Re: Where to move the Intercage/Atrivo discussion (was: the Intercage mess)

* J. Oquendo · * Thu Sep 25 13:13:13 2008

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008, Justin Shore wrote:

> David W. Hankins wrote:
> >I think the current state of the art in civilized, peaceful,
> >extralegal negotiation of reasonable behaviour expected of businessmen
> >and their peers is a form of social ostracism given its name in 1880
> >when the Irish Land League bade everyone in Mayo county, Ireland not
> >to engage economically or otherwise with Captain Charles Boycott...a
> >land owner who had set his rent very high, and was evicting anyone who
> >deigned to complain of it (fully within his legal authority, but
> >outside the realms of what the people saw as reasonable).
> >
> >If anyone can think of better, we'll have to call it "Intercaging".
> 
> Since the usefulness of this thread to NANOG is becoming less and less 
> as the thread wears on, where would the NANOG community suggest that it 
> be moved to?  What are the good SP operational security mailing lists? 
> What groups or forums would one find threads like this?  The NANOG ISP 
> security BOF group?  I would like to do a much better job of keeping up 
> on things of this nature.  I already spend a great deal of time on it 
> but I know that I'm missing a plethora of other security issues.  What 
> group would be interested in knowing that whois.estdomains.com 
> (83.171.76.99) is now being hosted by as31353 via as8997 (didn't we have 
> a small problem with 8997 the other day?)?  I'd love to find the good 
> lists and forums for this type of discussion, preferably with a SP 
> slant.  Perhaps that info will help move the discussion to more 
> appropriate places.
> 
> Thanks
>  Justin
> 

For the duration of this thread and others like it, I have to step back
and wonder why is it when operational issues that some don't like to
talk about come up, why they're often shifted to some form of offtopic
status: "Well it doesn't do me any good therefore we should move it
off the list!" This is and was relevant to issues such as botnets which
(drum roll) affect network operations to even Denial of Service attacks
which I can recall the urge to move to offtopic land going back to pre
Y2K. What are the terms? Status Quo Bias, Selective Recall,
Groupthink, False Consensus, Herding Instinct. 

Randy makes a good point as do others involved in the operations
decisions but the decision should be based on realistic input from
everyone, not just those who conform to someone's specific liking.
I'm no judge and jury to implicity cut off someone's connectivity
nor is anyone else and this entire situation is akin to a lynching
like the verbiage or not.

While I agree that rogue providers and hosts need to be dealt with,
the issue needs to be addressed by everyone in order to show there
was accuracy and fairness not just the "good old boy" networked
approach. Not solely using the Groupthink approach. Perhaps this
would have been better dealt with if there was a mechanism in place
to have all vote together or perhaps a committee need be created
where these issues can be resolved diplomatically and efficiently
which stays far and clear of the Not In My Back Yard attitude.

Business deals are business deals like them or not. If you made
a strategic decision based on what you thought was appropriate
at the time, how would YOU like it if someone came to YOUR
backyard protesting "Oh no you don't!".  "A man's judgement
cannot be better than the information on which he has based it"
Arthur Sulzberger

Perhaps whatever company decided whatever decision they
made based on the best information available to them at the
time. Is it fair for you to cut off their arm without getting their
end of the view before cutting off their arm. Then complaining
its not in your best interest to hear their case. I hope for
someone's sake you're never a juror for them.

I'd always had this impression that NANOG was the de-facto
place where experts would get together to make strategic
decisions, set forth best practices, provide in-depth information
on policies, etc., with regards to Internet operations. It's
beginning to look like the description of the intelligence
agencies skewing matters to their own likings in order to go
to war. In order to justify their own agendas. Whether or not
the agenda has meat and substance is not even being weighed
I see nothing more than confirmation bias, selective recall,
and the list goes on, but nowhere do I see anything other
than a witchhunt right now.

Place yourself in a situation like this and ask what would
you like to have some body of (so called) experts do. Would
you enjoy it if others ran around trying to hush any naysayer
that didn't conform to your views. Would it be fair, would it
truly be diplomatic.

Maybe some need to take a good look at this and create a
solution for future potential problems. Perhaps a rotating
board of decision makers who would unbiasedly take a good
look at a situation and offer a variety of solutions in which
those solutions would need to be voted in (for lack of better
terms) by a vast majority without that vast majority whining:
"Oh shut up if you're not going to see things my way!" then
siding with friends and colleagues or peers out of pressure.

My unwanted two cents for the year.

-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
J. Oquendo
SGFA, SGFE, CNDA, CHFI, OSCP

"A good district attorney can indict a ham sandwich
if he wants to ... The accusations harm as much as
the convictions ... they're obviously harmful or it
wouldn't be news.." - John Carter

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