I captured some notes during tonight's open mike committee meeting, in case they may be of interest to the list. Apologies in advance for typos, it was hard to keep up with the speakers. ^_^; Matt Steering Committee Report (steering@nanog.org) 2006.02.12 1700 hours Central Time. AGENDA Steering Comittee (Randy Bush) Program Committee (Steve Feldman) Financial Report (Betty Burke) Mailing List Report (Chris Malayter) Steering committee report Tryng to hear the membershiip responsible for ML, PC, Lostistics But trying not to micro-manage Establishing normal but minimal business practices Semi-weekly minutes on web site SC Tries to listen Transparency: SC Minutes, ML, Stats, ... Trying Mon-Wed Meeting (instead of Sun-Tues) Newcomers' Session (did it work?) No more Terminal Room (Laptops plugged to printers near registration) Change badge fonts (larger company name/person name) (really a question of size, according to WBN) Suggestion from a nice gentleman at the microphone who says "why not print the badge on both sides, so you don't need to flip badge around all the time? Did NOT change Number of meetings per year Many costs of support are fixed, ie not per-meeting Currently amortized over three meetings If over two meetings, fees would go up significantly Did NOT change Working Lunch Hotels have monopoly on food The charges for lunch are what you would expect from a monopoly But we will try to be more sensitive to ease of getting lunch near or at the meeting venue (not economical to have hotel provide food) Rights in Data NANOG trademark is held by Mertic Presos are copyright by the author Right to freely distribute, but not modify, granted to NANOG PC is drafting this formally copyright notices on slides are OK if small and unobtrusive What does it mean to be a member? Attendance at meetings, and participation in the mailing list is pretty much what defines membership. Program Comittee First change using new process seemed successful Why have you not submitted a talk? Wht do you want to hear? Mailing List Worked the process to fill vacancy left by Steve Gibbard Still working with ML panel to document their process Still working With MP to develop an appeals processs Statistics are published monthly on NANOG web site ML Panel Appointments No Terms, etc. in current charter Straw proposal charger change parallels SC and PC two year terms staggered two sequential terms max without a vacation Please comment, change, propose (Bill Norton, Equinix, Use of nanog-futures to discuss this very type of issue...Randy will get to it) ML panel proces cont. This would give members a light at the end of the tunnel Volunteers would know what they're signing up for Allwos chang without bad vibe of removal Normal organizational practice Chartger Change Octove is the end of the process so start now MLL Panel straw poproasal staring Need to get Steve's name adn other star-upisms removed No other proposals received for this year New Ideas BLOG--no progress Wiki, no progress SlashNOG, no interest Trial of new tech gear at NANOG, nothing exciting Video in hallways, Do you like it? It's back, same size, better location!! By cafe tables near registration area, near where food will be. Traded terminal room for informal breakout rooms, informal seating, allow for more mingling. Ren Provo--http://nanog.multiply.com/, about 100 pictures with names and affiliations, so you can match up faces with names to help newcomers. Mailing Lists Engineering and Ops dicsussion only (nanog@nanog.org) Discussion about NANOG itself (nanog-futures@nanog.org) Steering (steering@nanog.org) Program (nanogpc@nanog.org) ML <nanog-admin@nanog.org) Fruit supplied, yum! Discussion? How can we make NANOG more useful, fun, informative? Randy gripes the mailing list has gotten boring recently. Cut to Steve Feldman for Program Committee Report. Steve Feldman, CNET, PC Chair. All opinions, mistakes, his, all the good stuff is thanks to the PC. NANOG 36 program 26 submissions (down from 41!!) 22 accepted 1 cancelled 1 withdrawn 2 rejected 2 very late, both accepted Areas for improvement Speaker solicitation Tool improvements self-service submission web interface Reports Program Format Mon-Weds format morning plenaries afternoon BOF, Tutorials Evening social events Newbie meeting is there a better name Tracks? not without more content!! for tutorials, bofs, hopefully not too much overlap or need to be in two places at once. Party tomorrow courtesy of Yahoo! Tuesday, Beer and Gear with sponsors. For Tracks, need sufficient space as well as content. Lightning Talks Criterion: on-topic for mailing list Signups start Monday morning instructions during plenary Random acceptance of submissions made before 2pm Monday Submission order after that (if slots remain) (No personal insults! Stay technical, keep it below 10 minutes) Feedback Talk to us! PC members