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2006.02.12 Open Committee Meeting Notes

  • From: Matthew Petach
  • Date: Sun Feb 12 20:13:26 2006
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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 ([email protected])
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
 ([email protected])
Discussion about NANOG itself ([email protected])
Steering ([email protected])
Program ([email protected])
ML <[email protected])

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
 [email protected] (public)
 [email protected] (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%
[email protected] 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.