Christian
On Feb 14, 2006, at 4:47 PM, David Meyer wrote:
Tony/all,
I am not going to speak for the IETF, but why would they? Their meetings are already open, and to be globally fair the proposed coordinators would have to attend 3-5 extra meetings a year to cover all the ops groups.
I am also not speaking for the IETF (IAB), but the IAB has undertaken the task of trying to bring a little of what's happening in the IETF to the operator community (and hopefully in the process engaging folks to come to the IETF). Now, while many in the IETF argue that there is no such thing as an "operator community", I personally see it differently, and there are many of us who think that operator input is sorely missing from the IETF process. That is one of the reasons we did the NANOG 35 IPv6 multihoming BOF (and are doing the same at the upcoming apricot meeting).
Hmm, well, when there is lots of vendor and academia involvement, no, there's no operator community presented in number of things I'm following in the IETF. Take manet, for example, I don't even know to begin where to inject operator concerns/requirements. :-/
Well taken. And further, I would say manet is more the rule than the exception in this respect. BTW, it took me years to become facile with the (IETF) process (if I'm even there now :-)). I can say that I had excellent mentoring (Randy and perhaps a few others), so that helped. Maybe we need something not as formal as an IETF liaison relationship, but perhaps something like that. More thinking required...
I think this is as much an IETF issue as it is of the operator community. Operators need to devote time to IETF to make the work in the IETF most relevant to the operators needs.
Yes, and this has always been an acute problem as long as I've been around. People have day (night, weekend jobs). Co-location of the meetings seems a possible way to start attacking one aspect that problem, with the understanding that perhaps travel isn't the biggest of the problems, but it is a non-trivial issue for many of us. Thanks for the great comments. Dave