This was the topic of one of the most interesting policies
ARIN ever adopted. In 2000, there was a proposal to require
web hosting organizations to use virtual hosting (roughly
defined as many FQDNs on one IP address), unless indidivual IP
addresses were required for documented technical reasons.
This proposal predates the online proposal archive, but you
can track it on its progression through the Board meetings.
http://www.arin.net/meetings/minutes/bot/bot2000_0612.html
http://www.arin.net/meetings/minutes/bot/bot2000_1002.html
There was community support for the proposal, but strong
debate. The Advisory Council found consensus, the Board
adopted the proposal, then a few months later suspended the
policy. I think this is the only time the Board used its
emergency power to set or suspend a policy.
http://www.arin.net/meetings/minutes/ARIN_VI/ppm_minutes.html#webhosting
On the mailing list, and at the next public policy meeting
there was extensive discussion. The Advisory Council took
input from the community, and decided that the best policy
would be to make it a recommendation. The current policy
now reads:
When an ISP submits a request for IP address space to
be used for IP-based web hosting, it will supply (for
informational purposed only) its technical justification
for this practice. ARIN will analyze this data
continuously, evaluating the need for future policy
changes.
http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four25
To my mind, this is a good example of the ARIN process working
well: the community favored a proposal, so it was adopted, but
there were significant problems. The Board suspended the
policy so the AC could get community feedback, and the policy
was changed based on experience.
If you have an opinion on this policy, you should say so on
the Public Policy Mailing List.
http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/ppml
Lee