Re: Topicality perceptions
One of the biggest issues with the list as I've seen from time to time from my perspective, is the definition of operations. So on a quick breakdown of the logical definition of NANOG, I derive Operations of the North American Network. The problem with this stems from far too many bastardizing their own definition of what it should be. Please don't contribute to the bastardization. Section 3 of the NANOG charter states: The purpose of NANOG is to provide forums in the North American region for education and the sharing of knowledge for the Internet operations community. You can read the full charter here: http://www.nanog.org/charter.html By your definition, Cat's recent request for outage information about Telehouse North would be off-topic. But according to the NANOG FAQ here: http://www.nanog.org/listfaq.html outages are on topic. Obviously, network infrastructure tends to span political borders and geographic borders, therefore it is not unusual that Cat has an infrastructure issue in Europe to deal with. On your first point, the fuzziness and lack of clarity of what network operations issues belong on this list, I agree. The FAQ is never posted on the list so it has become an obscure document hidden away on a little-used website. It needs to be promoted more and I think it needs to be updated to communicate more clearly. These are off-topic but I wouldn't trade em for the world. I've learned much from them, as have I from all sorts of posts on topic or not. I agree with you. Unfortunately some old-timers would rather see a return to the old days when network ops and engineering was an obscure passtime only understood by those who knew the secret handshake and were admitted to the inner circle. They forget that NANOG's major role has been in educating the new people who have flooded into the net ops community as the Internet grew and grew and grew. --Michael Dillon
Re: Topicality perceptions
Concur. Nanog has been an on-going education in essentially all aspects of internetworking, routing, data centres, security, spam/malware/abuse. Long may it stay that way. I'd argue that the fuzziness is probably a reflection of the ever-broadening role of IT/telco/netops people and ideas in current organisations. Now, someone mentioned issues with SIP. I'd like to flag that this is going to become a top line operational issue in the next few years, due to the deployment of following technologies: 1) Carrier/Enterprise VoIP 2) Peer-to-Peer VoIP using SIP (see - Gizmo) 3) Concurrent applications using SIP 4) IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) in mobile networks (and possibly fixed networks) interworking with each other, PSTN and the public Internet 5) ETSI TISPAN activity (probably the least important of the five) Note that 1 through 3 use SIP as defined by IETF whereas 4 and 5 use the 3GPP/3GPP2/ETSI extensions to it, which may mean they cannot interwork. Further, IMS and various associated technologies employ DNS ENUM to map e164 numbers to SIP URIs, not to speak of ordinary DNS to map URIs to IP addresses. Some DNS security measures previously discussed on NANOG have the effect of filtering ENUM replies. There is also the problem that IMS carriers, as far as anyone knows, are going to operate as private internetworks and do some form of NAT at the Session Border Controller (ie - gateway to the public Internet). How they will handle this at private interconnections with each other is unclear. It is also unclear how connections between a Carrier SIP client with a privately assigned or RFC1918 address and a carrier-land URI, and an open-Internet IETF SIP client with a globally routable address and its own URI, will work. It also seems clear that IMS-adopting carriers will continue to declare themselves as carrier grade, which suggests that the criticality of their private DNS will be very high.
Re: Topicality perceptions
J. Oquendo rambled incoherently, saying in relevant part: William Allen Simpson wrote: Especially as I'm not aware of any Network Operator worth their salt that doesn't have regular contact with their support call centers. Regular contact? As in finding the name of someone who actually has a clue? Not the contact information of some helpdesk goon who doesn't understand the output of a traceroute? As in some helpdesk goon who understands what an AS is? You are a Network Operator, and you hired support personnel that doesn't understand the output of a traceroute and/or what an AS is? Perhaps the real problem here is some folks have lost sight of what it means to be a Network Operator?
Topicality perceptions
One of the biggest issues with the list as I've seen from time to time from my perspective, is the definition of operations. So on a quick breakdown of the logical definition of NANOG, I derive Operations of the North American Network. The problem with this stems from far too many bastardizing their own definition of what it should be. If I'm experiencing issues on the Network in North America, where else should I look for assistance but from a group that manages (or at least portrays to manage) operations in North America? I've posted quite a few questions here and there, many have said they've made no sense. DoS attacks... Mork calling Olson come in Olson... These do affect networks... Botnets, worms and viruses... Mork calling... Get the point? How many posts have we seen on configuring a router that were multi-threaded into a long post of my config is better than yours or similar. These are off-topic but I wouldn't trade em for the world. I've learned much from them, as have I from all sorts of posts on topic or not. I can see where there would be annoyance from certain threads, but I see more annoyance from the whiners and complainers who spew the same message inserting nothing worth reading and for this I have filters in place. William Allen Simpson wrote: Especially as I'm not aware of any Network Operator worth their salt that doesn't have regular contact with their support call centers. Regular contact? As in finding the name of someone who actually has a clue? Not the contact information of some helpdesk goon who doesn't understand the output of a traceroute? As in some helpdesk goon who understands what an AS is? Getting (semi)back on topic, who decides what's on topic or not, it seems to be based on one's personal view of what is and isn't relevant. SNIP http://www.nanog.org/endsystem.html The charter of the NANOG list was written to avoid being too specific and to not preclude useful network-relevent discussion /SNIP Botnets:Relevant Viruses and worms: Relevant DoS attacks:Relevant Mail/Spam: Relevant Router configuration: Semi-Relevant If someone's misconfiguration will affect your network, then router configurations are somewhat relevant. I recall having a fiber issue a while back (http://www.irbs.net/internet/nanog/0408/0563.html) and although it was not relevant to NANOG whatsoever, who else better to ask then the experienced engineers and I was thankful for the responses I received. I also recall talking about a possible huge DoS against the BGP protocol (which COULD affect hundreds) yet the response was... You're off-topic, etc. not including the off-list responses I received. Looking back at some of the threads I see posted here, whenever I tend to see something operational that doesn't bode well with someone, I see people quick to shoot a you're off-topic response offering nothing more than wasted bandwidth. It is those quick to shoot off those responses who give me the impression that they're nothing more than lazy whiners incapable of offering assistance/solutions/tips/etc. BGP exploitation? (http://www.irbs.net/internet/nanog/0308/1018.html) was shot down and I quote: this is almost certainly not a topic for Nanog. Really? To date I have not released plenty of stupid programs capable of wrecking havoc because they serve no purpose. My intentions when I posted this was to inform others Hey did you know that X could possible break your neighboring... It was sent with hopes of working with engineers to find a resolution. I'm sure if I shot off a program to the black hat community, I would have been an ass since I didn't properly notify the powers that be (whoever these are these days). Perhaps Operations need be dissected, re-defined and re-posted on NANOG. Laptop policies? http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg01619.html How is/was this relevant? So in other news, has anyone in the south experienced issues with Time Warner (South Carolina, Louisiana, etc.) experienced issues with filtering? Specifically SIP? I have tons of people with issues regarding VoIP and (not suprisingly) they happen to all be related to Time Warner. =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ J. Oquendo http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x1383A743 How a man plays the game shows something of his character - how he loses shows all - Mr. Luckey
