In message <199503082144.QAA01126@curtis.ansremote.com>, Curtis Villamizar writ es: | IMO the IETF Operations Area has not been unfair or hostile toward | providers. I'm not sure what the objections are. I didn't mean to suggest that they are. My objections are more philosophical and, perhaps, pragmatic. I would like to see Internet standards-describing bodies stay well away from trying to standardize operational metrics and operational procedures. This is to avoid three things: -- operators who say, "our NIC is RFC 9000 compliant" -- attempting to define what an operational organization should do as an Internet standard: "An ISP that is compliant with this standard will..." which is particularly amusing if it doesn't make business sense in a particular case, or when it is drafted by people who mispredict real operational issues (due to lack of foresight or lack of experience) that obviate the standard. This is essentially to avoid, "our competitor's organization is not RFC 9000 compliant" -- Operators and standards-folks are aliens from another planet. Operators typically will bend standards as they see fit for their business, while standards-folks attempt to make it easy for anyone -- say, someone new to the field -- to interoperate with the current operators. In extreme cases, operators completely ignore or break standards willy-nilly, while standards- folks get quite noisy when standards aren't followed to the letter. I have run into both, and, arguably, am an example of the former type. There is a tension between the two mindsets which is a good one for the Internet in general, but which essentialy necessitates, in my opinion, a division into two separate clubs when it comes to working out issues that are more or less fully in the domain of operators vs. standards folks. That's not to say that standards-folks should be discouraged from commenting on how we run our parts of the Internet, nor that operators should be told to shut up in working groups -- in fact, I like to see operators in working groups and standards-folks at NANOGs or IEPGs. However, any kind of consesus-building about operations issues or discussions about metrics showing good or bad things about operators' networks should be done in operators' forums, and not standards bodies. Conversely, protocol standards shouldn't be done at operators' forums. An example of how things work differently among high concentrations of operators vs high concentrations of standards-folks is the CIDR issue. CIDRD at IETF and the CIDR talks at NANOG are quite different, involve different issues, and come up with very different forms of consensus. I believe this is a good thing, and should be encouraged. So, wrt the provider measurement BOF, I am quite happy to see the standards-folks describe standard tools which operators can use to work out operational issues in operators' forums. I would not like to see the Operations Area turn into an olympics for providers any more than for vendors in other areas. Sean.