have yellow and green badges Send mail nanog-futures@nanog.org (public) nanogpc@nanog.org (private) Open Discussion What topics would you like to hear more (or less) about? How can we (PC and community) get speakers on those topics? Joe Wool, ATT, newbie--what is mission or purpose of this organization? Might help us develop content if we knew the purpose of the organization. We're a group of network operators who talk about network operations stuff. Open to anyone who operates large networks using networking technology. Bill Norton--what obstacles are there for people that prevent them from doing Question from the gallery--what talks would be relevant to the group? Security! IPv6 deployment new last-mile connectivity (DSL, DOCSIS 3, etc) peering? how to convert from OSPF to ISIS economics of networking? what macroeconimic events are shaping networking? Geoff Huston did great set of talks at the last meeting, for example. Randy notes potter.net is his monthly article, same subject Randy notes broadband deployment in Japan might be of interest--Cho-san could talk about it; you can get 100baseT in most places in Japan for $30/month. US is one of the last place developed countries in last mile deployments. Steve notes PC has assumptions about what we don't want to hear; no sales pitches from router vendors, no far future standards that may or may not happen, no talks of internet politics like ICANN politics, etc. If those aren't valid assumptions, should be challenged. Bill Norton notes that finding topics is sometimes easier than finding people to get up to the microphone and talk about it. For example, company spending millions on IPv6 gear testing could do a simple presentation on what they found. You might think it's horribly boring, but others might find it more useful. Tom Schull, ATT, hard to talk about deployments when vendor bashing isn't permitted. Maybe relax that restriction? Are vendors really that intertwined with NANOG? Vendors do provide financial support in terms of beer and gear; vendors don't sway the program comittee choices. Most vendor talks aren't vendors, but tutorials seem to be (they have budget for it?) Honesty isn't disallowed, but try to steer clear of simple hyperbole and invective. What about performance measurements? Those tend to be very cut-and-dried, factual details. Virender? RiverDomain?, what about advent of malware, events of denial of service, how do large networks use to mitigate those type of events? Lessons learned type talks. Steve notes the Katrina talk will focus on that type of "lessons learned" talk--see if those are of use to the group or not. Thank you all for the comments, and send email as well. Next up, Betty Burke for Merit Financial Report. NANOG 36 community meeting, Betty Burke, PM, Merit. Welcome!! Attendance Chart NANOG35 Report (financial report) NANOG36 predictions General Updates Acknowledgements Attendance: risen from about 100 in 94 to about 500 in LA slight downward dip for 34 down to 450. Each meeting has location as well as time of year that affects attendance NANOG35, LA Oct.05 Revenu 267,198.07 Expense 240,306,13 Academic Calendar: Jul1 to Jun31 Will give fiscal year update next meeting Equipment supplies 16,431.79 merit staff travel 9,255.32 Non merit staff travel 0.00 Speakers 0.00 Hosting 93,879.93 Admin Overhead 120,739.09 Technical overhead Per Meeting Balance: 26,891.94 No speakers who needed to be sponsored to attend in LA. 93K hosting is check to hotel for food, meeting room, power, etc. Admin Overhead is a rollup; July to October admin staff salararies, tech staff salaries, other GA from Merit that needs to be charged to NANOG for hosting it. 518 attendees, 26,891.94 surplus to carry forward. NANOG36 predictions Current registration 340 w/o cancellations due to bad weather Current Sponsors B&G - 8 (usually 10, down 2 from normal) Breaks - 0 (no vendors sponsoring breaks this time) Expenses Hotel about the same Travel +2 (2 additional staff members, ensure the tools and wireless network would be up to snuff) Fewer equipment expenses (spend in October beefing up, reuse in Feb) Revenue number will be lower than LA, with similar expenses to last time, so may Updates Accomplished Improved Budget Reporting Video Wiring (less big bulky RGB cables in white crates!) Statistics New meeting format (set-up, badges, agenda) Next quarter Merit CEO Search Improved Voting process Improved Registration Process New switch hardware Possibilities Presenters website NANOG list server update Carol Wadsworth has been working hard to make sure talent logistics work out Merit is looking for new CEO, Betty Burke will have a new manager in June. The improved voting and registration process will finally be merging this year. Develop a database, capture photos, etc. of people. Will be getting some new switch hardware as well, to help improve