Here's my notes from tonight's 'NANOG new attendee orientation meeting'. Matt 2006.06.04 NANOG New Attendee Orientation NOTES: NANOG Organization Steering Commitee (blue badges) Program Committee (yellow badges) decide what's on the agenda (green badges are both) Mailing list Committee (smoke badges) Merit Network staff NANOG Organization (2) Meeting hosts (Rodney Joffe) Rescued NANOG after previous host pulled out Sponsors pay for beer and gear, breaks The NANOG Community Community meetings Meeting surveys Elections nanog-futures@nanog.org Don't forget to fill out the surveys!! Meeting structure Format: Plenary sessions (big room) Tutorials sorta like panels, like Network Neutrality panel. BOFs Usually tools, security, peering, at least. not recorded, not webcast, more informal, more candid. Social events Beer and Gear, tomorrow evening. 8 exhibitors showing off latest gear Etiquette Mutual respect is the big thing; no personal attacks; can criticize ideas, but avoid ad hominum attacks. Dress Code Must wear shirt and shoes at all times. Pants or shorts would be nice, too. The press and photography Members of the press may be present Photography is not permitted during sessions due to legal liability/copyright issues. it's also distracting! All sessions except BOFs are recorded and webcast will be available for replay later off nanog.org Reporters should identify themselves if they speak with you. Program selection process 17 on the program committee, one selected by Merit call for presentations deadline ratings: each PC member rates each submission on a scale of 1-5 and adds comments conference call to determine consensus Usually most are good, some need suggestions on what is needed before they can be approved. Program process 2 second round of comments second round conference call anything after that: chair's discretion Some stuff had to be turned away this time, as schedule was full. Now over to Betty Burke for Merit update. NANOG 37 newcomer meeting Betty Burke, Project Manager, Merit Network she'll be giving overview of Merit, and why it's involved with NANOG. Bill Norton will go more through the relationship through history. She also handles the Michigan technology center, so she covers multiple hats. Merit and NANOG Continuation of shared values Committment to R&D National Involvement Regional Educational Activities Much of the background between merit and NANOG is in the shared research and development focus. Merit originally focused on the Michigan area research network, now covers research and development for widespread activities, nationally and internationally. Merit is 503.1c entity in Michigan, non-profit, one of the largest network providers in Michigan; they do R&D only, no commercial side. NANOG hosts and sponsors hosts: work with Merit to locate a hotel, provide connectivity, build the hotel network, and staff the meeting break sponsor: an engineer from your organization exhibits your equipment on a tabletop display. break slots are 30 minutes one vendor per event beer n gear: dipslay your equipment at a table staffed by two engineers. Merit is 501c.3 regional network, 40 years young Owned by Michigan Public Universities hosted at University of Michigan located in the Michigan information technology center with Internet2 Org chart Merit Board Merit CEO--new, starting in July, reports to Board Directors - R&D, Network Managers Staff Hierarchy is to allow decisionmaking, but the hierarchy isn't rigid; ideas can flow in either direction as needed. Mission statement: to be a respected leader in developing and providing advanced networking services to the research and education community. Merit is a trusted source for providing high-quality network infrastructure: initiating and facilitating collaboration; and providng knowledge and technology transfer through outreach... Supporting our Mission MichNet, Merit's statewide network as well as Internet2 Research and Development. Bill Norton, unvetted slides. Freshly unslept (new kids will do that to you) NANOG History (v0.2) William B. Norton Co-Founder/Chief Technical Liason Equinix, Inc. wbn@equinix.com He's used to dealing with lots of suits, with translators, transcribers, etc. Why did the Frenchman have only one egg in his omlette? One egg is an oeuf! What do I know about NANOG? Merit Staff 1987-1998 NANOG chair 1995-1998 Developed 1st Business Plan for NANOG financially self-sustaining Started number of NANOG traditions NANOG T-shirts Numbering NANOGs Colored NANOG NameTag Beer-n-Gear Cookie-graph Surveys Etc Q. What to expect in a typical day? A. Current meeting structure 2.5 days; it may look like a terminal room Sunday-Wednesday Sunday is Newcomer's welcome, and community meeting Monday-Main sessions... NANOG spreads travel burdens (6 was my first NANOG in San Diego) Still pretty much true that it's cheaper if you stay over Saturday night in terms of flights. 1987-1994 NSF funded $->Merit got NSFnet award to run T1 network Then T3/3, and then full T3. Also was supposed to run the regional techs meeting. The NSFnet core had regional networks as customers, supercomputer centers, research facilities, etc. This was the coordination forum where the NSFnet folks would pull the regional techs to discuss ongoing issues. Merit handled logistics and hosts for the meetings; usually a univerisity or supercomputer center. George Washington U. had a cool facility, for 65-70 people to get together. Always split between Merit and the hosts. The Agenda was always handled by Merit. 1994 Next, Internet grew, NSF decided internet could be self-sustaining as commercial venture, in 1994, transitioned to commercial, self-sustaining venture. Regional techs meeting had to go from free to paying $175, to become self-sustaining. 1.75 FTEs at Merit to support it; most of it done by the host. Single core split into different commercial providers interconnected at priority NAPs. regional networks could pick any provider. NANOG focused on the new commercial model. Merit thus just did logistics, host picking, the low volume NANOG mailing list; at the time, had a strong chair which helped determine the agenda for the meeting. Then, after Ann Arbor, Randy Bush and Curtis Villamizer and others helped as program Advisors to help pick the agenda; some were Merit staff with tentacles into industry, and some were in industry only. 1998-2004 For a variety of reasons, NANOG restructuring started in 2004 Desired structure should provide 1. transparency 2. accountability 3. better agenda 4. be community-driven and responsive Dan Golding was partially responsible for driving this change. 2005-2006 Community elects a steering committee, the steering committee selects the program committee, which creates the agenda by evangelizing the meeting to industry. Also the steering committee selects the mailing list committee Results Transparency each group's members/activities are documented meeting minutes community meeting for discussions Community-driven agenda PC actively recruiting talks Accountability elected steering group Accessible at NANOG, email aliases You, the members, can more directly control what happens in the NANOG community. InfoWorld/From the Ether/Bob Metcalf NANOG Meeting Column DRAFT TWO (Bob Metcalfe puts out a call for more suits to attend NANOG meetings to prevent the collapse of the internet) The Internet will collapse in 8^H 7 days! Famous Quotes page "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." Had to eat his words in 1997. 1997 had a fun series of fiber cuts, Internet under attack by backhoes. Rodney's hosted five NANOGs thus far. ^_^ My suggestions for you Every Conference is the same: 1st time, you know no-one 2nd time, you recognize someone 3rd time, someone recognizes you ...send the same person each time You won't understand everything spend time in the hallways (big) part of the benefit of NANOG is meeting the community Makes sense to send the same person to all NANOGs, rather than rotating through. Much of the benefit of NANOG is learning, and making contacts. The contacts are critically important. When engineers meet face to face, talk about networking and peering, when things break in the middle of the night, they get repaired faster; you trust them already, and you can speak a common language when things break. Steve Feldman thanks everyone, there's some refreshments, community meeting starts in 30 minutes in this room. Meeting wraps up at 1626 hours Pacific Time.