ARIN's new web hosting policy has recently been under discussion on the ARIN IP allocations policy mailing list. See http://www.arin.net/members/mailing.htm.
The policy is described at
http://www.arin.net/announcements/policy_changes.html
Some individuals have expressed their disagreement with this new policy. Should the ARIN web hosting policy be changed?
while I can be accused of being ignorant about ARIN matters, and this first came to my attention through the NANOG list, I have to say that this policy that (and many seem to miss that) HAS ALREADY BEEN IMPLEMENTED unduly restricts hosting companies from doing proper business: - SSL will not go away anytime soon. Billions have been spent on software to run it, certificates generated, signed and issued, expertise gained and management software written. How can ARIN ignore this existing investment and expertise and how dare it try to throw it out with the bathwater from literally one day to another? - How does ARIN think people are doing QoS for such large assemblies of hosted websites, or billing? Answer: by IP number with more simpler L-3 QoS enforcers such as Cisco CAR/GTS, Linux and BSDI-based rate-shaping. Why should webhosters start shelling out big bucks for Layer 5-7 intelligent switches in a market that is already seeing the $5/mo website? IP numbers are cheap, Layer 4-7 switches are disproportionally expensive. In a time when shortage of IP space should theoretically no longer be an issue, IPv6 allocation guidelines are pretty much ensuring that only the biggest players with the most engineering resources actually have a shot at IPv6: how do you suppose IPv6 expertise will be built on a large scale, when 1/2 to fully 3/4's of network engineers, website managers, DNS managers are working in places that are too small to get their own allocation of IPv6 IP space? There are lots of places, probably using the majority of all IP space, where the business model and economics of scale just make no sense to become ARIN member to get IP space, and instead IP space continues to be received as PA space from providers who have no real incentive or immediate plans to provide IPv6 service, with the incentive of the customers ASKING for IPv6 service never happening for that reason ? This is a giant distortion of the market, that will ultimately prevent IPv6 from ever getting deployed on a large scale, or only when it's too late. Already, people are too fixated on securing IPv4 space as property, with ARIN hopelessly trying to stem the flood, when all these efforts are ultimately doomed: giving the boat up when it's half full of water in order to make the jump to a bigger boat is a good idea. Stop the bucket line. Abandon ship.