Please be nice... (Was Re: Exodus?)

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1

Gentlemen,

In the last 6 weeks I have noticed a major drop off in nanog postings. Im
not complaining as we all know how many posts we go a day. Recently I
almost miss the number of posts :). What I am a great deal concerned
about is that a request numerous times to "watch what you post" as well as
scoldings on the list have made people gunshy.

I for one would rather have someone concerned about an outage post it. It
may just be the one network such as exodus or it may be related to a large
problem and concern several backbones. I have found that the NANOG list
often has better and quicker information during an outage then many telcos.

Maybe the exodus post was or was not off topic. But I'd rather see that
then a bunch of posts discussing whether or not it was on/off-topic.

As for on-topic maybe we could now start a few threads on backbone issues.
So with the holiday spirit I say just be just a "little" kind...

David

Personally, I think it's useful to report outages with any outfit that meets
the nebulous moniker of "Tier 1" provider as it can have far reaching
consequences. While it's still important to contact the affected network's
NOC, I don't see how it's out of line to post a short note about it here.
I'd certainly value that a lot more than the Alistat circle jerkage and I
suspect it wouldn't add a lot of traffic to the list.

Chris

Chris Mauritz
Director, Systems Administration/Network Engineering
Rare Medium, Inc.
chrism@raremedium.com

From: Derek Balling
To: Stephen Stuart
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Sent: 1/3/99 5:24 PM
Subject: Re: What is NANOG used for? (Was Re: Exodus?)

In the last week, there have been discussions of telco issues (the
"DACS failure" thread) and tools (the "System And Network Monitoring"
thread) that seem to have been generally received as on-topic.

But why WAS the System and Network Monitoring thread on-topic? As the
"creator" of that topic, I'd like to think it was, but in reality, all
it
would really "affect" is a single provider. Asking how someone else
monitors their internal network is very similar to asking someone how
they
configure their DNS server.

I'm not saying that you're WRONG. My point here is that we really don't
have any clear-cut guidelines. The old adage about "if I can't program
it
into my router, its not valid" would certainly flunk out the Monitoring
topic, that's for sure, since the main thrust of the request was how to
monitor individual servers (albeit about a thousand of them).

I'd MUCH prefer two meaningful messages to a dozen complaints from
people who don't know how to contact a NOC or configure DNS.

Agreed. I'd much prefer low-volume-high-signal to the opposite.

I just think we have a "charter" as it were that is a little too vague,
and
leaves too much up for debate as to what is on/off-topic.

I mean, you can state what you did about what you think is on/off-topic,
and I might agree with you, but the charter is much more vague, and
leads
itself to ambiguity.

I hate rules and regulations as much as the next guy, but I think it
needs
to be spelled out somewhere much more clearly than it already is. That's
all.

My point wasn't to claim that the Exodus topic necessarily WAS on-topic,
but that there's nothing that clearly states it WASN'T. Ya follow?

D

Thank you,
David Diaz
Chief Technical Officer
Netrail, Inc

email: davediaz@netrail.net
pager: 888-576-1018
office: 888-NETRAIL
Fax: 404 522-2191

Colo facilities: Atlanta-NAP, Miami, Arlington, Chicago, San Francisco

2

Amen.

I've always found it interesting that there is such a huge difference
between the set of regular posters on a list and the set of people who
complain about inappropriate postings.

Compare the discussions on this list to any number of conversations that
happen at NANOG meetings. I don't ever recall someone getting up during a
presentation and asking the speaker not to mention irrelevant topics, and
I am pretty certain that it costs people a heck of a lot more to travel to
NANOG than they pay for email access.

This whole issue of relevance is, well, irrelevant. The fact of the matter
is, not every message is going to be relevant to every subscriber. I
believe this is the North American Network Operators' Group, not the "Big
5 Network Operators Group" or the "DS-3-or-higher Network Operators
Group", so there are going to inherently be different levels of relevance
to the various members of this mailing list.

I suspect that many discussions here probably aren't relevant to large
chunks of the group. I didn't hear any all-Bay or all-Ascend shops ask
that the recent discussion about Cisco config-checkers was irrelevant,
though it certainly wasn't very relevant to them. The complaints posted
regarding the Exodus outage were probably relevant to Exodus customers, as
well as to people who would be passing along information on outages to
Exodus services. The complaints seemed to imply that because it wasn't
relevant to everyone on the list, or to at least a lot of people, it
shouldn't have been posted.

