[ppml] Definition of "Existing Known ISP"

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Mon, Apr 30, 2007 at 08:42:01AM -0400, Michael Hertrick wrote:
> I think that today's definition of ISP not not limited to user access,
> transit, and backbone services as it once was.  Companies providing
> web hosting and co-location services should be considered ISPs.  For

We have an unfortunate overloading terms.  ISP is a term used by
people to talk about a broad catagory of companies that provide
some sort of Internet based service.  Web hosting, NSP's, ASP's,
dial up providers, all sorts of companies.

Unfortunately none of these have anything to do with the ARIN
defintion of an ISP.  ARIN has a section of the PPML manual dealing
with ISP's:

http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four2

I quote:

  ] 4.2.1.1. Purpose
  ] 
  ] ARIN allocates blocks of IP addresses to Internet Service Providers
  ] (ISPs) for the purpose of reassigning that space to their customers.

So for ARIN's purposes an ISP is someone who received a block of
IP space from ARIN, for the purpose of reassigning space to their
customers.  They also fall under the ISP fee schedule.

Compare and contrast, they are not end users, they are not RIPE
members, they are not APNIC members, and they are not Legacy space
holders; although of course an "ARIN ISP" may be any of the above
as well.

I personally think it's unfortunate the policy manual uses the term
ISP, because it is misleading.  I don't have a better one to suggest
though.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
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