I haven't been on IRC in a long long time. Damn I'm old. :( On Wed, Aug 20, 2025, 8:36 PM Mark Prosser via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

I was chatting with some industry colleagues recently and I realized that various sectors of our industry are not "online" in the spaces I'm online.

Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster).

Personally, I'm subscribed to several discord groups (including NANOG), several slack groups, a few mailing lists, IRC (I'm not on that often these days), one or two Matrix groups, IETF Zulip...

This quickly becomes cumbersome and I find myself mainly in Packet Pushers & NAF Slack groups -- while being "reachable" in other places. I feel like I'm missing out on conversations outside of the few bubbles I participate in.

Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://zealnetworks.ca

_______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list

https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/CGE3HKEB...

On 2025-08-20 20:45, Andrew Latham wrote:

"Get off my lawn!" :P

* Direct chat with peers * Mailing Lists

I avoid walled gardens like discord. I do miss Google+ where I could make my posts globally visible without any ads. Used to run "The Backbone Of The Internet" group there.

:P You're definitely not wrong to avoid the walled gardens. I gave Google+ a try a long time ago but I never really explored the groups. I guess I forgot to mention I'm on Mastodon & Bluesky. I prefer the former, but there isn't much NetEng talk going on there. Warm regards, -- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://zealnetworks.ca

I will make note that two things cause me caution when socializing. 1. NDAs (so many!!!!) 2. Spear Phishing On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 6:49 PM Mark Prosser <mark@zealnetworks.ca> wrote:

On 2025-08-20 20:45, Andrew Latham wrote:

...

"Get off my lawn!" :P

* Direct chat with peers * Mailing Lists

I avoid walled gardens like discord. I do miss Google+ where I could make my posts globally visible without any ads. Used to run "The Backbone Of The Internet" group there.

:P

You're definitely not wrong to avoid the walled gardens.

I gave Google+ a try a long time ago but I never really explored the groups.

I guess I forgot to mention I'm on Mastodon & Bluesky. I prefer the former, but there isn't much NetEng talk going on there.

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://zealnetworks.ca

-- - Andrew "lathama" Latham -

There is a marginally active #nlnog (irc.nlnog.net) and fairly active #networker channel that I lurk on despite not speaking Dutch - but they are mostly European. I am on several Slack groups that are DNS-focused. There is the DNS-OARC Mattermost. I do sort of prefer IRC - Slack becomes quickly fragmented into "helpful" topical sub-groups that I never have the time to look at - one layer of categorization is plenty. Discord is walled garden. Social media is barely functional for conversations - it is a broadcast mechanism. Email lists are also functional but have been dying out in favor of... nothing. I am on some IRC channels dedicated to very narrow subjects (all OSS-related.) If someone wants to champion an effort to re-invigorate an IRC channel, I'd probably be there. I just looked at the Freenode #nanog - three other participants. I'm not even sure if that was the server/channel that I had used in the past, so pointers welcome if there is a more lively channel. As with all open platforms, keeping the really off-topic chatter down is a challenge. It drives people away. Also, there needs to be some minor gatekeeping, otherwise #nanog would become "I can't print - is the internet down?" I have no answers on this issue, though. JT On 20 Aug 2025, at 17:39, jim deleskie via NANOG wrote:

I haven't been on IRC in a long long time. Damn I'm old. :(

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025, 8:36 PM Mark Prosser via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

I was chatting with some industry colleagues recently and I realized that various sectors of our industry are not "online" in the spaces I'm online.

Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster).

Personally, I'm subscribed to several discord groups (including NANOG), several slack groups, a few mailing lists, IRC (I'm not on that often these days), one or two Matrix groups, IETF Zulip...

This quickly becomes cumbersome and I find myself mainly in Packet Pushers & NAF Slack groups -- while being "reachable" in other places. I feel like I'm missing out on conversations outside of the few bubbles I participate in.

Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://zealnetworks.ca

John,

Discord is walled garden.

How is Discord a walled garden? Choosing to sign up for the platform and joining an instance is a user's choice, and way more user friendly, than jumping through the hoops to get an IRC client set up, connected to a server, get their handle registered, make sure they identify correctly to the "NickServ" should the network be running a services package like Anope/Atheme. I can go on and on. Ryan Hamel ________________________________ From: John Todd via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 6:59 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Cc: John Todd <jtodd@loligo.com> Subject: Re: Where else do you hangout? Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments. There is a marginally active #nlnog (irc.nlnog.net) and fairly active #networker channel that I lurk on despite not speaking Dutch - but they are mostly European. I am on several Slack groups that are DNS-focused. There is the DNS-OARC Mattermost. I do sort of prefer IRC - Slack becomes quickly fragmented into "helpful" topical sub-groups that I never have the time to look at - one layer of categorization is plenty. Discord is walled garden. Social media is barely functional for conversations - it is a broadcast mechanism. Email lists are also functional but have been dying out in favor of... nothing. I am on some IRC channels dedicated to very narrow subjects (all OSS-related.) If someone wants to champion an effort to re-invigorate an IRC channel, I'd probably be there. I just looked at the Freenode #nanog - three other participants. I'm not even sure if that was the server/channel that I had used in the past, so pointers welcome if there is a more lively channel. As with all open platforms, keeping the really off-topic chatter down is a challenge. It drives people away. Also, there needs to be some minor gatekeeping, otherwise #nanog would become "I can't print - is the internet down?" I have no answers on this issue, though. JT On 20 Aug 2025, at 17:39, jim deleskie via NANOG wrote:

I haven't been on IRC in a long long time. Damn I'm old. :(

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025, 8:36 PM Mark Prosser via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

I was chatting with some industry colleagues recently and I realized that various sectors of our industry are not "online" in the spaces I'm online.

Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster).

Personally, I'm subscribed to several discord groups (including NANOG), several slack groups, a few mailing lists, IRC (I'm not on that often these days), one or two Matrix groups, IETF Zulip...

This quickly becomes cumbersome and I find myself mainly in Packet Pushers & NAF Slack groups -- while being "reachable" in other places. I feel like I'm missing out on conversations outside of the few bubbles I participate in.

Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fzealnetworks.ca%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cryan%40rkhtech.org%7C510c98a030154458bf7108dde0566f13%7C81c24bb4f9ec4739ba4d25c42594d996%7C0%7C0%7C638913384017592359%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7%2BT0khhhtAsmet22LflJi2r12XVukiqkt7nCPhA9RE0%3D&reserved=0<https://zealnetworks.ca/>

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Ryan, I am a bit confused. I was using IRC when I was 16 (we didn't have Internet before that) and never found it to be difficult, even when I was a SYSOP. Maybe something has changed over the past 20 years. As to heavyweight, I think this is self-evident - if you need to install Java - it is... note I never mentioned Teams... As to the security issues, I would think one knows better than to ask this on a mailing list of this size and publicity, so I'll let you think about that one... ...and maybe this is the issue we have in the community, the days of the hard core network operators have passed, and we do now have point and click generation trying to figure out the Internetz... jokes aside, let's think how competitive we are on the world arena? Cheers, Krassi On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 7:07 PM Ryan Hamel <ryan@rkhtech.org> wrote:

Krassi,

...

There is nothing like the simplicity of IRC.

IRC is anything but simple, with so many clients with varying features, having to know many commands. It makes instructing someone on how to set it up and use it more difficult.

...

Discord, Slack, are heavyweight and fairly insecure, which also begs the question, what happened to those people that were security conscious?

Heavyweight is subjective, especially when compared to Teams. How they are insecure?

...

Should we consider starting a IRC server for NANOG

I would argue that if the existing #nanog channels out there are effectively dead, and #ix (could be) slowly winding itself down. A NANOG IRC server would not get anywhere near the use, compared to the NANOG Discord server (https://discord.nanog.org). A *very strong *proposal would need to be made from the Moderation Committee to the Board to make such a thing happen, however with the committee focused on Discord and mailing list, it would likely not happen due to the friction involved in set up and maintenance, for little to no usage in return.

...

Or should we pick one of Discord and Slack? (none of which I'm a fan TBH)...

The NANOG Discord has been around for a few years, and we'd all be happy if you joined. https://discord.nanog.org

Ryan Hamel

------------------------------ *From:* Krassimir Tzvetanov via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 20, 2025 6:37 PM *To:* North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> *Cc:* Krassimir Tzvetanov <maillists@krassi.biz> *Subject:* Re: Where else do you hangout?

Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments.

There is nothing like the simplicity of IRC. TBH, I don't care if the smiling face emoji is animated or just two ASCII characters. Most of the clients - Discord, Slack, are heavyweight and fairly insecure, which also begs the question, what happened to those people that were security conscious? I am not ranting here but I am pointing out the simple fact that people are spending too much time on distractions and not on the actual function and goal they are trying to achieve. Every 2-3 years, there is a new social media hotness that sweeps the crowds and then we end up even more fragmented.

Should we consider starting a IRC server for NANOG, or simply setting up a chat group on Signal? That's at least to solve the NANOG crowd problem... Or should we pick one of Discord and Slack? (none of which I'm a fan TBH)...

We should have a meet up in person during the next NANOG! No cell phones allowed during the meet up! ;)

Cheers, Krassi

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 5:53 PM Andrew Latham via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

I will make note that two things cause me caution when socializing.

1. NDAs (so many!!!!) 2. Spear Phishing

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 6:49 PM Mark Prosser <mark@zealnetworks.ca> wrote:

...

On 2025-08-20 20:45, Andrew Latham wrote:

...

"Get off my lawn!" :P

* Direct chat with peers * Mailing Lists

I avoid walled gardens like discord. I do miss Google+ where I could make my posts globally visible without any ads. Used to run "The Backbone Of The Internet" group there.

:P

You're definitely not wrong to avoid the walled gardens.