I have to agree with Dave completely. I believe that it is way too extreme
to jump on a message just simply because it represents something that
could be a threat in the future. Yea, if everyone posted a message to
NANOG everytime a /32 went down, it would be a problem. But wouldn't it
also be a problem if everyone made their opinion known about any other
topic on this list? Maybe when that starts happening, there could be some
discussion about solving an /actual/ problem, not about preventing a
potential problem.

I, for one, would like to encourage that this forum be a place to discuss
anything that is even remotely related to network operations, whether it
be outages, management, whatever.

Pete.

3

Not to mention even the Exodus post was relevant to some of us smaller
operators. By listening to the threads on a given networks outages, I am
able to learn a lot more about how a backbone provider responds to outages
and how many they actually have, than I am able to learn from their
marketing folks. And personally I find that very relevant to my current and
future network operations.

Tim

4

Invariably, as a list becomes useful, Newbies get on, don't KNOW about
an AUP, don't CARE about an AUP, ask stupid questions, and get beat down.

Then, other Newbies sympathize and say "Yeah, everyone be nice!!!"

And the list dies. Or the Newbies get told to stuff it.

Ehud

5

This isn't even an AUP issue. It's all about RFC 1855 and a
  bit of confusion regarding the purpose of the list.

  Hint: anybody who can't find an RFC by number should probably
  start with a less technical list than NANOG. But, I'll be
  nice and give you a URL:

    http://www.cybernothing.org/cno/docs/rfc1855.html

  I've been handing out that URL a lot this year, and we're not
  even a full week into it yet. It's saddening.

6

Ditto that from me. I remotely administrate several systems across the
country from my location. I also have to support a crew that is basically
not technical at all, using ISP's that are on many different backbones.
(I also came from 3 years at an ISP and I survived the AGIS/SPAM thing.)
I also strive to learn as much as I can from the more knowledgeable ones
on this list. I really value (most of) the content. I'd hate to have
everyone get quiet all of a sudden. No, don't use this list in place of
reporting outages to the appropriate NOC, but it is nice to be clued in
on Fiber Cuts and other Outages or other Network Operator news that helps
one be just a little bit more clued-in when the phone starts ringing and
all the lusers start asking "Are WE down???" :wink:

I Co-locate at a place that's plugged into almost everybody else and I'd
have to tell you that I hear about problems here before anywhere else
(if at all). For that I am thankfull ... and I'll go back to being mostly
quiet on here.

In the last 6 weeks I have noticed a major drop off in nanog postings.
I'm not complaining as we all know how many posts we go a day.
Recently I almost miss the number of posts :). What I am a great deal
concerned about is that a request numerous times to "watch what you
post" as well as scoldings on the list have made people gunshy.

Amen.

I've always found it interesting that there is such a huge difference
between the set of regular posters on a list and the set of people who
complain about inappropriate postings.

Compare the discussions on this list to any number of conversations that
happen at NANOG meetings. I don't ever recall someone getting up during a
presentation and asking the speaker not to mention irrelevant topics, and
I am pretty certain that it costs people a heck of a lot more to travel to
NANOG than they pay for email access.

This whole issue of relevance is, well, irrelevant. The fact of the matter
is, not every message is going to be relevant to every subscriber. I
believe this is the North American Network Operators' Group, not the "Big
5 Network Operators Group" or the "DS-3-or-higher Network Operators
Group", so there are going to inherently be different levels of relevance
to the various members of this mailing list.

I suspect that many discussions here probably aren't relevant to large
chunks of the group. I didn't hear any all-Bay or all-Ascend shops ask
that the recent discussion about Cisco config-checkers was irrelevant,
though it certainly wasn't very relevant to them. The complaints posted
regarding the Exodus outage were probably relevant to Exodus customers, as
well as to people who would be passing along information on outages to
Exodus services. The complaints seemed to imply that because it wasn't
relevant to everyone on the list, or to at least a lot of people, it
shouldn't have been posted.

I have to agree with Dave completely. I believe that it is way too extreme
to jump on a message just simply because it represents something that
could be a threat in the future. Yea, if everyone posted a message to
NANOG everytime a /32 went down, it would be a problem. But wouldn't it
also be a problem if everyone made their opinion known about any other
topic on this list? Maybe when that starts happening, there could be some
discussion about solving an /actual/ problem, not about preventing a
potential problem.

I, for one, would like to encourage that this forum be a place to discuss
anything that is even remotely related to network operations, whether it
be outages, management, whatever.

Pete.

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