strawman for discussion in Ann Arbor

Fri Oct 1 22:25:42 UTC 1993

Hi,

As many of you have noticed there is an agenda item for the Ann Arbor
Regional Techs meeting dealing with the future of the regional techs.

The regional techs is a useful forum for coordinating the US Internet,
it has participation by most US Internet providers including the
regional techs, CIX members, ANS, US Federal Network operators, etc.
Thus in some way, the name "regional-techs" does not do fully reflect 
the membership of the regional-techs mailing list and the attendees of
the regional-techs meetings.  Merit has done an excellent job of
organizing the regional techs from the beginning, and running the mailing
list and meetings as a function of the NSFNET project to date.  
It seems to me that the regional techs will continue to exist, 
independant of whatever occurs due to the result of the pending NSFNET
solicitation and awards.  In that spirit I would like to put forward 
the following outline of a strawman proposal:

	Regional Techs relabels itself to US-NOGIN, the US 
		Network Operators Group for InterNet.
		(the actual name is subject to change ...)

	US-NOGIN organized in an ad hoc manner.  This 
		would leave it with the current constiuency and  with
		an open  "membership" 

	Central topics for US-NOGIN:

		Coordination of US NIC  functionality
			CIDR
			relationship to top level NIC

		Coordination of US Routing Coordination
			Routing Registries 
			Technology Deployment
			Inter Provider coordination
			Info sharing

		Interexchange coordination (e.g. Mae-East, etc.)
			(network operators as customers of NSFNET NAPs)

	Structure of US-NOGIN meetings:
		Organizers of each meeting selected by US-NOGIN, would 
			circulate on a meeting by meeting basis, probably
			based on what the pressing issues at that time were.
		Location: try to collocate with other meetings: 
			IETF, InterOp, etc.

	Relationship with other organizations:
		Peer with RIPE, etc. as members of a federation which
			constitutes the IEPG.
		Loose (undefined, but recognized) overlapping relationships
			with FEPG, CIX, FARNET, etc.	

		Funding -- most costs are carried by membership and 
			sponsors of meetings. 

	Other operational issues?
		trouble resolution
		NOC to NOC handoff
		operational standards/IETF ORAD activities
		information sharing

I would welcome any feedback, especially if someone would like to help 
flesh this out.

cheers and see you in A**2,

peter