At 10:20 AM 12/18/00 -0800, Bob Hinden wrote:
I find it amusing that this debate on how to handle "congestion" at IETF
meetings mirrors the technical debate on congestion in the Internet. The
two sides still seem to be "more bandwidth" or "apply QOS".
Actually, there are three avenues under discussion. "More bandwidth", and
"ensuring access for the critical participants" are the ones you mentioned.
The third is "apply random early detection with sufficient force to ensure
that the meeting fits in the room."
Reality, IMHO, involves some elements of each of the above. Our experience
has been that we do indeed get the largest venues we can consistent with
the projected attendance, and we do in fact ask people to let the folks who
have read and posted drafts get in the room. BOFs are often decided weeks
in advance, while venues must be contracted months to years in advance, and
people decide what to attend as little as minutes before entering the room.
I get impatient with the summary dismissal of people as "tourists", but in
point of fact when I have ten contributors in a room that will hold 100 and
I have another hundred telling me that "the conference attendance is 2700,
divide by 8 and make sure that every room will hold that number of people",
I do begin to wonder whether every single one of those people is in fact
critical to conducting the meeting.