How many ISPs are out there?

Tue Jul 24 11:08:02 UTC 2001

Unless the network is lying to me again, bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com said: 
> 
>  well, once upon a time....  you weren't really considered an "ISP"
>  unless you were able to play the BGP game.  So an ASN once was an
>  hallmark of an I{A,S}P.  Things change so I expect it is much harder
>  to figure out, externally, what an I{A,S}P is than it used to be.
>  I still use the ASN token as a discriminator. YMMV

Additionally, you need to subtract out the ones that have gone out of
business.  I was looking thru the ASN list and right off the top found
about 5 that I recognized as defunct within the first 5000.

(ok, ok, 5 / 5000... maybe you don't need to subtract them out after all)

AlanC {stunned that we just got an ASN in the 2xxxxx range}