Anybody can participate in the IETF (Was: Why is IPv6 broken?)

Mon Jul 11 08:55:42 UTC 2011

On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, William Herrin wrote:

> If the complaint is that the IETF doesn't adequately listen to the 
> operations folk, then I think it makes sense to consult the operations 
> folks early and often on potential fixes. If folks here think it would 
> help, -that- is when I'll it to the IETF.

I started participating in the IETF 1-2 years ago. Coming from Fidonet 
background, the threshold of entry felt very low, as long as you make any 
kind of sense, people will discuss with you there and it doesn't matter 
who you are. You don't even have to go to the meetings (I've only been to 
a single one).

I encourage everybody to participate, at least to subscribe to the WG 
mailing lists and keep a look out for the draft announcements and give 
feedback to those.

If we in the ISP business don't do this, the show will be run by the 
vendors and academics (as is the case right now). They're saying "come to 
us", you're saying "come to us", and as long as both do this the rate of 
communication is going to be limited. What is needed is more people with 
operational backgrounds. For instance, I pitched the idea that ended up as 
a draft, dunno what will come of it:

<http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/isis-wg/current/msg02556.html>

This has purely operational background and the puritans didn't like it 
(they didn't even understand why one would want to do it like that), but 
after a while I feel I received some traction and it might actually end up 
as a protocol enhancement that will help some ISPs in their daily work. 
Even something like your IGP isn't "done", and can be enhanced even if it 
takes time.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se