Matt, While I understand your point _and_ I agree that in most cases an ISP should have an ASN. Having said that, I work with multiple operators around the US that have exactly one somewhat economical choice for connectivity to the rest of the Internet. In that case having a ASN is nice, but serves little to no practical purpose. For clarity's sake all 6 of the ones I am thinking about specifically have more than 5k broadband subs. I continue to vehemently disagree with the notion that ASN = ISP since many/most of the ASNs represent business networks that have nothing to do with Internet access. Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms -------------------------------- On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 6:12 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 1:42 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
On Jul 14, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Brett's concerns seem to center around his ability to be cost-competitive with the big guys in his area...which implies there *are* big guys in his area to have to compete with.
He 's running wireless links, from web and prior info as I recall. His key business seems to be outside the cable tv / DSL wire loop ranges from wire centers. The bigger services seem to have fiber into Laramie, and Brett seems to have fiber to that Denver exchange pointlet .
Why he's not getting fiber to a bigger exchange point or better transit
is
unclear.
There are bandwidth reseller / BGP / interconnect specialist ISPs out there who live to fix these things, if there's anything like a viable customer base...
Ah--right, that was the genesis of my rant about "if you don't have an ASN, you don't exist". He'd first have to get an ASN before he could engage in getting a different upstream transit, or connect to different exchange points, etc.
As much as people insisted you can be an ISP without an AS number, I will note that it's much, MUCH harder, to the point where the ARIN registration fees for the AS number would quickly be recouped by the cost savings of being able to shop for more competitive connectivity options.
Matt
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone