Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Sat Jul 12 02:54:24 UTC 2014

Matthew Petach wrote:
> *sigh*
>
> Fine, fine, y'all are super-attached to your
> business-y definitions of ISP.
>
> I'll clarify my earlier point to eliminate this
> confusion.
>
> To the core of the internet, if you do not have
> an AS number, you do not exist.  If your business
> does not have an AS number *as far as the BGP
> speaking core of the internet is concerned, there
> is no representation for your entity, no matter
> what acronym you attach to it.*
>
> There.  Confusion over.  You can call yourself an
> ISP until you're blue in the face, for all the good
> it does you; the incontrovertible point I'm making
> is that you don't exist as a recognizably separate
> entity from your upstream provider from the network
> perspective.

For a lot of folks, "business-y definitions" actually matter. People 
write checks and send bills, to business entities, not AS numbers.  
Business entities get sued, taxed, and regulated - not AS numbers.

And, for the record, it's pretty widely acknowledge that "The World" 
(Barry Shein) was the world's first commercial ISP - offering shell 
access in 1989, and at some point started offering PPP dial-up 
services.  As I recall, they were a UUnet POP.

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra