Re: 202212160543.AYC Re: eMail Conventions

2022-12-16 Thread Jethro Binks 
Abe,

Since you ask, and it's coffee time on a Friday, I'll chip in.  This is not an 
invitation for an extended conversation; take or leave what I say below as you 
wish, but note my remark at the end.  The only other general remark I'd make is 
observe what others do; these are the usual norms for email conversations that 
you should probably adopt for friction-free discussion.

> As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the 
> "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's 
> mechanism!

I don't know about Thunderbird; but this is one of the things that you do that 
likely irks people.  Your message already carries a Date: field added to it by 
your email system when you compose and send (and displayed to recipients), you 
don't need to put another date in the Subject.  By changing the subject each 
time you respond to a point in the discussion, you mess up the threading that 
some other mail readers use -- they often rely on the Subject being, modulo a 
few accepted changes, the same for each related message -- although there are 
techniques other than relying just on Subject: too.  Just hit "reply" and type 
your response to someone's comments, perhaps appropriately quoting the direct 
points you are responding to (that's a whole other topic).

By messing with threading, you also make it very hard for people to look back 
on the list archives and read the totality of the discussion as historical 
record, which, if you're proposing changes to the operation of the Internet and 
its addressing, they may wish to do.

You don't need to put your initials there either.  We know it's from you.  The 
email system adds a From: header with your name and displays that to recipients.

If you use (e.g.) "202212160543.AYC" as some sort of 'letter reference' for 
your own purposes, I'd suggest just stating that in the body of the message, 
maybe at the bottom out of the way, rather than butchering the Subject: field.

You don't need to add "(2022-12-16 10:04 EST)" and similar after your name 
signature.  The sending time and timezone are all stored in the message 
automatically when you send it.  No-one receiving it cares that you might have 
written it at 10.04 and sent it a minute or an hour later.

> my best understanding of an eMail is that it is an electronic equivalent of 
> the traditional postal letter.

Not so much.  And anyway, because it's on a computer, the computer can 
automatically do things for you that you used to have to do manually.  Like 
adding the date and your name.  It's your own time you are wasting adding these 
things, but the more you irk people (and it doesn't take much), the less likely 
they are to engage with what you are trying to communicate and so the chances 
of you progressing your case diminish.

Jethro.


.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Jethro R Binks, Network Manager,

Information Services Directorate, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK


The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, 
number SC015263.


From: NANOG  on behalf of 
Abraham Y. Chen 
Sent: 16 December 2022 15:05
To: nanog 
Cc: NANOG ; Chen, Abraham Y. 
Subject: 202212160543.AYC Re: eMail Conventions

Dear Bill, Et al.:

0)  Ever since I signed up to the NANOG List, I have been getting
complaints about my eMail style, format, etc. Since I could not find any
document that clearly stated the guidelines and no one cared about
providing an explicit lead, it has been a very frustrating experience.
As I explained previously, my best understanding of an eMail is that it
is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter. We should
start from following the old business correspondence protocol and then
enhance it by taking advantage of the available electronic facility.
Beyond that, an eMail is a literary work from an individual writer's own
"creativity". A receiver can do anything possible about handling an
eMail, but should refrain from imposing "rules" to the writer, unless
there is a mutual consent. From time to time in the past, I did get
questions from various contacts about what was I doing. Upon describing
my rationales, most accepted them. Some even started to mimic my
approaches. However, feedback on this List was exceptionally strong, it
was quite distracting. Thus, I tried my best to minimize the rough
spots, so that we could carry on the technical discussions.

1)  "On 2022-12-01 23:54, nanog wrote: ...  1) Your emails do not
conform to the list standards (changing subject lines with every reply
making it impossible to digest or follow.) ...   ":

   The above from you was the most recent feedback that I got. It
stirred up my curiosity on this topic again. Since I had some slack time
during the past few days, I decided to look into the "threading". I have
been using ThunderBird eMail client software ever since its
introduction, but never

Re: IP tracking system

2021-12-14 Thread Jethro Binks 

Efficient-IP https://www.efficientip.com
Bluecat https://bluecatnetworks.com/

(both commercial)


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Jethro R Binks, Network Manager,

Information Services Directorate, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK


The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, 
number SC015263.


From: NANOG  on behalf of 
Andrew Latham 
Sent: 14 December 2021 17:05
Cc: nanog@nanog.org 
Subject: Re: IP tracking system

>From a previous run of this topic I made a wiki page and will copy paste from 
>it.

A list in no particular order

Mediawiki https://mediawiki.og
Netbox https://github.com/digitalocean/netbox
Ralph http://ralph.allegro.tech/
IPplan https://sourceforge.net/projects/iptrack/
Infoblox https://www.infoblox.com/
GestióIP https://www.gestioip.net/
PHPIPAM https://phpipam.net/
NIPAP http://spritelink.github.io/NIPAP/
6connect https://www.6connect.com/
Subnetsmngr https://github.com/seankndy/subnetsmngr
TIPP http://tipp.tobez.org/
Device 42 https://www.device42.com/

On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 9:15 AM Adam Thompson 
mailto:athomp...@merlin.mb.ca>> wrote:
> This may have been asked and answered, but I couldn’t find the answer.

The answer changes every year, anyway.

> What are people recommending these days for IP tracking systems? I’m
> looking for something to track the used/available IP addresses in my new
> lab.

FWIW, we use TeemIP/iTop, although I can't say I would recommend it, it does 
work.

We've looked at NetBox, which is quite nice, but getting our data *out* of 
TeemIP/iTop proved to be much more difficult than expected, so we haven't 
migrated yet.  CANARIE (Canadian NREN) and all the subsidiary RANs here are 
adopting NetBox, AFAIK.

-Adam

Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
MERLIN
100 - 135 Innovation Drive
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8
(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)
athomp...@merlin.mb.ca
www.merlin.mb.ca



--
- Andrew "lathama" Latham -