If you remove "to other organisations" from d) and also reword c) so that it refers to something other than organisations (sites?) then I think the policy will be much fairer.

Now we are getting closer to the real stuff: nobody in RIPE-Land has ever been able to agree on the definition of "ISP", much less on a definition of "customer" or "organisation" or "site".

However, I still think that the plan for 200 sites within 2 years is not necessary at this point in time.

It is not even useful or helpful, because the entities which should count up to the magical number 200, eventually, are of different make and model and lifespan. If you look at the "traditional mass-market ISP", having 200 customers is zilch. Private homes, SOHO stuff, and so on. Looking at e.g. a research network, a "customer" or "site" is something like Vienna University. Till recently (before the medical faculty was split off, I don't have the curent figures at hand) this site was serving some 60K+ students plus 6..7K facutly on the campus. The whole LAN serving that community on-site can live comfortably within a *single* /48 (yes we do have an addressing plan and our backbone is dual-stack :-). But, there are "slightly" less than 200 universities in our country... Looking at the regional school districts (9 of them, aligned with the federal states), they _could_ be run as a single site within a /48 each, and from our point of view, as a single "customer" (again 9 << 200) - or they can be treated as separate schools (=sites) leaving us with a couple of thousands to add to the tally :-). It all depends on the *operational model*, the connection technology, and the contractual relationships. Bottom line: 200 is just as good or useless as a "measure" for size of an operator, or its importance, determination to introduce IPv6, or the size of a user community served - as is 0, 5, 10, 100 or 20K. And, btw, I was involved in trying to align the evolving regional IPv6 policies across the regions: the magical mistery number "200" is merely a result of social engineering, and not a result of technical or scaling deliberations. The proposals we had on the table at that time were between "0" and a couple of "thousands".

If only we had a clearer definition of a network

How about: Some transmission equipment and physiacal channel, with more than 1 attachment point, serving some functional gadet, which require a unique identification and agreeing on the use of a common set of communication rules. those ruleswhich include using those unique identifiers on more than 1 of the attachment points.

and an internetwork.

More than 1 operational domain with a "network", interconnected on at least 1, probably more, points using an "interconnection network" to provide and operate the exchange of information.

I would probably say something like: "Any organization planning to operate an IPv6 internetwork connecting two or more physically discontiguous locations...".

You might have fun coming up with a definiton of "physically discontiguous locations...", but that's a diferent exercise :-)

--Michael Dillon

Wilfried.