I gave Google+ a try a long time ago but I never really explored the groups.

I guess I forgot to mention I'm on Mastodon & Bluesky. I prefer the former, but there isn't much NetEng talk going on there.

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W:

https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fzealnetworks.ca%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cryan%40rkhtech.org%7Cc70aef361a6f41023dc608dde053909f%7C81c24bb4f9ec4739ba4d25c42594d996%7C0%7C0%7C638913371706389877%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=voaEKj7XLgit9PLV%2BE2f%2FOauj7oPYvOsRhlm5LUjpsM%3D&reserved=0 <https://zealnetworks.ca/>

-- - Andrew "lathama" Latham - _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list

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Krassi, Not everyone is you. IRC is not as ubiquitous now as it was 20 + years ago. "Kids these days" know about Discord from their friends, Twitch, and other social media. Slack is well known because of its widespread use in many businesses. Out of the 1138 members in the NANOG Discord, 37 have accounts less than three months old, and 170 are year to date. That is 18.2%, meaning that over 4 of every 5 users that join the Discord already have an account. I am not sure where you got Java (as in the Java Runtime Environment - JRE) as a dependency for Discord, Slack, Teams. They are based on Electron which are Chrome embedded apps, which can contain a lot of JavaScript code, but is not Java, and Java + JavaScript are not in the same ballpark for languages. As for security issues, I am asking so that I and everyone here can better understand. We're all open to learning. Everyone has different upbringings, and technology changes over time. There is nothing wrong with using technology that the 90's side of the millennials and gen z are more familiar with, especially when it works very well. We do not need to force everyone into an IRC client just because "this is how it's always been done" or "this is how real network operators communicate." For the "point and click" generation, let's understand here that network architects, engineers, and now the ever increasing automation engineers, are writing UIs, tools, workflows, and using AI to automate and scale. Some of that automation could be Slack or Teams bots, but more often its REST APIs, and UIs, targeting users who are not network engineers, to grab information from the network, and update the status of the network, with ease. Ryan Hamel ________________________________ From: Krassimir Tzvetanov <maillists@krassi.biz> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 7:25 PM To: Ryan Hamel <ryan@rkhtech.org> Cc: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Subject: Re: Where else do you hangout? Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments. Ryan, I am a bit confused. I was using IRC when I was 16 (we didn't have Internet before that) and never found it to be difficult, even when I was a SYSOP. Maybe something has changed over the past 20 years. As to heavyweight, I think this is self-evident - if you need to install Java - it is... note I never mentioned Teams... As to the security issues, I would think one knows better than to ask this on a mailing list of this size and publicity, so I'll let you think about that one... ...and maybe this is the issue we have in the community, the days of the hard core network operators have passed, and we do now have point and click generation trying to figure out the Internetz... jokes aside, let's think how competitive we are on the world arena? Cheers, Krassi On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 7:07 PM Ryan Hamel <ryan@rkhtech.org<mailto:ryan@rkhtech.org>> wrote: Krassi,

There is nothing like the simplicity of IRC.

IRC is anything but simple, with so many clients with varying features, having to know many commands. It makes instructing someone on how to set it up and use it more difficult.

Discord, Slack, are heavyweight and fairly insecure, which also begs the question, what happened to those people that were security conscious?

Heavyweight is subjective, especially when compared to Teams. How they are insecure?

Should we consider starting a IRC server for NANOG

I would argue that if the existing #nanog channels out there are effectively dead, and #ix (could be) slowly winding itself down. A NANOG IRC server would not get anywhere near the use, compared to the NANOG Discord server (https://discord.nanog.org<https://discord.nanog.org/>). A very strong proposal would need to be made from the Moderation Committee to the Board to make such a thing happen, however with the committee focused on Discord and mailing list, it would likely not happen due to the friction involved in set up and maintenance, for little to no usage in return.

Or should we pick one of Discord and Slack? (none of which I'm a fan TBH)...

The NANOG Discord has been around for a few years, and we'd all be happy if you joined. https://discord.nanog.org<https://discord.nanog.org/> Ryan Hamel ________________________________ From: Krassimir Tzvetanov via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org<mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 6:37 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org<mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> Cc: Krassimir Tzvetanov <maillists@krassi.biz<mailto:maillists@krassi.biz>> Subject: Re: Where else do you hangout? Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments. There is nothing like the simplicity of IRC. TBH, I don't care if the smiling face emoji is animated or just two ASCII characters. Most of the clients - Discord, Slack, are heavyweight and fairly insecure, which also begs the question, what happened to those people that were security conscious? I am not ranting here but I am pointing out the simple fact that people are spending too much time on distractions and not on the actual function and goal they are trying to achieve. Every 2-3 years, there is a new social media hotness that sweeps the crowds and then we end up even more fragmented. Should we consider starting a IRC server for NANOG, or simply setting up a chat group on Signal? That's at least to solve the NANOG crowd problem... Or should we pick one of Discord and Slack? (none of which I'm a fan TBH)... We should have a meet up in person during the next NANOG! No cell phones allowed during the meet up! ;) Cheers, Krassi On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 5:53 PM Andrew Latham via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org<mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> wrote:

I will make note that two things cause me caution when socializing.

