For the technical geeks out there, there are a couple things BPW has been doing recently that hint at things to come.

ARIN Registration

ARIN, or the American Registry for Internet Numbers is the regional body that manages IP addresses. For example, hollandbpw.com currently lives at the IP address 67.225.219.197.

Holland BPW is now registered with ARIN which is a step needed to become an ISP and sell internet service. Each internet customer needs and IP address to connect to the internet, assigned by their ISP (ok, I’m simplifying this a bit, but if you knew that much you probalby stopped reading a while ago). BPW needs to be registered in order to get a block of IP addresses to assign to customers.

Merit Membership

On Monday (March 6) the BPW Board approved membership in Merit Network. Merit is a membership organization made up of Michigan’s state universities, education, healthcare, and government entities and they run an extensive fiber network across the state.

Merit membership has a lot of benefits from training to services, but to quote BPW, “of specific interested to HBPW is Merit’s IPv4 address space. By becoming a Merit member, HBPW will gain access to this space, allowing for enhanced internet connectivity…”. IPv4 addresses are a scarce resource, but still needed for an ISP. It is good to see BPW making plans to gain access to that address space.