strawman for discussion in Ann Arbor

Sat Oct 2 17:20:11 UTC 1993

I think the critical component for any successful forum is 
whether or not the agenda is relevent to the people participating
in the forum.  As such there are really few technical and 
operational differences between GIX and NAP issues.  It is really 
just an incidental difference in where you are operating in the global 
Internet mesh.  Currently there is a single root (the mesh is 
at this point is close to a tree and the GIX is very close to being 
the root), but over time this will diffuse, and each party will 
probably root a hierarchical routing tree out of the mesh by 
logically pulling themselves up to the root.

In this sense the nature of regionally defined vrs globally defined
boundaries in terms of GIX/NAP and IEPG/{RIPE, US-NOGIN, PAC-NOGIN,
LATIN-NOGIN, etc.} are somewhat artificial.  They are still useful
since they provide a mechanism for reasonable meeting sizes and scoping 
of discussions, containment of costs for participating in meetings
(e.g. travel), and allows for taking advantage of regional initiatives
(U.S. NII, European CEC, etc.) and regional differences
in terms of operational context.  

I would think it best if the boundaries between global
and regional NOGINs are kept in an ad-hoc manner.

cheers,
peter