Warning: implementing this would likely require breaking changes in the inter-node protocol. Please label this appropriately and postpone until it’s time to break protocols again.

In HTTP, the request has a Host header to tell the host which web site the request is meant for. This allows one server to server any number of web sites on the same IP address and port number. This is very handy for hosting many web sites. This works nicely together with DNS CNAME records.

With Radicle, different nodes on the same host (IP address) are differentiated by port number. There are relatively few available port numbers, merely tens of thousands. While I don’t expect that to be a limitation in practice, it’d be nice for a potential Radicle hosting service to not have to allocate port numbers, and for their users to not have to remember port numbers.

If the Radicle port number had something identifies the ID of the node that is being connected to, a Radicle hosting service could use the same domain name, IP address, and port number, for any number of Radicle nodes.

Extrapolating from the HTTP server experience, that could potentially mean servince tens of thousands on the same server, I think.