> IP addresses also are assigned by registrars (ARIN in the US and Canada, for instance).

To be pedantic for a moment, ARIN etc. are registries.

The registrar is your ISP, cloud provider etc.

You can get a PI (Provider Independent) allocation for yourself, usually with the assistance of a sponsoring registrar. Which is a nice compromise way of cutting out the middleman without becoming a registrar yourself.

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immibis 12 hours ago | parent [-]

You can also become a registrar yourself - at least, RIPE allows it. However, fees are significantly higher and it's not clear why you'd want to, unless you were actually providing ISP services to customers (in which case it's mandatory - you're not allowed to use a PI allocation for that)

	▲	traceroute66 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> and it's not clear why you'd want to The biggest modern-era reason is direct access to update your RPKI entries. But this only matters if you are doing stuff that makes direct access worthwhile. If your setup is mostly "set and forget" then you should just accept the lag associated with needing to open a ticket with your sponsor to update the RPKI.