On the other hand..... It has been clear over the past (years?..... time sure flies....) there has been a strong and very vocal pro-filtering Keep the Routing Table Small at *any* cost, group of advocates and protagonists in the NANOG mailing list. It is easy to reach the conjecture that the _perception_ of *others* is; having many strong and vocal pro-filtering protagonists in NANOG; and given the fact that the few who warned that selective route filtering was very problematic were flamed-broiled and none came to their defense \Metaphor .........................after all, if a town in the days of the Salem witch trials watched as the zealots burned the heretics, is the town without blood on their hands just because they remained silent in their comfy homes? \EndMetaphor It is not a strong leap of the imagination to believe that NANOG, the vocal majority, supports selective route-filtering to control routing table growth and was very aggressive to oppress the those whom dared to stand alone and challenge there will. Please keep in mind that as in *any* group, NANOG included, by virture of allowing a few dominate voices to represent the group, does bear responsibility for the perception others view the group. Best Regards, Tim

After scanning the on-line notes from the NANOG meetings, I did not find any "recommendations" made by the group. In fact, the group has mentioned many times that it is inappropriate to set policy. What the group does is discuss various technical problems, share work-arounds, fixes, kludges, and as individuals adopt what is useful. --Elise

...

Sean Donelan writes:

What is NANOG's role?

I was surprised to read in the March 25 issue of NetworkWorld Alecia Cooper at Sprint comments that Sprint is just following NANOG's recommendations to block addresses to minimize the number of router table entries. I must have missed something, because I don't remember NANOG ever making any recommendation, of any sort.

Is this just a case of bad reporting by Joanie Wexler at NetworkWorld? A bad case of passing the buck by Alecia Cooper at Sprint? Or something else? -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation

On Tue, 2 Apr 1996, Elise Gerich wrote:

After scanning the on-line notes from the NANOG meetings, I did not find any "recommendations" made by the group. In fact, the group has mentioned many times that it is inappropriate to set policy. What the group does is discuss various technical problems, share work-arounds, fixes, kludges, and as individuals adopt what is useful.

Sounds like a recommendation to me. Just rewrite that in some flowery language alonmg with a few technical details and you will have a press release for the next NANOG meeting that you can feed to the journalists. I'm serious; something like this could be done.... At the ??? 96 NANOG meeting the important issue of widgets was discussed. Widgets are the framistams that make the Internet's frogistor wave synchronise with the widgimajiggers at each of the main exchange points. Several proposals were made to solve the problem of widget wave induction and the group generally agreed to implement the best of these proposals and report back on results at the next meeting. Members were generally confident that the proposed solutions will alleviate the problem. Note that this short press release explains the items being discussed and why they are important to the Internet's operations. It also includes some background material to help journalists understand the situation even if they were not previously aware that the Internet relied on framistams. And there is a strong statement of confidence that things are OK, routine, being taken care of, not to worry, etc... You may not like the eyes of the world to be looking at you, but the fact is that those eyes are going to be looking at you more and more as the Internet grows in importance and people get curious at how it really works. Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com

it has) and a viable alternative is presented, I suspect Sprint will be interested in cooperating in the best interest of the Internet, and at least give any new ideas an objective audience.

We have a request in to Sprint to make an exception to their policy. We will renumber, resulting in a reduced number of route annoucements. I'd like to think that what you say is correct - we'll see.