North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Topicality perceptions

  • From: Michael.Dillon
  • Date: Mon Sep 25 06:06:22 2006 
> One of the biggest issues with the list as I've seen from time to 
> time from my perspective, is the definition of "operations". So on a
> quick breakdown of the logical definition of NANOG, I derive 
> "Operations of the North American Network". The problem with this 
> stems from far too many bastardizing their own definition of what it
> should be.

Please don't contribute to the bastardization. Section 3 of
the NANOG charter states:

   The purpose of NANOG is to provide forums in the North 
   American region for education and the sharing of knowledge 
   for the Internet operations community. 

You can read the full charter here: http://www.nanog.org/charter.html

By your definition, Cat's recent request for outage
information about Telehouse North would be off-topic.
But according to the NANOG FAQ here:
http://www.nanog.org/listfaq.html
outages are on topic. Obviously, network infrastructure
tends to span political borders and geographic borders,
therefore it is not unusual that Cat has an infrastructure
issue in Europe to deal with.

On your first point, the fuzziness and lack of clarity
of what network operations issues belong on this list,
I agree. The FAQ is never posted on the list so it has
become an obscure document hidden away on a little-used
website. It needs to be promoted more and I think it 
needs to be updated to communicate more clearly.

> These are off-topic but I wouldn't trade em for the world. 
> I've learned much from them, as have I from all sorts of posts on 
> topic or not. 

I agree with you. Unfortunately some old-timers 
would rather see a return to the old days when network
ops and engineering was an obscure passtime only understood
by those who knew the secret handshake and were admitted
to the inner circle. They forget that NANOG's major role
has been in educating the new people who have flooded into
the net ops community as the Internet grew and grew and grew.

--Michael Dillon