the NIC?

Tue Oct 5 02:02:56 UTC 1993

Attached is a brief review of what Claudio & I cobbled together.  I don't
remember if all the comments were added, and conversations today point out
the need to either restrict the scope to IP (the wording of the current draft
seems to point to an IP-centric view), or widen the view to support 
multi-protocol view(s)....:-)

Additional, -CONSTRUCTIVE- comments are welcome.       

What is a Internet Provider?

An entity that provides IP service to a customer base, either in a closed 
environment (no external world view) or open, world connected Internet service.
At a minimum this would entail a bilateral aggreement with another provider to 
exchange routing information between the two.  It would also imply that the 
instant any bilateral agreement is made, that one of the common points of this 
agreement is to recognise the IANA for what it is, and agree that the documents
produced by ISOC standards and published in the offical RFC repositories are 
the standards by which compliance with an IP network are defined and form the 
sole basis for arbitration of disputed points. RFC change occurs in the normal
fashion as identified by the ISOC.

This does not imply any actual application support between providers.  Areas 
that may define base level customer service are DNS registration, and some SMTP 
configuration support. Additional user services for clients are infotools like 
archie/ftp/gopher/www.  Higher level services like help desk and training
may be added.

It may be appropriate to require some level of periodic  accounting/checkup for
all providers by the IANA for numbers allocated to providers. It may also be 
required that a provider must be refered by an existing provider. 

This seems to cover the base set of what an Internet provider does and may do.
Additional requirements may be imposed by other entities that have a controlling
interest in one or more providers. It seems that a checklist of items that
when reviewed, are generally positive, indicate that internet provisioning is
occuring, is a useful tool.
-- 
Regards,
Bill Manning         bmanning at rice.edu        PO Box 1892
 713-285-5415         713-527-6099	       Houston, Texas
   R.U. (o-kome)       			        77251-1892