2 parts to this message, read it all for twice the fun :-)
Given the amount of damage due to time wasted for other participants,
it might be worthwhile to print it up ahead of time and include it in
the registration packet. The cost of a ream of paper is small
relative to the lost productivity this causes. Heck, maybe even put
it on the IETF web site ahead of time.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
1----Wireless at IETF----
We tried this once. It is hard to determine how well it worked because if
they fixed it, we didn't know about it (as they blended in to the
background infrastructure).
Seems to me that most of the people running in ad-hoc mode don't even know
it (thus, why bother to read the sheet).
Continuing along those lines, sometimes Working Groups have been known to
put MAC Addresses on the screens of people in the room (running ad-hoc).
I don't know how much success this has either, as the networks still stay
up and running.
I'll see if I can dig out the "How to turn off ad-hoc mode" sheet from a
few meetings back and send it to the upcoming hosts.
We have tried to solve some of these problems by taking the MAC addresses
of those doing mean things to the net, and stuffing them in a "Penalty
Box" so they would come down to the terminal room, and we could track them
to a switch port. I actually think this worked pretty darn well.
Much of the problem was (wo)man power. We didn't have enough people to
run the network, and enough left over for a brute squad.
Hopefully with more companies coming back to host the networks (YAY, Thank
you!!) we can start doing cool things like this again.
2----Ad-Hoc mode in airports/airplanes
So at the talk that started all of this at shmoocon (I haven't reviewed
the slides, I'm just going from what I remember from the talk). A few
extra notes.
The issue was ad-hoc mode on the W-NIC and the goofy 169 address you get
from 3927. Microsoft said they would patch this in their next service
pack. Patch the fact that you get the auto address or work to disable
ad-hoc. Chances are that it would be the auto address. (So then you
setup a DHCP server, also mentioned in the talk, and you are back to
square 1)
MS was there and a rep. said that it was made so you and a bunch of your
co-workers could walk outside of the building at lunch with your laptops,
and the network still appears to work. I'm guessing he is going off of
the fact you would only share networking interests with your buddies,
unless they are coming up with some kind of link local grid that has one
card acting as a bridge back to to the main network implementation. (Pure
speculation)
Simple Nomad also discussed during the presentation that he was tinkering
with his (recalling from my full brain from the weekend) Palm OS, and this
it may also have a problem too. (Add another doc to the IETF packet)
Anyway to sum all of this up, some of the people he was playing with were
on the plane and unpatched. While I hope & expect (more hope I guess)
that the people at an IETF meeting are more saavy than the plane riders,
can you imagine walking up to one of these people and handing them a note
on how to turn of ad-hoc networking on their wireless lan card? I'd
imagine you would get a response similar to handing them a document on how
to engage the CAT 3 ILS and land the plane. Simple if you know what you
are doing, totally alien if you don't.
Cheers!
--Brett
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