connectivity. Considering a separate presenter's website. Aiming to beef up servers to speed response time. Future meeting sites: Spring 06 --not yet confirmed Oct 06 w/ARIN --confirmed Feb 07 w/Internet2 --planning underway with internet2 joint techs--one day overlap with them. Acknowledgements SC, PC, List-admins Host and Sponsors Yahoo, ATT, Duane, Arbinet, Arbor Networks, Cariden, Cisco Systems, Foundry Networks, Juniper Networks, Renesys, Tellabs Merit Staff Attending Manish, Jon, Bert, Mary Merit Staff in Ann Arbor Sue, Bob, Charlie, Jeff, Brad Merit NANOG Staff on site David, Rick, Jason, Dale, Chris, Larry, Gayle, Carol, Susan, There's Merit staff both here and in Ann Arbor working hard to keep everything running smoothly. Questions? Bill Norton asks why it's in Merit's strategic interests to continue playing the host/coordinator role for NANOG, esp. in light of the evolution that happened last year. In Betty's opinion, after the meeting with Merit's board two weeks ago, when that question was asked, it is worth it for Merit to go through the shakeup. Merit's purpose is to run a first-rate, high-end research and educational network in the state of michigan. But beyond the regional network, it aims to showcase its network to the wider world, and from that perspective, it makes good sense to support NANOG. Merit board of directors generally agrees. Betty notes there was a question of what would happen if Merit didn't handle NANOG? If the community felt it was important, it would go on; but Merit felt it was in a good position, and the cost recovery was preventing it from being a drain, that the community good will benefit was worth the bumps along the way. Bill Norton--are things easier? Randy goes back to first question. Look to Europe and Asia, where internet registry takes a stronger role; the ops community is largely run by the registry, and fragmentation has started to creep in. With ARIN, LACNIC, etc., it's more like a partnership, so less fragmentation. Merit also brings educational background, eliminates any partisanship that might creep in from vendor support. Back to Bill--it's easier, because we're talking more as a community, opening up to more transparency, showing the benefits Merit brings with their platforms more clearly to the community. Slight tension still, working as a community rather than just being "merit making decisions over here off to the side by ourselves". Oh! Looks like BLUE badges for Merit staff?? Chris Malayter, Mailing list admin panel presenter up to talk about the mailing list. AGENDA: Status update on membership Process Flow Addition to AUP -- Anti Spam List stastics Questions Rob, Susan here, Rob Wilcox not able to be here. Membership Stve Gibbard -- resigned Steve Wilcox --added Present committ Rob Seastrom Susan Cris Steve Process Flow User sends an email to the lsit an MLC voluntter jduges email to be a violation of the AUP AUP per EMAIL list AUP The SC is authorized to make changes per the NANOG charter For one-off violations, an MLC volunteer sends an off-list note to the offending user, giving guidance about the list's AUP and explaining the MLC volunteers' concerns. For repeated violleations, the MLC discussion on the nanog-admin list may result in an official warning being sent to the user, outlining the specific violations the user has been responsible for, and specifyng that further violations might result in revoking of posting privileges For repeated violations following one or more official warnings, MLC discussion on the nanog-admin list may result in a decision to remove posting privileges for the user for 3 to 6 months For repeated violations following one or more official warnings and also following a temporary posting ban, MLC discussion on the nanog-admin list may result in a decision to permantly revoke posting privagletges for the user Bill Norton asks if a single MLC volunteer can act unilaterally Joel Yagli?, regardless of how process has been designed thus far, taking the light touch is probably the best thing that could have been done thus far. Bill Woodcock wants more moderation and heavy handedness; his views are amusing. Louis, from Equinix; what about appeals? Chris notes there is a process being discussed for an appeals process; Merit is the last line of appeal, after the and in conjuction with the steering committee. Legally, Merit owns the trademark "NANOG", so it is responsible for legal ownership of the term NANOG. However, it wants to work with the community and not be heavy handed. But Merit does reserve the final go-no-go decision. Bill Norton asks if the warning comes from a group address, or an individual account? Rob Seastrom replies--after Steve left, he's been sending out the warnings from his own account. But if there is a user who has procmail'd a given list admin, can they be considered to have been