1. NDAs (so many!!!!) 2. Spear Phishing

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 6:49 PM Mark Prosser <mark@zealnetworks.ca<mailto:mark@zealnetworks.ca>> wrote:

...

On 2025-08-20 20:45, Andrew Latham wrote:

...

"Get off my lawn!" :P

* Direct chat with peers * Mailing Lists

I avoid walled gardens like discord. I do miss Google+ where I could make my posts globally visible without any ads. Used to run "The Backbone Of The Internet" group there.

:P

You're definitely not wrong to avoid the walled gardens.

I gave Google+ a try a long time ago but I never really explored the groups.

I guess I forgot to mention I'm on Mastodon & Bluesky. I prefer the former, but there isn't much NetEng talk going on there.

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca<mailto:mark@zealnetworks.ca> // W: https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fzealnetworks.ca%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cryan%40rkhtech.org%7Cc70aef361a6f41023dc608dde053909f%7C81c24bb4f9ec4739ba4d25c42594d996%7C0%7C0%7C638913371706389877%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=voaEKj7XLgit9PLV%2BE2f%2FOauj7oPYvOsRhlm5LUjpsM%3D&reserved=0<https://zealnetworks.ca/>

-- - Andrew "lathama" Latham - _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list

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On Wed, 20 Aug 2025 20:35:46 -0400 Mark Prosser via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?

I don't use a lot of social media or spend much time in real-time chat platforms or forums, especially where the community is larger than a few dozen. The useful conversations there are often too fleeting and lost among so much mindless dope fuel. There are a few private Slack spaces that can be useful to be at but I don't spend much time them. Some of the public ones include openobservatory, internethealthreport, chinog, and networkautomationfrm, and sigcomm. On Discord you can find networking:ix, bgpeople, and the RPKI space from NLnet Labs. There is, or least there was a NANOG IRC channel. I never spend much time there and I've not looked at IRC in a years now since most groups I did once join have largely died out. IMO, this list is the place to be for serious NANOG people and operational matters in and around North America. The outages list is related and useful to watch too. There are other adjacent lists from other communities such as the IETF of course, RIPE (and other regions or RIRs), network security-oriented coordination groups, dns-operations, and the puck lists (now that they're back :-). John

Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?

The older I get , the fewer methods of communication I choose to use. It's information overload. Multiple different Slack instances, Signal, WhatsApp, emails, IRC , it's just overload. It's enough work sorting through the things I *HAVE* to pay attention to. Trying to keep up on all the others that I don't is basically impossible. I've been dropping more and more things, like the NANOG Discord. It was a good idea, but I find no value in it, so I moved on. For most things at this point a text/imessage/WhatsApp works best if I need to get in touch with someone. On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 8:36 PM Mark Prosser via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

I was chatting with some industry colleagues recently and I realized that various sectors of our industry are not "online" in the spaces I'm online.

Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster).

Personally, I'm subscribed to several discord groups (including NANOG), several slack groups, a few mailing lists, IRC (I'm not on that often these days), one or two Matrix groups, IETF Zulip...

This quickly becomes cumbersome and I find myself mainly in Packet Pushers & NAF Slack groups -- while being "reachable" in other places. I feel like I'm missing out on conversations outside of the few bubbles I participate in.

Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://zealnetworks.ca

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On 20.08.2025 20:35 Mark Prosser via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster).

I am on some mailing lists, forums and Usenet. I don't use Slack. Discord is only in use for some special contacts. -- kind regards Marco Send spam to abfall1755714946@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

Im pretty much hang only on IRC. Low BW and lightweight clients, stability, no bloat.. I even run my own legacy IRC network, because I like to put some syslog messages to IRC.. If anyone have some spare time and want to spawn some IRC channel(s) I offer my network and help :) You can reach me off-list. ---------- Original message ---------- From: Mark Prosser via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Cc: Mark Prosser <mark@zealnetworks.ca> Subject: Where else do you hangout? Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2025 20:35:46 -0400 I was chatting with some industry colleagues recently and I realized that various sectors of our industry are not "online" in the spaces I'm online. Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster). Personally, I'm subscribed to several discord groups (including NANOG), several slack groups, a few mailing lists, IRC (I'm not on that often these days), one or two Matrix groups, IETF Zulip... This quickly becomes cumbersome and I find myself mainly in Packet Pushers & NAF Slack groups -- while being "reachable" in other places. I feel like I'm missing out on conversations outside of the few bubbles I participate in. Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there? Warm regards, -- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://zealnetworks.ca _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/CGE3HKEB...

On 21/08/2025 06:12:41, "Ryan Hamel via NANOG" <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

whereas Discord is very likely already running on a person's device.

