[RRG] Providers and providers

[RJ Atkinson <rja@extremenetworks.com>]

Let me point out what I previously thought had been
quite obvious --- though after browsing some recent
notes apparently is not obvious to all...


Large corporations that have large networks are ISPs.
They might be ISPs with themselves as the only customer,
but they are effectively the same as an ISP.



That's true for Boeing, for US DISA, and for probably
a few hundred other large (private) IP network operators.

Boeing doesn't have PI space.  oeing has PA space -- with
itself as its ISP.  Parts of Boeing *do* get renumbered
from time to time -- just as for DISA -- the IP address plan
of any large deployment or any large organisation simply
is never static.

The same basic analysis is true for US DoD networks,
which generally have DISA as their ISP.  DISA even
is funded on a "fee for service" basis, meaning that,
for example, USAF pays DISA to ensure IP connectivity
to each random AFB around the globe.

And by the way, while I think the US Government networks
are among the few "all continents" networks, I'm pretty
confident the USG isn't the largest ISP.  For one thing,
most of the civilian (and some of the DoD) IP connectivity
is supplied by commercial ISPs under GSA contracts
(e.g. Networx) that are remarkably similar to any other
customer contracts with the same big ISPs.  For example,
at one point DREN simply had been outsourced to AT&T.
US Navy outsourced a bunch of its domestic IP connectivity
via an EDS contract, if one believes Federal Computer Week
(a trade periodical).


The issue to hand before the broader community is not how
to deal with any really large network deployment.  The issue
is how to deal with the many many more mid-sized or smaller
deployments in some way that actually will scale in some
cost-effective manner.


Cheers,

Ran


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