Re: ARIN Policy on IP-based Web Hosting

[Bennett Todd <bet () rahul net>]

2000-08-29-21:25:09 Joseph McDonald:
> > Name-based virtual hosting does not work in many, MANY cases.
>
> And it doesn't work for POP3 at all.

It can. Just give your users POP logins of the form
user () domain name.

> If you give your customers their own pop3 server, you will need to
> bind to a different IP for each customer. I don't know of any way
> around that.

Don't give them each their own pop3 server, just give them distinct
accounts per virtual domain on the same pop3 server.

> Same goes for ftp as far as I know.

ftp can't be name-virtual-hosted. It is also such a wretched
protocol that it urgently needs to be retired in all settings for
all purposes.

The only real excuse I'd argue for keeping IP virtual hosts is
https --- but as there's no chance of a secure replacement for HTTP
that works with name virtual hosts getting deployed any time soon,
and as the last legal barrier to universal deployment of https
is falling in just a month, I think ARIN has picked a remarkably
unfortunate time to launch this crusade. If they'd done it a couple
of years ago, maybe it would have helped to nudge some of the folks
who just never bothered to learn how to configure name virtual
hosts into shifting a bit, and possibly this could have helped
provide motivation for designing something better than the current
https, like e.g. a TLS negotiation within http, and maybe we could
be approaching the point where such an improved client might be
widely-enough available. But now there's no helping it, IP virtual
hosts are the primary webserving product for the next bit of a while
anyway.

-Bennett

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