ARIN newbie here. I apologize in advance if these issues have already been covered somewhere. I also apologize if this list isn't the ideal venue for these questions, but I suppose that some of them could point to a need for clarification in the NRPM or elsewhere. My organization is not yet an ARIN member and there don't appear to be any public-access listservs that are more appropriate. (I see that a public discussion list is in the works.)
The terms "ISP" and "LIR" are used interchangeably in this email, in the spirit of section 6.5.1 of the NRPM. Backstory: I work for a company that is preparing to become multi-homed later this month. We currently use provider-reassigned address space, so we are getting ready to request resources from ARIN and therefore need to determine if we should classify ourselves as an ISP/LIR or as an end-user. If I were only to mention our primary business activity, manufacturing, it would be pretty clear cut that we are an end-user. Where it gets complicated, however, is that we are also running a small-time colocation operation at our headquarters. This began as an accident, with us giving free hosting to a local nonprofit, but then some other people asked if they could pay to keep their equipment here. We only have a handful of tenants, and they are mostly friends of the company. The rates we charge are only slightly higher than break-even because we're not multihomed and we're not pretending to be a proper colocation facility (yet). Our "ISP" business has no public-facing website and service is currently only offered by word of mouth. To date, the growth of this side-hustle has been severely limited by our current upstream provider, which still hasn't implemented IPv6 and charges exorbitant fees for IPv4 address space, but things could change once we are multihomed and have our own direct allocations. Eventually, we will have to choose from one of two paths forward: commit to providing a higher level of service and expand the ISP operation so that it's worth our time, or shut it down and only service our primary business (which, either way, needs IPv6 and robust connectivity). We would prefer to take the former path, as it will give our technology operations greater scale, but it won't be clear for at least another year which way we're headed. (once we've addressed our current connectivity shortcomings and can better gauge what existing and prospective customers are willing to pay) Basically, in one to two years, we'll have either fully embraced our role as an ISP, or we'll have exited that business and will be firmly in the end-user camp. Questions: 1.) From our reading of the NRPM, it seems like we currently fall within the definition of an ISP, but what happens if this changes subsequent to our initial allocation? (*) Likewise, what happens if an organization that was directly assigned resources as an end-user begins offering Internet services to other organizations? The NRPM does not appear to address these scenarios. 3.) Is conversion from ISP to End User (and vice versa) possible if the nature of an organization's business changes? Is it necessary? 4.) Is ISP/end-user status recorded in ARIN's database on a per-prefix basis, or is it per-organization? How does one currently determine this status from Whois? I tried to find examples of organizations that would typically be seen as end-users, but there were no clues in their organizational Whois results, and Whois queries on their prefixes all indicate "NetType: Direct Allocation", just like ISPs, as opposed to "NetType: Direct Assignment". This would be consistent with a clue I found in the problem statement of Draft Policy ARIN-2022-12, which indicates that "direct assignments are no longer being utilized in ARIN databases", but does this then imply that the ISP/end-user distinction has been eliminated entirely? 5.) Now that ISPs and end-users share the same fee schedule and voting privileges, what distinctions remain, other than differences in allocation rules and the obligation for ISPs to register reassignments/reallocations? * It can be assumed for the above questions that our organization type (whether ISP or end-user) will not impact the size of the IPv6 prefix that we qualify for and request, which we anticipate being /40. In the hypothetical scenario where we would want to convert from ISP to end-user (assuming it's even possible), we wouldn't face the issue of not qualifying for an IPv6 block as large as the one that we were initially allocated as an ISP. We have > 13 sites in our WAN. I would be curious, however, to understand what might happen if an ISP were to have a larger allocation than that which it would qualify for once becoming an end user. Thanks in advance for any insight. _______________________________________________ ARIN-PPML You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List ([email protected]). Unsubscribe or manage your mailing list subscription at: https://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml Please contact [email protected] if you experience any issues.