I have most networks apps installed but not that. Slack seems to be way more prevalent but has a high paywall and bins your data if you don't pay. Enterprises tolerate the pricing to avoid Teams but it does not work well for open communities, on several we are just tolerating it because it is the common client people have on their devices (including locked down work devices).

Since I mentioned the Discord link in this thread, nine users have joined, and their account ages span from 3-9 years. All it took for them to join was clicking or tapping the link, which has very little to no friction.

Indeed. I have an old discord login that would add to those stats but not be the indication you suggest. Due to splitters we tend to accumulate logins all over but that does not mean we are active users with an app installed. Discord is one that I occasionally visit via the web site when prompted and then not look at for another 6 months. There are too many systems like this to poll, especially private web forums of ix and such. Event driven email is way more useful.

All this proves my point that IRC simply does not have that level of awareness, convenience, and ease of use.

It's pretty trivial, even apps for it now brandon

Ryan- Network engineers need to research the capabilities , functionality, and features of many hardware and software products and vendors to come up with correct solutions. They have to understand network protocols at a fundamental level, sometimes capturing raw packets (GASP) and analysing to understand a problem. They have to read very dry, boring specifications in an effort to understand how and why something does what it does. All of this is standard stuff. If doing a little homework on a piece of software is 'too much work' for a person, then that person isn't likely to find success doing any of those other things. Now to address some of your other statements. How many people are going to research an IRC client, install it, get it

connected, and figure out NickServ, just for one network? Sure, it may not be a walled garden, but it's yet another client that must be installed, whereas Discord is very likely already running on a person's device.

This is a hilarious assumption that Discord just magically appeared on devices. Unless someone was a gamer, they likely never even heard of Discord before the last year or so. There's no real delta between installing an IRC client, and installing Discord. Since I mentioned the Discord link in this thread, nine users have joined,

and their account ages span from 3-9 years. All it took for them to join was clicking or tapping the link, which has very little to no friction. All this proves my point that IRC simply does not have that level of awareness, convenience, and ease of use.

It does not prove anything except that people can click on a link. IRC has been around for almost 40 years. "I don't know much about it" does not mean "Nobody knows anything about it." At the end of the day, if the tool is useful, people will use it. If it's not, they'll use something else. If people find Discord useful, cool. But let's not make bullshit statements that IRC is "OMG JUST SOOOOOO HARD GUYS". On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 1:12 AM Ryan Hamel <ryan@rkhtech.org> wrote:

Tom,

How many people are going to research an IRC client, install it, get it connected, and figure out NickServ, just for one network? Sure, it may not be a walled garden, but it's yet another client that must be installed, whereas Discord is very likely already running on a person's device. Since I mentioned the Discord link in this thread, nine users have joined, and their account ages span from 3-9 years. All it took for them to join was clicking or tapping the link, which has very little to no friction. All this proves my point that IRC simply does not have that level of awareness, convenience, and ease of use.

Kind regards,

Ryan Hamel

------------------------------ *From:* Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 20, 2025 9:37 PM *To:* North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> *Cc:* Ryan Hamel <ryan@rkhtech.org> *Subject:* Re: Where else do you hangout?

*Caution:* This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments.

How is Discord a walled garden?

Because you can only access the service using their official client. That's the definition.

You cite in another message that IRC clients are 'too complicated' with 'too many commands'. Spoiler alert : actual network engineers do WAY more complex things every day than paste a hostname and learn a few slash commands. If that's 'too hard' for the next generation of network engineers, then they probably want to consider a different career path.

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 10:15 PM Ryan Hamel via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

John,

...

Discord is walled garden.

How is Discord a walled garden? Choosing to sign up for the platform and joining an instance is a user's choice, and way more user friendly, than jumping through the hoops to get an IRC client set up, connected to a server, get their handle registered, make sure they identify correctly to the "NickServ" should the network be running a services package like Anope/Atheme. I can go on and on.

Ryan Hamel

________________________________ From: John Todd via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2025 6:59 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Cc: John Todd <jtodd@loligo.com> Subject: Re: Where else do you hangout?

Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments.

There is a marginally active #nlnog (irc.nlnog.net) and fairly active #networker channel that I lurk on despite not speaking Dutch - but they are mostly European. I am on several Slack groups that are DNS-focused. There is the DNS-OARC Mattermost. I do sort of prefer IRC - Slack becomes quickly fragmented into "helpful" topical sub-groups that I never have the time to look at - one layer of categorization is plenty. Discord is walled garden. Social media is barely functional for conversations - it is a broadcast mechanism. Email lists are also functional but have been dying out in favor of... nothing. I am on some IRC channels dedicated to very narrow subjects (all OSS-related.)

If someone wants to champion an effort to re-invigorate an IRC channel, I'd probably be there. I just looked at the Freenode #nanog - three other participants. I'm not even sure if that was the server/channel that I had used in the past, so pointers welcome if there is a more lively channel.

As with all open platforms, keeping the really off-topic chatter down is a challenge. It drives people away. Also, there needs to be some minor gatekeeping, otherwise #nanog would become "I can't print - is the internet down?" I have no answers on this issue, though.