giving fair warning? If the first warning is ignored, the second warning would come from a different list admin, who would hopefully not be procmail'd. Mike Wallace?, ModWest. Recommendation that a role account be created, but sign each message with the name and signature of the person writing it, but, the "from" line would be from the role account, which would prevent individual treatment of messages. Also, removes the view of actions being singular user singling out vs a more "group oriented action. Randy Bush, IIJ, notorious procmail; if you send mail Cc'd to something he's responsible for, it will always get past his procmail filters. If you have a role account, you can make it part of the subscription process that the role account be whitelisted past any filters. Propopsed addition to AUP first proposed addition since committee started. 8. Challenge/response sender whitelisting software which requires interaction by any party to validate a post to the NANOG mailing list as non-spam shall be treated by the list administration team like any other condition that generates a bounce message. Subscribers with software (such as but not limited to TMDA) that is (mis)configured ...slide moves on, can't capture the rest of it. Question--Regarding AUP Addition: Should we treat vacation messages the same way as mis-configured whitelisting messages? Joel Yagli--in general, opposed to summary kicking off the list; but in a case like this, which is essentially DoS'ing the list, yes. Jared Mauch, NTT America, he hosts puck.nether.net, which has mailing lists on it; his solution is to use his best judgement on when to remove people; auto-whitelist tend to be quickly removed. People on 2 month sabbatical tend to be problematic. Pete Templin, TexLink--should they discriminate to just posts that kick back to the list, vs that kick back to the sender. The big damage is when it goes to the full list, clearly. Martin Hannigan, Renesys--if Reply-To goes to the sender, it goes once in a 30 day period, so is this really a problem? Joe Provo; if it's a one-on-one problem, they shouldn't be whining to the list admin. Joel Yagli--if it's one message back from a vacation, that's annoying; but if it's a challenge for every mailing to the list, that's worthy of blockage. So, agreed, if it goes to the list, absolutely remove them. But even if it goes back to the sender, it does generate complaints to the mailing list administrators. Rob Seastrom agrees that it's a grey area, esp. on the vacation subject. About 5% nanog-post@ is the shadow mailing list that never gets traffic, but that governs whether you can post to the list or not. That way, any auto-responder won't be allowed to post to the list. Randy asks Joel to clarify the difference between vacation and bozo turing test. The vacation message is one-way, notification only. The Turing test is an arms race; the more widely used they are, the closer we get to the point where we start failing them. Also, some poorly handled systems have no hysteris dampening. Bill Woodcock again; in this region, we seem to be dilligent workers; in other regions, postings to lists result in deluge of autoresponders. Rob Seastrom notes that there's no stigma with this type of removal; you can rejoin immediately when you return from vacation. All that's being removed is a bot, not a person. When the removal happens, the person is ALWAYS notified of the removal, so they know to rejoin upon return. Martin Hannigan notes TMDA is clue factor; the vacation is more likely corporate policy. The removal is NOT just posting privileges, you are removed as a recipient as well, Rob Seastrom clarifies. Mike Hughes, LINX--no harm if you get kicked off, just read the archives. It's a temporary removal! Steve Gibbard--challenge/response replies usually indicates they're not getting the list mail in the first place. Martin Hannigan--what about making first incident warning, second offense is misdemeanor with removal? What was the most recent case? 2 and a half weeks ago, went to the whole list, and the admins were deluged with forwarded copies. Randy notes this is a network operators list, not a network idiots list. if you can't operate your mail client, you don't really belong on the list. Michael Loftis, ?, Discussion seems to center around Exchange users--but UNIX clients have similar issues, but the users are more clueful. What about honoring precendence settings on mail being sent through? Patrick Gilmore calls for vote and moving on--we're starting to beat a dead horse. The steering committee makes the change to the AUP, so they'll get the vote. List stats: January Stats (thanks, Merit!!) Posts to list 8039 Warnings: 2 Threads requiring intevention 2 Members with posting privileges removed 2 Bill Norton--can any light be shed on those two people who were removed? No, no, no. Patrick Gilmore--if