critique of NANOG meeting

Wed Jun 19 03:55:50 UTC 1996

  I'll agree with Vadim's assesment.  Metcalf can mock Merit and MFS
  folks all he wants, but they're doing damn good work.  I
  especially liked this quote:

rm]   Yes, I found pettiness and bureaucratic infighting among the
rm] groups I had hoped would be pulling the Internet together. 

  Death of the net, death of the net!  The network operators 
  won't all agree, we're DOOMED!!!

rm]   I stand corrected, but not reassured.  Back at NANOG, I was
rm] surrounded by people whose lives are about "running code." I
rm] twiddled as these people, unaccustomed as they are to public
rm] speaking, stood up one by one in front of 350 people without
rm] having ever tried their slides on GWU's projection system. We all
rm] waited while Windows booted. If you have running code, it seems,
rm] you don't have to respect your audience by checking your slides
rm] at least once. Or by wearing a suit.

  Sheesh.  I dunno.  Does respecting your audience mean "wearing a suit" 
  and having a flawless a/v presentation?

  Or does it mean presenting encompassing intelligent information?  I think
  the latter, and I think Mr Ethernet failed in this respect in his most
  recent article in InfoWeek.

  -alan

.........  Vadim Antonov is rumored to have said:
] 
] 
] >From: Michael Dillon <michael at memra.com>
] >I don't know if you folks are following Metcalfe's columns...
] 
] The guy is seriously out of touch with reality.  He seems to be
] completely unable to comprehend the fact that packet loss is
] not a malfunction but rather the nature's way to say "you need
] more bandwidth".  And the fact that it was exactly suits who
] got Internet to that point; engineers keet screaming about
] inadequate facilities for as long as i could remember.
] 
] And if he thinks backbone engineers have time to prepare slides
] (or have secretaries to do that for them) i'd like to move to the
] world he's living in.
] 
] --vadim
] 
] 