[arin-ppml] Initial ISP Allocation Policy

[Owen DeLong]

On Jul 17, 2013, at 2:36 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 1:13 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> Having made applications under both policy frameworks and
>> having been active in authoring policies on both sides of the
>> spectrum, I think that the needs of these two different
>> communities in terms of how they justify resources are,
>> in fact, quite distinct.  I suggest this exercise for anyone
>> who doubts this is the case...
> 
> Akamai assigns IP addresses to its servers for use with SSL. Akamai
> owns the servers. The servers cache content from other servers they
> don't own and then feed it up to the public on request.
> 
> ISP or end-user? Why?

Generally, I would say end-user. My understanding is that mostly, Akamai uses blocks from the upstreams for each cluster which are assigned to them for use on the cluster.

When I worked for Netli (which is now part of Akamai), we certainly applied as an end-user for our addresses that were used in that manner.

End-user because we were not making assignments to systems we did not control.

> Google assignes IP addresses to its servers for SSL. Google owns the
> servers. The servers cache content from other servers they don't own
> and index it for searching by google users.
> 
> ISP or end-user? Why?

Same answer as for Akamai and for the same reasons.

OTOH, if you asked about Google Fiber, then clearly that is an ISP and it is a different situation.

> The University of Maryland assigns IP addresses to students in dorms.
> The computers are owned by the students and do everything from web
> surfing to bit torrent to servers.
> 
> ISP or end-user? Why?

I could accept the university applying under either policy and self-determining so long as the university was not SWIPing blocks to those students and was willing to take responsibility for all uses of that address space. The question of whether students in an academic institution (this is not limited to universities IMHO) are more like customers of an LIR/ISP or more like employees of a business is definitely one of the most vague use cases today. I would argue that it varies from university to university and that the university and ARIN staff should usually be  able to come to mutual agreement on the classification based on appropriate guidance from policy. Hence my proposed much simpler wording for this policy.

> Starbucks Coffee runs wifi hot spots. Many many wifi hotspots.
> 
> ISP or end-user? Why?

Each Starbucks itself is more like an end-user. They never register the addresses to the users and the users are making very transient use of those addresses. The entity that allocates blocks to the individual Starbucks locations is probably more of an LIR/ISP, however and probably should be registering those blocks to the locations.

> Hilton and Marriott provide Internet service to their customers during
> their stays.
> 
> ISP or end-user? Why?

I consider this to be an identical use case to the Starbucks question and the same answer would apply.

> Linode assigns IP addresses to virtual servers running only on
> equipment they own. Each virtual server is leased to a customer.
> 
> ISP or end-user? Why?

End-user. The addresses are being placed on hardware devices under their exclusive control.

However, if Linode were to start assigning blocks of addresses to customers and wanted to be able to register those blocks in whois for purposes of delegation of responsibility and reputation matters, then they would become an ISP/LIR for that purpose, IMHO.

> Godaddy vends DNS service to half the Internet using only equipment they own.
> 
> ISP or end-user? Why?

End-user. They are not delegating addresses to external entities and have no need to register delegations or sub-delegations.

Owen