Now with that out of the way...  The mentality of everyone working together for a Better Internet (tm) is sort of a mantra of WISPA and WISPs in general. It is a mantra that has puzzled me and perplexed my own feelings as a network engineer. Do I want a better overall experience for my users and customers? Absolutely. Do I strive to make our network the best... pause... in the world? Definitely. Should I do the same to help a neighboring ISP, a competitor? This is where I scratch my head. You would absolutely think that we would all want a better overall Internet. One that we can depend on in times of need. One that we can be proud of. But we are driven, unfortunately, by our C-level execs to shun the competition and do whatever we can to get a leg up on everyone else. While this is good for the bottom line it is not exactly a healthy mentality to pit everyone against each other. It causes animosity between providers and we end up blaming each other for something simple and then claim they are stupid. A mistake that may be easy to make, a mistake that we have probably made ourselves a few times, perhaps a mistake we can learn to shrug off.

I believe there probably is a happy medium we can all meet, sort of our own ISP DMZ, where we can help one another in the simple mistakes or cut each other some slack in those difficult times. I like to think NANOG is that place.