you say no, it means we DO need an appeals process, as it means the process is closed and not transparent. Randy Bush, IIJ, Steering Committee. Trials in secret where the result/victims are not known, and causes are not known, are done in this society. (other than the president, who is NOT related to Randy). Randy feels the REASONS for people being banned needs to be made public; don't NAME them, but note the cause and process. RS notes that they'll be happy to divulge what information is required of them. If the steering committee believes that providing some information is appropriate, they will provide it. But without the framework and guidelines, they won't do it. Joe Provo--asks if they were clear abuse of AUP, or grey area. They were clear AUP abusers. Chris notes that when it's clear and removal happens, even if you don't say the name, everyone else will know who it is. But Bill Norton says that if everyone knows who it is, they've already been shamed, what additional shame is there in having their AUP violation listed? Chris declares it dead, until the steering committee directs the list admins to change their policy. Bill Norton finishes off with a call for more transparency in agreement with Randy--it's the lack of transparency that led to the evolution of last year. Randy notes direction WILL be provided. Steve Gibbard--when are the stats for? January 5th to February 5th, actually. He notes 2 was the same number that were removed during the 8 months he was on the team; so it seems the curve is growing rapidly. Joel Yagli--if you haven't noticed, there's not a lot of shame on the list; if you can't shame them into not deaggregating, how can you shame them into not posting?!! 8039 subscribers to the list, NOT posts in the month!!! Only 692 posts in the month. *whew*. Martin Hannigan, founder, former chair of the mailing list admins. In the first mailing list incarnation, they did not publish the names, but they did agree to publish the reason so it was open and fair. The reason for not posting the names was that the general agreement was there could be negative legal connotations to list them by name from the owners of the list; but listing AUP violations does not single out individuals. RS and Chris note they're in agreement, but won't take action until they have a framework from the steering committee, to ensure it is NOT an ad-hoc decision made by individuals on the list-admin team. Once that framework is forthcoming (Randy), the team will move forward in accordance with it. Martin Hannigan--we got here because we wanted the list to be more fair, more transparent, more open. He agrees with TMDA, doesn't agree with vacation, hopes that there will be clear guidance on it coming soon. Randy--how is this safer than transparency? RS notes transparency vs obscurity is one axis, framework and policy vs adhoceracy is a different, orthogonal axis. Chris just says he's not comfortable doing it until Merit says it's ok, since they have legal feet in the fire. Bill Woodcock asks for the next slide--it just says Questions, so we're already here. Jared notes much of the mailing list details aren't formalized, we should take this to the nanog-futures list to discuss openly. We can ask for some of these details to more proscriptively be put in the charter moving forward. Merit put together new charter, they left a lot of vagueness around the mailing list charter, as it was a hot topic, and there was already quite a bit of change happening on the group administration. They specifically left the void in the charter, so that the community could fill it in based on what their views and opinions were. Merit wants to support the list. Betty notes there is a desire to NOT single people out, but if the vote is to increase transparency by making information documented, Merit will be happy to support that effort by documenting the framework. Luis from Equinix; were the posts removed from the archives? No, there's no removal from the archive, you may go back and view them. Joel Yagli--ghost of usenet tends to show people for who they are, in spite of how they may have posted inappropriately in the past? (not sure what he meant). Mike Loftis, ModWest--we all think the list admins are doing a great job--we're not angry with any of them, we're just trying to hash out how best to handle this hot topic. On that note, we move on to the next topic on the Agenda. There's nothing scheduled to be next. Vince Fuller beat him up about something. He doesn't like the schedule change, they should be scheduled before or after so people who don't need to be tutored can skip them before or after. And never again on Valentine's day!! And not on Halloween either!! (ARIN!). With that, Randy calls the Community meeting to a close with some comment about stepping on hogs (poor innocent porcines!!) at 1903 hours Central Time.