What do you consider valid justification for IP space?

Due to the IPv4 depletion, I know some companies are tightening their grips on their IP space and ensuring that only needs with proper technical justification are assigned IP addresses and will require proof, as well.

In the past, SSLs required their own dedicated IP however that is not the case anymore for a lot of environments, so I'm curious what you providers here consider 'proper' technical justification when issuing IP space to your customers. Do you require proof of how they'll be used?

I'm sure a lot of people are going to be taking notes on the responses.

I guess the main concern for providers is whether or not they can use this information to get new IP assignments from a RIR. Otherwise I (almost) don't see any other reason why a provider would even bother asking...

As far as I am aware, SSL is still a valid justification for ARIN (they may ask to supply a domain name for verification).

dcdan said:

As far as I am aware, SSL is still a valid justification for ARIN (they may ask to supply a domain name for verification).

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It probably is, I can't speak on behalf of the VPS world but I know in shared hosting environments, after cPanel 11.38 it was no longer a requirement that dedicated IPs had to be assigned to accounts with SSLs. ( http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/1138ReleaseNotes#Improved%20SSL%20Management%20System ) Whether or not company's like HostGator, GoDaddy, etc implement this and don't force you to buy a dedicated IP with the purchase of an SSL or not... I don't know. I stopped telling customers who wanted an SSL that they needed a dedicated IP a while ago when I discovered it wasn't really needed. Saves them $2/mo so they're happy and see no difference anyway.

Unsure of what OS versions offer SNI support out of the box, so in the VPS world it may be hit or miss.

I have found asking for justification varies by situation. Somebody with 1-2 extra IPs isn't exactly a cause for an interrogation. However when somebody wants a large number or asks about them being on different subnets we will request a technical justification.  The one thing I can say is NOT a technical justification is "SEO"

 

MannDude said:

Unsure of what OS versions offer SNI support out of the box

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IE on Windows XP and below doesn't support it. Get Chrome or Firefox on Windows XP and you're good to go though. Anything newer, Mac or Linux, and you can count on SNI. It was just IE that took a while longer (surprise surprise). As a webmaster if you're wanting to ensure SSL works in a shared environment (i.e. no dedicated IP), write some code that runs on the HTTP only version to see if the user is using I.E. on Windows XP. If so, link them to IE6 No More and the Windows XP EOL page, otherwise redirect to HTTPS.

Anyway, back on topic. Justification for a dedicated IP might come if for some reason you really need rDNS set, like for e-mail (legitimate or not). Or maybe you're just worried that someone who's sharing the same IP as you might soil it. One way or another, though, mail is always a suspicious reason to get more IPs (unless you're ColoCrossing).

Only other thing (and as far as I know the only thing that requires a dedicated IP) is anonymous FTP. There's no SNI equivalent for FTP, so if you're doing anonymous FTP, you'll need a dedicated IP. But the real question is, why are you doing anonymous FTP? Do you like taking security risks? I doubt your provider (you know, the one you're asking for the IP) likes it as much as you do.

MannDude said:

It probably is, I can't speak on behalf of the VPS world but I know in shared hosting environments, after cPanel 11.38 it was no longer a requirement that dedicated IPs had to be assigned to accounts with SSLs. ( http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/1138ReleaseNotes#Improved%20SSL%20Management%20System ) Whether or not company's like HostGator, GoDaddy, etc implement this and don't force you to buy a dedicated IP with the purchase of an SSL or not... I don't know. I stopped telling customers who wanted an SSL that they needed a dedicated IP a while ago when I discovered it wasn't really needed. Saves them $2/mo so they're happy and see no difference anyway.

Unsure of what OS versions offer SNI support out of the box, so in the VPS world it may be hit or miss.

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There are way too many cPanel servers still running Centos 5 where SNI is not an option... unless you're willing to build your own OpenSSL, which can be quite messy.

The VP of Operations of a pseudo data center operator asked me to post his reply to Manndude's justification question here because he's never been a VPSboard member (although he has been an avid reader of VPSB since Day 1).

Our IP justification Policy

1. Give us the farking money and you can have an entire /24 on your VPS. Need more than one /24? No problem! Don't worry your pretty little head about justification we'll fake it for you because customer satisfaction is our #1 concern!

2. Anonymity a concern?  No problemo! You can have that entire /24 unswipped and as an added bonus we won't require you to provide us with any ID verification.  Your privacy is safe with us!

3. For an extra fee we'll give you a constantly rotating supply of IPs and we'll tell any blocklistNazi who asks that you've been terminated if they try to bully you and hurt your business.  They'll never know we rotated you to a new IP block!  (see answer #1 for our justification requirements.)

@DomainBop Tell that fine fellow that he's got an excellent policy there - his concern for "customer satisfaction" shows true professionalism!

Well, it depends on what we're looking at. I'm not going to give you a /24 of IP space just because you say you're using it for SSLs. You'll have to prove it.

If you have a true need for the extra IP space and can show me how it'd work, then I most likely won't have a problem with it.

Basically like @BlackoutIsHere said, if the justification is "SEO" then I just refund their payment. Other than that, it's on a case-by-case basis since not every situation is the same.

I couldn't have said it better myself @BlackoutIsHere - every case is a little different, but SEO is never a valid reason.

I think SSL still valid for justification. If I've few ecommerce website I'd like each site has it's own dedicated IP and using different rDNS for each IP.

Some shared hosts issue a dedicated IP to each cPanel account without SSL certificates, what is the reasoning for this?

1e10 said:

Some shared hosts issue a dedicated IP to each cPanel account without SSL certificates, what is the reasoning for this?

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I know @Francisco does this at BuyVM because if there's one IP, a DDoS on it will take down all the accounts sharing that IP. That's not so much the question here, though - we're talking about additional dedicated IPs, especially on VPSes.

D. Strout said:

I know @Francisco does this at BuyVM because if there's one IP, a DDoS on it will take down all the accounts sharing that IP. That's not so much the question here, though - we're talking about additional dedicated IPs, especially on VPSes.

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Right.

We used to do shared hosting back under Frantech before we ever did BuyVM and DDoS was a problem back then (granted we had a lot of gameservers).

We didn't want to see a repeat of that or being forced to offer DDOS filtering for free. DDOS filtering on shared hosting is a pain in the butt and gets very ugly if there's ever a leak. I'd rather just give the IP in the price and not deal with that headache.

Francisco

I need more IP's for SSL, The Retirement Home still use Windows 2000 and XP so no SIN Support.

Otherwise i am getting bitch slapped because we dont offer SSL.

Thankz

IP Justification, what are you, a bunch of legitimate providers or does ARIN justification have you quaking ?

Something like 20% of users are still using XP so you can't use SNI yet.

Abdussamad said:

Something like 20% of users are still using XP so you can't use SNI yet.

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MSIE on WinXP does not support SNI, but this can be remedied by installing Firefox/Chrome/etc.