I agree with Dale (I think). ISPs do a lot more than just register Internet
addresses, but their interaction with ARIN and the NRPM is under their function
as an Internet Registry (allocating and registering addresses for their
customers), so they are a special case of LIR. If the term LIR is used most
commonly by other regions and their definition of LIR is similar to ARIN's, then
I think "LIR" should be used in the NRPM, even if it requires more single-point
changes.
If everyone agrees that the terms ISP and LIR, as used in the NRPM, are
equivalent, then substituting one for the other is a purely editorial change,
not a policy change.
If we want to make clear in the policy that ISPs and LIRs are the same, this
should be explicitly stated in the definitions section at the beginning. Both
acronyms should be defined, and the statement should be made their that their
policy implications are identical and thereafter only one of the terms will be
used in the rest of the NRPM.
If, some time in the future, we develop a policy that distinguishes LIRs from
ISPs, a future policy revision could state that some particular aspects of the
new policy apply only to LIRs and not ISPs or vice versa, although there appear
to be no such policies at the current time. Making the editorial change to use
only the term ISP or LIR now would make any such future change much easier to
understand and implement.
On 12/5/2023 5:10 PM, Dale W. Carder wrote:
Thus spake Brian Jones (bjo...@vt.edu) on Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 02:28:18PM -0500:
Section 6.5.1.a “Terminology” explains that ISP and LIR terms are used
interchangeably throughout the entire document. The NRPM working group in
discussions with ARIN staff has concluded that the term LIR could be replaced
everywhere in the NRPM with the term ISP. By my counts the term LIR appears 37
times in the NRPM currently, while ISP is referenced 62 times. The LIR term is
utilized less nowadays than in times past and ISP is a more widely used and
well understood term. The LIR term occurs more frequently in other RIRs and it
is likely that if section 6 were written solely for ARIN the ISP term would
have been used. So the question to the community is, would replacing the term
LIR with ISP make the NRPM more consistent and readable? The NRPM working group
would like to hear your feedback.
I think that would be a step in the wrong direction. To me, the term
ISP seems to carry a strong commercial connotation that excludes the
existence of LIR entities that include governments, academic
institutions, non-profits, large scale enterprises, or even cloud or
content providers.
Of course, I have some bias coming from a network that is very much not
an isp... ;-)
The term LIR is used at other RIR's as you mention, as well as in a
number of RFC's since the mid 90's. Why should we diverge?
I think you could delete 6.5.1.a and clarify in section 2 that LIR and
ISP may be used interchangably in the document, but personally I would
prefer use of the term ISP be cleaned up, not LIR.
Part b
Section 6.5.1.b defines the IPv6 nibble boundaries . The working group feels
like this definition would be a better fit if moved to section 2 of the NRPM
which is the Definitions section. Your thoughts about moving the IPv6 nibble
boundaries definition from section 6.5.1.b to section 2 would be appreciated.
Sounds perfectly reasonable.
Dale
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