NANOG

Wed Apr 3 00:46:01 UTC 1996

On Tue, 2 Apr 1996, Bob Metcalfe wrote:

> Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, the problem is not that the Internet's chief 100
> engineers, whoever they are, fail to report their problems to me, it's that
> they (you?) fail to report them to anybody, including to each other, which
> is half our problem.

This is a good point. If there were a list somewhere which collated all 
of the trouble reports from all of the ISP's then some entrepreneur could 
set up an Internet traffic report WWW site and make all the mass of 
trouble reports palatable for end users, including stories about ladies 
in Lincolns. 

This entrepreneur could get rich selling ads on their WWW site and 
everyone would know what is going on.

> Now, NANOG -- not affiliated with anybody, you say, not even the Internet
> Society.  OK, I stand corrected.  So, if not ISOC, who are IEPG and NANOG?
> Do IEPG and NANOG have anything to do with one another?  By the way, is
> IETF not ISOC too?  See www.isoc.org.

Even though I know how all this came about and how groups like NANOG 
operate (what group!) I still don't believe it when people say that NANOG 
doesn't set policy and NANOG is not affiliated with anybody. The fact is 
that NANOG appears to set policy and NANOG appears to be affiliated with 
somebody and that appearance is what counts until NANOG pipes up and 
states what their official policy and official affiliations are.

> Settlements, "wrong on the face?"  Or are you just too busy busy busy
> defensive to argue?

Settlements are contrary to NANOG policy. It is also contrary to NANOG 
policy to engage in long drawn out debates about things which have 
already been decided, like "settlements are wrong". The policy is 
unwritten and to a certain extent, non-verbal, but it is policy nevertheless.

> So, you say, increasing Internet diameters (hops) are only of concern to
> whiners like me?  There are no whiners LIKE me.  I am THE whiner.  And hops
> ARE a first class problem, Jerry, or are you clueless about how
> store-and-forward packet switching actually really works?

I have had to explain to ISP's how to do email relaying so that their 
customers can get email back and forth from fringe locations. It's 
usually an asymmetrical problem so it shows up when a person can receive 
email but cannot send a reply.

BTW, the trick is to address it like this joe%farawayplace.com at majorhub.com

Michael Dillon                                    Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Memra Software Inc.                                 Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com                             E-mail: michael at memra.com