[kiallmacinnes]

> I can think of a few dozen "unnecessary" IP addresses this little web development firm consumes, I suspect big hosting companies could probably find thousands or tens of thousands of similarly used IP addresses.

That's the problem. A few million addresses would stretch things out by a couple of months.. But the cost of getting a few million websites onto SNI would far exceed any benefit.

[bigiain]

Perhaps. As well as "returning" a few million addresses, it'd also plug one of the drivers behind demand for new addresses (I've got no idea if it's just my blinkered little web-dev worldview talking here - anyone actually know what the big consumers of new ipv4 addresses are doing with them? Is SSL certs for websites a significant consumer?)

If my view is even vaguely supportable - I see things happening that give me some optimism - WHM/cPanel, a fairly significant webhosting management system, rolled out SNI support earlier this year (a few months behind schedule, but it's out now and it works). I assume Plesk and other webhosting management packages are doing the same thing. Perhaps this'll stave off the ipv4 apocolypse by longer than expected? (Or perhaps I've got no idea about what's really going on out there…)