I'd like to publically apologize to Randy Bush for the tone of my
response to his message from earlier this week.
Randy was quite correct to point out that any terms that IETF might
develop to describe ISPs might not be consistent with any particular
provider's offerings. And though I have heard far too many attempts
to use "business models" to justify technical brain-damage and worse,
it was indeed a leap on my part to assume that Randy was referring
to that type of business model.
Keith
p.s. I do however think that, given the tendency of various providers
these days to violate the internet protocol specifications and
erode the ability of applications to run on the network, the
community might benefit from some kind of "standardized" (in the
loose sense) description of IP service (rather than ISPs) that could be
specified by customers. and IETF would appear to be the organization
which is best suited to define such terms.