2006.06.04 NANOG new attendee orientation meeting notes

Mon Jun 5 08:21:20 UTC 2006

Here's my notes from tonight's 'NANOG new attendee orientation
meeting'.

Matt

2006.06.04 NANOG New Attendee Orientation

NOTES:
NANOG Organization
Steering Commitee (blue badges)
Program Committee (yellow badges)
 decide what's on the agenda
 (green badges are both)
Mailing list Committee (smoke badges)
Merit Network staff

NANOG Organization (2)
Meeting hosts (Rodney Joffe)
 Rescued NANOG after previous host pulled out
Sponsors
 pay for beer and gear, breaks
The NANOG Community
 Community meetings
 Meeting surveys
 Elections
 nanog-futures at nanog.org

Don't forget to fill out the surveys!!

Meeting structure
Format:
 Plenary sessions (big room)
 Tutorials
  sorta like panels, like Network Neutrality panel.
 BOFs
  Usually tools, security, peering, at least.
  not recorded, not webcast, more informal, more
  candid.
 Social events
  Beer and Gear, tomorrow evening.  8 exhibitors
   showing off latest gear
Etiquette
 Mutual respect is the big thing; no personal
  attacks; can criticize ideas, but avoid ad hominum
  attacks.
Dress Code
 Must wear shirt and shoes at all times.  Pants or
 shorts would be nice, too.

The press and photography
 Members of the press may be present
 Photography is not permitted during sessions due
  to legal liability/copyright issues.
  it's also distracting!
 All sessions except BOFs are recorded and webcast
  will be available for replay later off nanog.org
Reporters should identify themselves if they speak
 with you.

Program selection process
 17 on the program committee, one selected by Merit
 call for presentations
 deadline
 ratings: each PC member rates each submission on
  a scale of 1-5 and adds comments
 conference call to determine consensus

Usually most are good, some need suggestions on
what is needed before they can be approved.

Program process 2
 second round of comments
 second round conference call
 anything after that: chair's discretion

Some stuff had to be turned away this time, as
schedule was full.

Now over to Betty Burke for Merit update.

NANOG 37 newcomer meeting
Betty Burke, Project Manager, Merit Network
she'll be giving overview of Merit, and why
it's involved with NANOG.
Bill Norton will go more through the relationship
through history.
She also handles the Michigan technology center,
so she covers multiple hats.

Merit and NANOG
Continuation of shared values
Committment to R&D
National Involvement
Regional Educational Activities

Much of the background between merit and NANOG is in
the shared research and development focus.  Merit
originally focused on the Michigan area research
network, now covers research and development for
widespread activities, nationally and internationally.
Merit is 503.1c entity in Michigan, non-profit, one
of the largest network providers in Michigan; they
do R&D only, no commercial side.

NANOG hosts and sponsors
hosts: work with Merit to locate a hotel, provide
 connectivity, build the hotel network, and staff the
 meeting
break sponsor: an engineer from your organization
 exhibits your equipment on a tabletop display.
 break slots are 30 minutes
 one vendor per event
beer n gear: dipslay your equipment at a table
 staffed by two engineers.

Merit is 501c.3 regional network, 40 years young
Owned by Michigan Public Universities
  hosted at University of Michigan
 located in the Michigan information technology
  center with Internet2
Org chart
 Merit Board
 Merit CEO--new, starting in July, reports to Board
 Directors - R&D, Network
 Managers
 Staff

Hierarchy is to allow decisionmaking, but the
hierarchy isn't rigid; ideas can flow in either
direction as needed.

Mission statement: to be a respected leader in
developing and providing advanced networking services
to the research and education community.  Merit is a
trusted source for providing high-quality network
infrastructure: initiating and facilitating
collaboration; and providng knowledge and technology
transfer through outreach...

Supporting our Mission
MichNet, Merit's statewide network
 as well as Internet2
Research and Development.

Bill Norton, unvetted slides.
Freshly unslept (new kids will do that to you)

NANOG History (v0.2)
William B. Norton
Co-Founder/Chief Technical Liason Equinix, Inc.
wbn at equinix.com

He's used to dealing with lots of suits, with
translators, transcribers, etc.

