On 07/10/2011 12:45 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
While this is true, there are a couple of factors that make it more difficult than it would appear on the surface.
Number one: Participating effectively in IETF is a rather time-consuming process. While a lot of engineers and developers may have IETF effort as a primary part of their job function and/or get their employer to let them spend time on it, operators are often too busy keeping what they already have running and it can be _VERY_ difficult to get management to support the idea of investing time in things like IETF which are not seen by management as having direct operational impact. NANOG is about the limit of their vision on such things and even that is not well supported in a lot of organizations.
Vendors make up the vast bulk of attendance at ietf. And vendors are there for one reason: to make stuff that you'll be paying for. So you pay for it at ietf time, or you pay for it at deployment time. Either way, you'll be paying.
Number two: While anyone can participate, approaching IETF as an operator requires a rather thick skin, or, at least it did the last couple of times I attempted to participate. I've watched a few times where operators were shouted down by purists and religion over basic real-world operational concerns. It seems to be a relatively routine practice and does not lead to operators wanting to come back to an environment where they feel unwelcome.
If you're trying to imply that operators get singled out, that's not been my experience. You definitely need to have a thick skin given egos and there's definitely a large pool of professional ietf finger waggers, but their holier than thou attitude is spread to all in their path, from what I've seen. I won't speak for every working group, but the ones i've been involved with have been pretty receptive to operator input. Mike