February 2001 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Re: Beer and Gear surprise
by owen＠dixon.delong.sj.ca.us 22 Feb '01

22 Feb '01

> > [ Warning: this message is void of any operational content. ] > > On Tue, Feb 20, 2001 at 11:36:55PM -0600, Ukyo Kuonji wrote: > > Did I miss some discussion about the Beer and Gear surprise? I, > > personally, feel somewhat cheated that there was no "gear" available > > from the vendors in attendance. > > <rumor> > > Sponsors were specifically asked _not_ to give out clothing, as the > Cisco boxer shorts distributed at NANOG 20 were somehow deemed > offensive and discriminatory. > > </rumor> > > Don't get me wrong, Beer and Gear was definitely time well spent, I > just found the "gear" aspect (assuming that's in reference to > freebies, not hardware demonstrated by vendors) a bit lacking. ;) > > Long live free vendorware. > > -adam > > Er... I can understand offensive (I don't agree, but I can understand), but I don't understand how they were discriminatory. The only people in my house that like to wear Boxers are my two daughters. I'm a tighty whitey person myself. Most of my daughters female friends claim to prefer boxers too. Maybe it's just local to SJ. Owen

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Re: Beer and Gear surprise
by owen＠dixon.delong.sj.ca.us 22 Feb '01

22 Feb '01

> I have found this on the web site: > > "In striving to achieve these goals, all tutorials and presentations, > including BOF presentations, are reviewed in advance and are limited to > those entirely of a general technical nature, explicitly prohibiting > material that relates to any specific product or service offerings. For > similar reasons, equipment exhibits are limited to the "Beer 'n Gear" > sessions, and vendor giveaways are not permitted at any time during the > meeting." > > I'm not sure if there was a vote of the membership, or what, but I had > certainly missed it. > > Does anyone have more information on this? > I agree with your general point that the vendor giveaways should be restored to the beer 'n gear. I did not notice any sort of vote. I think it was decided by the folks at Merit. Someone said it was the result of one person at Merit reacting to a particular Cisco giveaway (underpants?) at one of the last two NANOGs which I missed. Anyway, Merit, if your listening, bring back the vendor chachkies (sp?) at the Beer & Gear. It's supposed to be the exception to the Purley Academic nature of NANOG, and I really don't see drawing a line where booze and food are OK and flashlights, pens, t-shirts, underwear, etc. are bad, just because food doesn't stay with you (unless it's bad or you eat too much). Owen

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Beer and Gear surprise
by Ukyo Kuonji 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

Did I miss some discussion about the Beer and Gear surprise? I, personally, feel somewhat cheated that there was no "gear" available from the vendors in attendance. If I had known that there was to be no freebees, I certainly could have went to dinner early and not hung around to look at equipment that I already have seen directly from the vendors. I did not spend money to come out to Atlanta to get hit upon by vendors. If I had wanted to look at vendors, I could have went to some other conferences and spent more time looking at equipment that I won't be recommending for deployment. Without some freebees to draw the nanog conference attendees to the vendors, I don't even see the point of continuing to have the the Beer and Gear part. I have found this on the web site: "In striving to achieve these goals, all tutorials and presentations, including BOF presentations, are reviewed in advance and are limited to those entirely of a general technical nature, explicitly prohibiting material that relates to any specific product or service offerings. For similar reasons, equipment exhibits are limited to the "Beer 'n Gear" sessions, and vendor giveaways are not permitted at any time during the meeting." I'm not sure if there was a vote of the membership, or what, but I had certainly missed it. Does anyone have more information on this? UK --- Opinions in this email are the personal opinions of the author and are not associated with author's employer. This email account is a not the regular email account of the author and is being used for the protection of the employer. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

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Re: Beer and Gear surprise
by Richard A. Steenbergen 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 08:40:03PM -0500, Jared Mauch wrote: > > If i were a vendor i'd at least make them talk to me or get a > business card/name on a sign-in sheet before they got their goodies. > It's better business than showing up and giving away 550 t-shirts at a > considerable cost to me with no return on my investment other than the > advertizing value. Not to drag this discussion out any longer then it needs to be, but 550 t-shirts is hardly a budgetary nightmare considering the amount of money that the people who attend NANOG spend on these vendors. I very much doubt any real discussions with vendors take place over and beer and gear, its an opportunity to build goodwill and for people to get an upclose look at new equipment they might not otherwise have the opportunity to see. IMHO, This entire discussion is really quite sad. Yes the boxers and "IP Everywhere" shirts are not items you'll find in the Cisco Marketplace, but I didn't think the point of the beer and gear was to get drunk and be politically correct. People go their to socialize, have a good time, and yes they like to get neat little toys and clothing. If you cannot deal with this you don't have to go, noone said you had to take off your suit and tie and put on a Cisco t-shirt. As for the "outrage" over people leaving conferences early, maybe the problem is that the presentation is less interesting then a tshirt. I know I'm not the only one who was praying for someone to snipe the presenter off the stage during that 2 hour long MPLS VPN nightmare. And yes I've said as much in my survey. </2cents> -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras(a)e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)

