On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Naslund, Steve <snasl...@medline.com> wrote: > Here we go down the rabbit hole again. This is not difficult. An Internet > Service Provider is an entity that provides Internet connectivity to its > customers for some consideration.
> If you are looking for a legal definition of an ISP you are not going to find > (a >satisfactory) one. The FCC does have specific rules that define carriers >such as ILEC, CLEC, RLEC, and those have definitions. ISP is really a term > that describes a line of business. There is no engineering definition of an > ISP that is defined by any regulatory body that I am aware of. Correct. "ISP" is not a specific technology or business. It is based on what is being sold. You can be selling customers a dial-up service where your customers are presented with a shell prompt over the dial-in terminal connected to a hosted Unix server you are renting with connectivity from a 56K leased line, and you are still an ISP. By common definitions, by the way, Youtube has been referred to as an ISP. An ISP is a company that generates revenue by providing connectivity to internet resources (in this case: streaming video). Usually ISP is used to refer to providers that are selling complete internet connectivity, however, not organizations that merely run one website providing entertainment or e-commerce. You can subdivide the idea of ISP into various related ideas such as "Online Service Provider", "Network Service Provider", "Broadband Service Provider", "E-mail service provider", "Mobile Data Provider", etc Which are more informative, but generally equally vague and informal. -- -JH