JT

On 20 Aug 2025, at 17:39, jim deleskie via NANOG wrote:

...

I haven't been on IRC in a long long time. Damn I'm old. :(

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025, 8:36 PM Mark Prosser via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

I was chatting with some industry colleagues recently and I realized that various sectors of our industry are not "online" in the spaces I'm online.

Perhaps there was a time when most of us were on mailing lists & IRC, but now the communities seem fragmented and behind walled gardens (Mainly Discord and Slack .. the latter is deleting our messages faster and faster).

Personally, I'm subscribed to several discord groups (including NANOG), several slack groups, a few mailing lists, IRC (I'm not on that often these days), one or two Matrix groups, IETF Zulip...

This quickly becomes cumbersome and I find myself mainly in Packet Pushers & NAF Slack groups -- while being "reachable" in other places. I feel like I'm missing out on conversations outside of the few bubbles I participate in.

Where do you spend most of your time, outside of this mailing list? Why do you like it there? What kind of folks hangout there?

Warm regards,

-- Mark Prosser // E: mark@zealnetworks.ca // W: https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fzealnetworks.ca%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cryan%40rkhtech.org%7C510c98a030154458bf7108dde0566f13%7C81c24bb4f9ec4739ba4d25c42594d996%7C0%7C0%7C638913384017592359%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7%2BT0khhhtAsmet22LflJi2r12XVukiqkt7nCPhA9RE0%3D&reserved=0 <https://zealnetworks.ca/><https://zealnetworks.ca/>

---

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...

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I would suggest the board or "moderation committee" send a simple survey to this list to identify what platform(s) are preferred. s On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 4:36 AM Brandon Butterworth via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

On 21/08/2025 06:12:41, "Ryan Hamel via NANOG" <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

whereas Discord is very likely already running on a person's device.

I have most networks apps installed but not that. Slack seems to be way more prevalent but has a high paywall and bins your data if you don't pay. Enterprises tolerate the pricing to avoid Teams but it does not work well for open communities, on several we are just tolerating it because it is the common client people have on their devices (including locked down work devices).

...

Since I mentioned the Discord link in this thread, nine users have joined, and their account ages span from 3-9 years. All it took for them to join was clicking or tapping the link, which has very little to no friction.

Indeed. I have an old discord login that would add to those stats but not be the indication you suggest.

Due to splitters we tend to accumulate logins all over but that does not mean we are active users with an app installed.

Discord is one that I occasionally visit via the web site when prompted and then not look at for another 6 months. There are too many systems like this to poll, especially private web forums of ix and such.

Event driven email is way more useful.

...

All this proves my point that IRC simply does not have that level of awareness, convenience, and ease of use.

It's pretty trivial, even apps for it now

brandon

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On Aug 21, 2025, at 10:00 AM, Jared Mauch via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

On Aug 20, 2025, at 11:44 PM, steve ulrich via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org <mailto:nanog@lists.nanog.org>> wrote:

the lindy effect for email is particularly strong in some communities. NANOG seems to be one of them.

I think that for some of us, e-mail was the original version of IM, as it was/is the common cross-systems way to communicate with each other. I was horrified when I was forced to sign up for an AIM account with one company but grew to be ok with it as a way to reach colleagues.

After using MTS messaging on mainframes and VAX/VMS messaging over DECnet for a few years, I helped EDS/GM establish SMTP email messaging with gateway MTA instances between internal and external TCP/IP networks. I joined the NANOG mailing list sometime last century and have relied on it ever since to remain 'au courant'. The most important part of the NANOG mailing is the searchable archives which allow users to learn from history. I, too, have been appalled at the fragmentation and fragility of 'more modern' verbal (and visual) interaction tools. "How soon we forget." No (anti)social network tool provides reliable history as they respond to social and political whims which provide only selective memory and only for as long as business goals support such. Over several decades, I have been able to recall NANOG discussions that bear on current situations. Here is one example.

From: "james.cutler () consultant com" <james.cutler () consultant com> Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2021 15:07:14 -0400 Dave,

I am a regular discourse user these days. I have been a NANOG list participant for at least a quarter of a century. I find all the modern forums require examining multiple web pages and do not support gaining any historical perspective or assist in correlating various topics into a coherent gestalt. They also require waiting for all the embellishments and formatting which html users prize as advantages, even when words, well reasoned or hasty, would serve as well or better.

As you might surmise from the forgoing: IT AINT BROKE. DON’T FIX IT.

Pardon my shouting in my fervent expression of my opinion, but it is important that you hear and consider this.

- James R Cutler - 🦉 No AI content 719 Leicester Street, Plymouth, MI 48170-1020 +1 (734) 673-5462 james.cutler@consultant.com

Now with Zoom, Slack, MS Teams, Webex(Teams/Spark), etc I’m back in the world where I used to have a common client like Adium that aggregated it all together and don’t have that option really these days. Ideally the services would work on some sort of federation/interop but there’s not a lot of motivation/justification for that.