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Re:RE: Monitoring/Trending Software -- Which Package(s) do y
by CARL P HIRSCH 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

Just curious, Would HP's Openview Network Node Manager be suitable for this application? I evaluated NNM some time ago but found it rather bloated and I figured that it would really only be truly useful in an HP-UX environment where NNM could integrate with all the other Openview components. One thing I found appealing is that NNM sits on an Oracle backend (according to the marketroids, anyhow), meaning that you could run reports till the cows came home. I've always been told that trend analysis is where OpenView Network Node Manager shines. Plus, it's Fully Buzzword Compliant. Every IT manager's eyes light up when they hear "OpenView", but is it really useful in a real-world scenario? For network monitoring, I've actually grown to really like IpSwitch Software's WhatsUp Gold. I wrote it off for a long time but grudgingly tried it out during a time crunch and was pretty impressed. It's bare-bones, and NT-only, but it's so durn easy to get up and running with it in a pinch. It handles ICMP, SNMP, and RMON with threshold alerts. I'm thinking it supports a wide variety of MIBs. I found its reporting a bit lacking, though. It probably would be more or less useless for trend analysis. I'm sure I'd get more out of MRTG is I was more comfortable with Perl. One of my projects has been to investigate monitoring/trending solutions under Linux/*BSD. Apparently somebody just created a Debian distribution for net telemetry collection. I haven't found much under Linux for RMON yet, and there certainly doesn't appear to be anything like a free full-featured monitoring/trending suite out there. Any suggestions? -carl hirsch network analyst sargent & lundy llc chicago 60603 ____________________Reply Separator____________________ Subject: RE: Monitoring/Trending Software -- Which Package(s) do you Author: owner-nanog-outgoing(a)merit.edu Date: 2/21/01 9:45 AM Actually you probably need to look at VitalNet.. This is a competing product to Concorde NetHealth... -----Original Message----- From: John Starta [mailto:john@starta.org] Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 9:23 PM To: Lee Watterworth Lucent's VitalSuite (either SP or Enterprise) software is definitely worth a look. You can find detailed information about it on their web site: http://www.lucentnps.com/software/ jas At 05:44 PM 2/20/01 -0500, Lee Watterworth wrote: >I have been handed the task of finding a monitoring/trending package for >our network and systems. > >I will be looking at the package's collection mechanism for flexibility >(snmp gets, traps, rmon), and the variety/configurability of the reports >it can produce. The package should be able to provide (configurable) >alerts when threshholds are met/surpassed. > >I have been evaluating Concord's eHealth Suite, and would like to evaluate >other options before I commit to a particular package. > >Any feedback would be great. > >-Lee.

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Re: Network for Sale
by John Fraizer 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

To EVERYONE who has contacted me offlist regarding my being so hard on Jay: If this company were truely revelational, my WIFE would have told me about it and I would not have ready about them for the first time on NANOG. They are letting their marketing monkeys run wild, duping unknowing customers into thinking they're getting something better than ANY other provider can give them. By design, their network depends on BGP4 because they depend on TRANSIT from other providers. If they had peering relationships with "God and everybody", "Everywhere", perhaps their new, fangled technology would have some benefit. As it stands, from what I can grep from their "marketing s^&#%&t".....er.....website, they have NOTHING to offer that SAVVIS/INTERNAP/(every other like-type provider) have to offer besides perhaps the fact that their network will be faster until they inevitably grow beyone capacity at which time, their marketing types will announce their new "OC-10,1000" network buildout with an estimated turnup date of 1/1/3000. Beyond that, I'm _REALLY_ sick of people pissing and moaning about NAPS being congestion points. If you're so tired of the exchange point being slow, INVEST IN MAKING IT FASTER!!!!! It's _NOT_ that hard. It's to _YOUR_ benefit. Moral of the mini-tangent: It's not the NAP, it's the OPERATOR. If they're too greedy to invest in infrastructure, you should investigate alternatives, At the same time, those of you with pipes trying to run at 150% to the exchange points should be ashamed! Someone shoot me when money becomes more important to me than the performance of my network. So, basically, what we're looking at is "Same s%^t, different company name." Jay: _PLEASE_ show different. I'll gladly be shown to be wrong. I'm not holding my breath though. --- John Fraizer EnterZone, Inc