Why did the Frenchman have only one egg in
his omlette?  One egg is an oeuf!

What do I know about NANOG?
Merit Staff 1987-1998
NANOG chair 1995-1998
Developed 1st Business Plan for NANOG
 financially self-sustaining
Started number of NANOG traditions
 NANOG T-shirts
 Numbering NANOGs
 Colored NANOG NameTag
 Beer-n-Gear
 Cookie-graph
 Surveys
 Etc

Q. What to expect in a typical day?
A. Current meeting structure
2.5 days; it may look like a terminal room
Sunday-Wednesday
Sunday is Newcomer's welcome, and community meeting
Monday-Main sessions...

NANOG spreads travel burdens
(6 was my first NANOG in San Diego)
Still pretty much true that it's cheaper if you stay
over Saturday night in terms of flights.

1987-1994
NSF funded
$->Merit got NSFnet award to run T1 network
Then T3/3, and then full T3.
Also was supposed to run the regional techs meeting.
The NSFnet core had regional networks as customers,
supercomputer centers, research facilities, etc.
This was the coordination forum where the NSFnet
folks would pull the regional techs to discuss
ongoing issues.
Merit handled logistics and hosts for the meetings;
usually a univerisity or supercomputer center.
George Washington U. had a cool facility, for 65-70
people to get together.  Always split between
Merit and the hosts.  The Agenda was always handled
by Merit.

1994
Next, Internet grew, NSF decided internet could
be self-sustaining as commercial venture, in
1994, transitioned to commercial, self-sustaining
venture.  Regional techs meeting had to go from
free to paying $175, to become self-sustaining.
1.75 FTEs at Merit to support it; most of it done
by the host.
Single core split into different commercial
providers interconnected at priority NAPs.
regional networks could pick any provider.
NANOG focused on the new commercial model.
Merit thus just did logistics, host picking,
the low volume NANOG mailing list; at the time,
had a strong chair which helped determine the
agenda for the meeting.

Then, after Ann Arbor, Randy Bush and Curtis
Villamizer and others helped as program Advisors
to help pick the agenda; some were Merit staff
with tentacles into industry, and some were
in industry only.

1998-2004
For a variety of reasons, NANOG restructuring
started in 2004
Desired structure should provide
 1. transparency
 2. accountability
 3. better agenda
 4. be community-driven and responsive

Dan Golding was partially responsible for driving
this change.
2005-2006
Community elects a steering committee, the
steering committee selects the program committee,
which creates the agenda by evangelizing the
meeting to industry.
Also the steering committee selects the mailing
list committee

Results
Transparency
 each group's members/activities are documented
 meeting minutes
 community meeting for discussions
Community-driven agenda
 PC actively recruiting talks
Accountability
 elected steering group
 Accessible at NANOG, email aliases

You, the members, can more directly control
what happens in the NANOG community.

InfoWorld/From the Ether/Bob Metcalf
NANOG Meeting Column
DRAFT TWO
(Bob Metcalfe puts out a call for more suits to
attend NANOG meetings to prevent the collapse
of the internet)
The Internet will collapse in 8^H 7 days!

Famous Quotes page
"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly
supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse."
Had to eat his words in 1997.

1997 had a fun series of fiber cuts, Internet
under attack by backhoes.

Rodney's hosted five NANOGs thus far.  ^_^

My suggestions for you
Every Conference is the same:
 1st time, you know no-one
 2nd time, you recognize someone
 3rd time, someone recognizes you
 ...send the same person each  time
You won't understand everything
 spend time in the hallways
 (big) part of the benefit of NANOG is meeting the
  community

Makes sense to send the same person to all NANOGs,
rather than rotating through.

Much of the benefit of NANOG is learning, and
making contacts.  The contacts are critically
important.  When engineers meet face to face,
talk about networking and peering, when things
break in the middle of the night, they get
repaired faster; you trust them already, and
you can speak a common language when things
break.

Steve Feldman thanks everyone, there's some
refreshments, community meeting starts in 30 minutes
in this room.

Meeting wraps up at 1626 hours Pacific Time.