On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, William Herrin wrote:
If the complaint is that the IETF doesn't adequately listen to the operations folk, then I think it makes sense to consult the operations folks early and often on potential fixes. If folks here think it would help, -that- is when I'll it to the IETF.
I started participating in the IETF 1-2 years ago. Coming from Fidonet background, the threshold of entry felt very low, as long as you make any kind of sense, people will discuss with you there and it doesn't matter who you are. You don't even have to go to the meetings (I've only been to a single one). I encourage everybody to participate, at least to subscribe to the WG mailing lists and keep a look out for the draft announcements and give feedback to those. If we in the ISP business don't do this, the show will be run by the vendors and academics (as is the case right now). They're saying "come to us", you're saying "come to us", and as long as both do this the rate of communication is going to be limited. What is needed is more people with operational backgrounds. For instance, I pitched the idea that ended up as a draft, dunno what will come of it: <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/isis-wg/current/msg02556.html> This has purely operational background and the puritans didn't like it (they didn't even understand why one would want to do it like that), but after a while I feel I received some traction and it might actually end up as a protocol enhancement that will help some ISPs in their daily work. Even something like your IGP isn't "done", and can be enhanced even if it takes time. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se