Yeah Adium was very nice to aggregate all the things in a single place. But yeah, the decade+ trend has to move away from federation/interop since more tightly controlled ecosystems push those magical engagement numbers up. On Thu, Aug 21, 2025 at 10:01 AM Jared Mauch via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

On Aug 20, 2025, at 11:44 PM, steve ulrich via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

the lindy effect for email is particularly strong in some communities. NANOG seems to be one of them.

I think that for some of us, e-mail was the original version of IM, as it was/is the common cross-systems way to communicate with each other. I was horrified when I was forced to sign up for an AIM account with one company but grew to be ok with it as a way to reach colleagues.

If you were always online, you could have a bot manage your presence on IRC to maintain history and other elements, but these days you take something like Slack/Discord and whatnot and it’s very much like that but “in the cloud” as a service vs having to each run your own bot.

It also doesn’t have the annoying/confusing IETF-type stuff that was in the Jabber protocol where you could have per-device presences that are different and lost messages because they sent something to a machine or device that won’t be online for a few days.

Now with Zoom, Slack, MS Teams, Webex(Teams/Spark), etc I’m back in the world where I used to have a common client like Adium that aggregated it all together and don’t have that option really these days. Ideally the services would work on some sort of federation/interop but there’s not a lot of motivation/justification for that.

- Jared _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list

https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/SGD77SH6...

Jared, Great comment. 100% agree with you. We speak of this often in our community RE DNS. Steve Sullivan Membership Coordinator OARC Mattermost Chat: @stevos https://linktr.ee/dnsoarc On 8/21/2025 7:04 AM, Jared Mauch via NANOG wrote:

...

On Aug 21, 2025, at 9:50 AM, Mike Simpson via NANOG<nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

The idea that we would expect Network Operators to be able to deal with the intricacies of running an irc client with commands and everything. /sarcasm

Most windows folk seemed to be able cope with mIRC or whatever the kids are using these days. Even the ones that weren’t into internetworking. I will say this:

We used to live in a world where most people on the list ran their own DNS, NNTP, IRC, E-mail etc servers and services and understood how each end-to-end bit worked together. We seem to be much further from that these days, people either know the hosts or the network but not both, the applications but not the operating system.

It’s important to understand more of what is going on in the adjacent systems and network elements as that impacts the outcomes that we design and engineer for these days.

- Jared _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/7ONWQNN2...

On Aug 20, 2025, at 6:39 PM, jim deleskie via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

I haven't been on IRC in a long long time. Damn I'm old. :(

Wow! Talk about a blast from the past! (IRC, not you Jim :~D) Anne -- Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. Email Law & Policy Attorney, Legislative Advisor Author: Section 6 of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (the Federal anti-spam law, such as it is) Originator of the term 'deliverability'; Co-Founder of the deliverability industry Board of Directors, Denver Internet Exchange Dean Emeritus, Cyberlaw & Cybersecurity, Lincoln Law School Chair Emeritus, Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop Counsel Emeritus, eMail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS)

On 21/08/25 16:41, James R Cutler via NANOG wrote:

I, too, have been appalled at the fragmentation and fragility of 'more modern' verbal (and visual) interaction tools. "How soon we forget." No (anti)social network tool provides reliable history as they respond to social and political whims which provide only selective memory and only for as long as business goals support such.

In my estimation this is as much to do with technical implementation and legal liability as it is business goals. Imagine you are creating a new chat app (not a protocol). The end user has several devices and usually doesn't have a TCP connection to the server, so the server stores all the messages so that when the user opens their app on any device it asks the server for the latest messages and they see the same thing on each device. You don't even try to do end-to-end encryption because that's *hard* (seriously) and this is the first version of the app. Perhaps the user can join a chat group with several other users, and obviously you'll only store one copy of the messages in that group and serve it to all users in the group. Now an abuse report comes in. It's from the police. Someone posted something illegal. You have to delete it (among other actions) or you go to jail, and you don't like jail. So you delete it. Now it doesn't appear in anyone's chat history. You modified their chat history. There is no way to avoid this. So how's this different with email and IRC? The difference I see is that the party who relays the message to all members of a chat group is different from the party who stores the message. The mailing list server isn't technically able to delete messages it already amplified, and each user's inbox server could be separately forced to delete it, but that is a waste of time (when it's gmail) or completely illegal (when it's self-hosted). It's the same with IRC but even stronger. The server isn't technically able to delete a message it already amplified, and police aren't breaking into your house to wipe it out of your RAM. If you use a bouncer, it's likely to be self-hosted, but even if not, it's not worth sending a legal notice to everyone's bouncer providers. This is part of the design of email and IRC *primarily because they are old*. They come from the time when the internet was a cooperative, open federation project between many peer organizations, rather than one company trying to lock you into a closed system, followed by another company trying to lock you into a different closed system. Although you could design your *new* system to deliver messages immediately to the end user's RAM, it won't interact well with multi-device support and only-sometimes-online support. The need to maintain a TCP connection to the server is a major complaint about IRC and possibly the biggest reason for its decline in popularity. Although it works just fine in a lot of desktop computer scenarios, and okay enough in laptop scenarios, it's utterly intolerable in mobile phone scenarios, which, as you probably know, make up about 95% of usage. Let's assume you're willing to sacrifice multi-device support. TCP does buffer messages for a short time, seconds to minutes at most. You could try to do a TCP-like thing, and see how long you can extend the buffering until you need to get lawyers involved. If messages are buffered on the server for five milliseconds and you can't delete them in response to a legal request, that is okay. Five seconds also appears to be okay. How about five minutes? Five hours? It will become a problem before five days. You could design your system so that you *can* delete messages from TCP-like buffers. If a client's next connection is after you get a legal request to delete a message, it just won't get that message, but clients who got it earlier will still have it. This still means you need a department to process legal requests. It still doesn't work if you wrote the client, because the police will simply ask: why did you write the client in a way that doesn't allow the server to order it to delete messages it already received? And you'll go back to jail. So this kind of thing really requires a real open architecture.

