedback or comments you might have. Kind regards, Nurani Nimpuno (Registration Services Manager) and Simon Skals (Hostmaster) RIPE NCC