On Fri, 19 Sep 2025, David Farmer via ARIN-PPML wrote:
Please explain what is confusing about the current usage of both LIR and ISP? The following Blog post from ARIN seems perfectly straightforward to me; https://www.arin.net/blog/2023/02/28/ISP-or-end-user/ And the following page is about Requesting IP addresses. https://www.arin.net/resources/guide/request/ They both seem to address the idea that LIR and ISP are effectively the same thing.
Just a week ago, I asked if someone could give examples of how an ARIN member could be an LIR and not be an ISP, and was told "there are ways".
The page referenced above is confusing, because it simultaneously says ISP = LIR and LIR != ISP. If an LIR is "generally" an ISP, then that suggests there are circumstances in which an LIR is not an ISP.
From the page:
Let’s start by defining the elephant in the room: Local Internet Registry (LIR). In short, an LIR is an Internet Service Provider (ISP). As defined in ARIN’s Number Resource Policy Manual (NRPM): “A Local Internet Registry (LIR) is an IR that primarily assigns address space to the users of the network services that it provides. LIRs are generally Internet Service Providers (ISPs), whose customers are primarily end users and possibly other ISPs.” You may find that ARIN and many members of the community use ISP and LIR interchangeably in conversation. So, when someone says “ISP,” you can think of that as “ISP/LIR.”So, which is it? ISP and LIR are the same thing, or all ISPs with direct allocations can be LIRs (but don't have to be), but not all LIRs are ISPs?
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