Over several decades, I have been able to recall NANOG discussions that bear on current situations. Here is one example.

...

From: "james.cutler () consultant com" <james.cutler () consultant com> Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2021 15:07:14 -0400 Dave,

I am a regular discourse user these days. I have been a NANOG list participant for at least a quarter of a century. I find all the modern forums require examining multiple web pages and do not support gaining any historical perspective or assist in correlating various topics into a coherent gestalt. They also require waiting for all the embellishments and formatting which html users prize as advantages, even when words, well reasoned or hasty, would serve as well or better.

As you might surmise from the forgoing: IT AINT BROKE. DON’T FIX IT.

Pardon my shouting in my fervent expression of my opinion, but it is important that you hear and consider this.

- James R Cutler - 🦉 No AI content 719 Leicester Street, Plymouth, MI 48170-1020 +1 (734) 673-5462 james.cutler@consultant.com

_______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/OD67B4F3...

On 21/08/25 16:04, Jared Mauch via NANOG wrote:

I will say this:

We used to live in a world where most people on the list ran their own DNS, NNTP, IRC, E-mail etc servers and services and understood how each end-to-end bit worked together. We seem to be much further from that these days, people either know the hosts or the network but not both, the applications but not the operating system.

This may be due to the broadening of the scope of the list. I assume at one time the North American Network Operators Group exclusively consisted of people who Operated North American Networks. And I assume most of those people are still here. But people (or at least I) now receive information from farther and farther afield; I expect the number of tangentially interested people, university students, etc. on this list has increased much faster than the number of actual network operators. It seems like *you* really Operate a real North American Network, but you're replying to someone with a Russian name and a mail server hosted on AWS, who probably doesn't. I know that I have certainly never set foot in North America, nor do I Operate a real Network (DN42 isn't real - it's a grown-up lab exercise).

It’s important to understand more of what is going on in the adjacent systems and network elements as that impacts the outcomes that we design and engineer for these days.

- Jared _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/7ONWQNN2...

nanog@lists.nanog.org (nanog--- via NANOG) wrote:

If they want more usage, I suggest moving off ircnet. It's a rather closed network, in that it's somewhat difficult to connect if you're not a member of a participating organization. But I suppose that's the German way.

What exactly are you trying to hate on? That IRC channel has existed for way over a decade. And honestly, somebody who can get a router to do RPKI will have zero problem installing irssi. Whatever you're making up there, it's made up.

In addition to others mentioned, I'll visit reddit.com/r/networking on occasion. New networking folk seem to gravitate towards that forum. I tried this for a bit ... it was largely a matter of people trying to get "upvotes" rather than reasoned conversation, and newcomers were actively discouraged from speaking.

I figured it would be another space I could contribute, particularly to newb's, but I dropped out after a couple of weeks. My answers are always too "nuanced" and tradeoff oriented, which doesn't get upvotes. :-) /r

This. I may not speak much, but I lurk and learn, a lot (moreso, I now know much more the amount of things I do not know ...). However, when I do speak, responses are respectful, and even if the comment is, I am not made to feel "stupid." I like the mailing list, it suits me well. There may be other "better" platforms, but this one just works. michael brooks Network/Systems Administrator IV Adams 12 Five Star Schools michael.brooks@adams12.org :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: "flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss" On Mon, Aug 25, 2025 at 10:07 AM 7riw77--- via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:

...

In addition to others mentioned, I'll visit reddit.com/r/networking on occasion. New networking folk seem to gravitate towards that forum. I tried this for a bit ... it was largely a matter of people trying to get "upvotes" rather than reasoned conversation, and newcomers were actively discouraged from speaking.

I figured it would be another space I could contribute, particularly to newb's, but I dropped out after a couple of weeks. My answers are always too "nuanced" and tradeoff oriented, which doesn't get upvotes.

:-) /r _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list

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