Do we need ISPs to access to the Modern Internet?

First of all, we should get some grasp of how the internet works, before answering to this question. Let us dig into it...

The first thing to note is, the internet isn't really a single "thing". It's a convenient name we give to what is in effect, just a lot of computers that are able to talk to each other. Think about your home: you might have a desktop, a laptop, a printer, and a phone, and you need them all to talk to each other, so you put in a network that lets them do that. Just on its own that's useful, you could transfer a file from the desktop to the laptop, or send a job to the printer from the phone. But your network doesn't do everything. So the next step is to connect your network to other networks.

The simplest "Internet" is just two networks like the above that can talk to each other. So you have two desktops (in network A and in network B), two printers, etc. So now you can send files between the two desktops. Or perhaps you can set up a simple website on the Desktop A system and access it from the Desktop B system. Congratulations, you've made "The Internet" as it existed at the very very beginning!

It just expanded from there. More and more independent networks started talking to each other, and the growing Internet decided via its members on a large number of standards for how those computers are supposed to talk to each other. Independent organizations were founded to help manage this; one I'll refer to below is the RIPE NCC, the dutch Registry of Internet Numbers, which is the most important one for "becoming an ISP" in Europe, Middle East and Central Asia.

So, how do you become an ISP?

It is easy! You just talk to the RIPE, and they give you some numbers that are put in their official "book" that keeps track of everyone who makes up the Internet. Except that doing this isn't actually easy, or cheap. There's two main things you need from the RIPE: what is called an AS (Autonomous System) Number, which is a unique number that identifies your network, and a block of IP addresses that they assign to you. Those IP addresses become your addresses on the Internet, like your telephone number of home street address. But that alone isn't enough, because no one can talk to you unless you connect to someone else! So using your AS Number, you establish what are called peering relationships with other networks on the Internet. A reasonable small ISP would have at least 2 peers, and you connect a physical wire to them somehow, and then do what is called "announce routes" to your IP address blocks to those other providers. That will propagate out from those peers to the wider Internet, and done! traffic can now reach you! You're now an ISP.

It is that easy?

No. This process is not easy at all.

First off all, none of this is cheap (every step there costs you money, in addition to all the gear you'll actually need which itself is not really cheap), and you also need people with good technical skill to set it up and run it.

One thing to note is that the RIPE is not really in just the business of handing out these AS numbers and IP addresses to random individual people. There's also "tiers" of companies on the Internet, really depending on how big they are. Tier 1's are giant companies and networks that form the backbone of the Internet (Like AT&T), and most other companies use them to talk to each other. From there you get Tier 2 and Tier 3 (small and local) networks like ISPs. Yes, it's not just ISPs: if you're a big corporation like, for example, Google, you might just register for your own AS number and IPs and peer directly with some Tier 1 and Tier 2 networks to get on "the Internet", no ISP needed!

So, how do you, a normal person, get on the Internet?

You sign up for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who's done all that stuff above! As a business, they obtained equipment, the AS number, the IP addresses, and the staff to run this network of theirs, and their business model is selling you access to their network, which in turn lets you connect through them to the other networks that make up the Internet.

Conclution

So, you NEED an ISP?

Actually no! If you can get your own network set up. But doing so is way beyond the skill level and cost of the vast majority of people or even organizations (small businesses, etc.), so they just pay an ISP to connect them. And that's how you get the Modern Internet we have today.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post!

Surprise!

At the time of writing this post, 17 September, i was visiting the Ripe NCC Website. And guess what? I’m just found out they will have a online Event about the state of the Internet in Iran ( my country ) in next 2 hours!!

So I signed up and attended to the meeting.

Ripe Meeting

here i write some summery of the presentations and discussions (things that i understand from them). you can access to whole presentation files (merged together) from here.