What is NANOG used for? (Was Re: Exodus?)

Mon Jan 4 06:32:57 UTC 1999

On Sun, 3 Jan 1999, Derek Balling wrote:

> >When did nanog at merit.edu become the Exodus NCC?  Come on folks, there has
> >been too much of this crap lately.
> 
> OK, so now even network problem assessments have been chided as being "off
> topic".

You are not a kid anymore. You don't have to raise your hand and ask the
teacher's permission to go to the bathroom. You are a network operator and
when you detect an apparent network problem that is impacting your
network then it is your RESPONSIBILITY to pick up the phone and call the
NOC of the network that appears to have the problem. Maybe they don't know
about it yet or maybe you will be able to provide valuable info that helps
them diagnose the problem sooner. Or maybe you will have greater clue than
the people on shift at the other NOC and you will tell them what is wrong
and help them fix it.

That's how the Internet has been able to scale so far and so fast.

Posting a query to this list is basically useless except in a couple of
instances. One is when you are reporting a post-mortem of an incident so
that everyone can learn from it. And another is when you are asking for
more info about a continuing problem that may be affecting many other
networks. Examples are the week or so when everyone was figuring out how
best to deal with syn flood attacks. Or the SMURF amplifier problems.

The question about Exodus really was out of place on this list, however it
would not be out of place on IRC. Maybe it would help the list if folks
would let other list members know where to find the IRC channels that
network operations staff hang out on.

--
Michael Dillon                 -               E-mail: michael at memra.com
Check the website for my Internet World articles -  http://www.memra.com        