Does NANOG have a role in developing some best practices text that could be easily imcorporated into peering agreements and service contracts? ...
RFC 2267 -> RFC 2827 == Best Current Practice (BCP) 38 RFC 3013 == BCP 46 RFC 3704 == BCP 84 Are these followed?
No, the IETF BCP's are not followed and part of the reason is that they are not written by network operators but often by vendors and academics. The fact is that the collective of network operations people (in North America at least) does not have any agreed set of BEST OPERATIONAL PRACTICES. There are various camps that promote various sets of rules which are often overly simplistic and cannot be 100% adhered to in practice. What we really need is a forum to discuss best operational practices and resolve all these various differences in opinion systematically. The end result should be a set of best practices that people really can follow with no exceptions. Of course this means that the best practices must incorporate various exceptions to the simple rules and explain when those exceptions are and are not appropriate. So again, I ask the question: Is NANOG an appropriate forum to develop some best practices text that could be incorporated into service agreements and peering agreements by reference in the same way that a software licence incorporates the GPL by referring to it? --Michael Dillon