[lir-wg] IPv6 assignments to RIPE itself

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 15:37:27 +0100, Gert Doering wrote:

> Just calling those parties ISPs will not solve the dilemma.   A big company
> that wants to give IP connectivity to their employees (like the RIPE NCC
> does) is not an "ISP" in the classic sense, as it's not their main 
> business.
> 
> On the other hand, if you call everybody that happens to offer an ISDN S0
> for dialup to their employees purposes an ISP, then most of our business 
> customers could be called ISPs - which defeats the "one /48 for end sites" 
> rule again.

I agree. Maybe the difference is how the home network is connected? For
most people, the normal conenctivity is via traditional ISPs. They get
a /48 from that ISP. They may also have some kind of connectivity (VPN
or dialup) to their company network. But I think that's mostly used for
"secure" access to company services. Usually one /64 out of the company
prefix will be enough. The company does not need to assign /48s to its
employees.

University xDSL, cable and fiber networks are different. Usually, it's
the only connectivity for the students or employee. And they prefer to
get /48. In this case the university can be seen as an ISP.

I think some uncertainty comes from the fact that most ISPs are still
not offering IPv6 services and people are trying to get an IPv6 prefix
somewhere else.

> I still don't think that it's very easy to define a given business
> relation as "this is an end-end-end customer", and "that is an ISP".

Thinking more about it, I agree.

	rvdp