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Re: Beer and Gear surprise
by richb＠pioneer.ci.net 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

> Did I miss some discussion about the Beer and Gear surprise? I, personally, > feel somewhat cheated that there was no "gear" available from the vendors in > attendance. > > I did not spend money to come out to Atlanta to get hit upon by vendors. > ... I don't even see the point of continuing to have the the Beer > and Gear part. I have the same opinion. Having recently left the ISP competitive rat-race to join the equipment rat-race, I attended as one of the vendor sponsors. We followed all the rules to avoid "hitting" on anyone, but it was only after we committed to the sponsorship that we learned we couldn't give out "gear" to improve name recognition. Why is the event called "beer 'n gear" if I can't hand out T shirts and schwag? Like the above writer, I always looked forward to collecting a drawerful of T shirts and trivia at past NANOG beer 'n gears. Data sheets and business cards are kinda boring. Will I need to wear a tie next time? ;-) -rich

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Re: Beer and Gear surprise
by Ukyo Kuonji 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

I will accept your word that people were leaving before the end, however I know that the beer and gear didn't start early, and I got whatever there was to get, and even a little extra from a couple vendors. There seemed to have been no shortage that would have required people to get there early. At 21, the doors to beer and gear were not opened until 5:30. I would have to propose that if there is a problem with people leaving early to go to beer and gear, just close the doors to the beer and gear until the designated start time. I believe that the reason why people left the IXP panel in DC was that it was a pretty darn boring panel. You tend to get people drifting after the 3rd presenter anyway, and although I stayed for the whole thing, I certainly was starting to fall asleep. This may have been a problem in Atlanta with the VPN panel as well. After the 3rd presentation people tent to shut down. Better to keep each presentaation short, and just spark more questions than put everyone to sleep. --- Opinions in this email are the personal opinions of the author and are not associated with author's employer. This email account is a not the regular email account of the author and is being used for the protection of the employer. ----Original Message Follows---- From: Stephen Stuart <stuart(a)mfnx.net> To: "Ukyo Kuonji" <kawaii_iinazuke(a)hotmail.com> CC: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: Beer and Gear surprise Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:33:54 -0800 > I was at NANOG 20, and I seem to remember that the technical talks were over > a good 20-30 minutes before Beer and Gear. If people were leaving the talks > early, I'm sure it was not the fault of the vendors. I certainly don't > think that people should have been offended by it. The vendors set up early and left their stuff unattended. The supply of particular trinket was pretty much exhausted by people leaving the talks 20-30 minutes early to ensure their possession of that NANOG's "must-have" trinket. > As far as being "sexist", I know more women that wear boxers than men. The boxers were not the issue, despite rumor to the contrary. Stephen _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

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Re: Network for Sale
by Paul A Vixie 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

> >no, that is not the problem. oh i admit that ping time jitter is ~random. > >but even if it weren't, RTT doesn't drive performance, (bw*delay)-loss does. > > And how does "delay" differ from RTT, except for the obvious constant > factor? my point wasn't that rtt didn't matter but that bandwidth and loss also matter. so does filesize. for a 2MB GIF i'd rather have a 900ms * 622Mb/s (satellite?) link. for a 2K frame i'd rather have a 60ms * 56K link. using RTT by itself as a performance predictor is just silly. same for aspath length. the only way to know if performance will differ between server/proxy A vs B when talking to client C is to serve from both and see what the tcp window does and what the total bytes/sec are (if the file is long enough for those to matter.) the data then decays rapidly since congestion and routing will change after measurement.

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Re: Network for Sale
by Paul A Vixie 21 Feb '01

21 Feb '01

>> Oh god, I hope not. RTT has never been an accurate predictor of end-to-end >> performance. (Just ask anyone who bought into ping-based global server load >> balancing.) ASPATH length is almost as bad (as a predictor) as RTT. > > well, it's the way icmp_echo is handeld in some vendor routers and > sometime also the poor implementation of an IP stack on the echoing > device which is a problem. no, that is not the problem. oh i admit that ping time jitter is ~random. but even if it weren't, RTT doesn't drive performance, (bw*delay)-loss does.

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