NANOG67 - Tipping point of community and sponsor bashing?

Wed Jun 15 13:26:56 UTC 2016

In a message written on Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 08:25:04AM +0300, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> I am not at NANOG67 and am following this issue remotely.  Excuse me if I am getting this all wrong.  Dave shows a slide that LINX made $2.3M profit and AMS-IX made $4.1M last year and Randy states "that the IXPs run us over to make an extra penny"?  

When I vew the presentation from a raw money basis, it seems like
just a "we hate our suppliers" whine.  For instance it's quite
normal for a "not for profit" to both pay salaries and marketing,
and to even "make a profit" from a raw accounting perspective.
There's also nothing in the non-profit rules that disallow marketing
departments or spending money on socials.  If those things further
their non-profit mission, it's all good.

However there is another perspective where I think a good point is
raised, and perhaps a bit lost.  Some of these IXP's are "community
run".  Or well, they say they are "community run".  But when the
curtian is pulled back, perhaps they look a lot less community run
and a lot more like a business with a savvy marketing department
leading people to believe they are community run.

I do wonder how many people became a _member_ of these "community
run" IXP's thinking that entited them to some say over how it was
run, only to discover due to the bylaws and corporate structure
they have in fact little to no say over anything?  That is a form
of bait-and-switch, and _may_ be a problem with some IXP's.  Maybe
the community wants a no-marketing cost-recovery co-op service, and
this is a way of rallying and organizing for that.

It's on that point that the presentation is classic NANOG, a bunch
of operators getting together to discuss their common issues and
figure out if there if there is a path forward to make things better.

-- 
Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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