--On Thursday, May 30, 2013 15:31 -0400 Warren Kumari
<warren(_at_)kumari(_dot_)net> wrote:
The below is not a direct response to John, it is more my
general views on IETF interaction with operators.
So, I've been a long time participant in some NOG's and still
(perhaps incorrectly) view myself as an operator. I've spent
significant time thinking about / discussing the issue of
insufficient operator involvement in the IETF, trying to
understand some of the causes. I've tried to summarize some of
the operators' views below, and also some thoughts on how we
might be able to work better / get more operator input.
I think that at the root of much of the problem is cultural
differences -- if we want more operator involvement / feedback
there needs to be some attention paid (by both the operators
and the IETF folk) to understanding these differences, and
taking care to respect / accommodate the other side's culture.
...
Warren,
I think these notes are very helpful, at least insofar as I have
enough knowledge to evaluate. Some of your comments,
including...
This is somewhat of a vicious cycle -- operators participate
less, and so the IETF understands less about how their
networks run. This leads to solutions that don't understand
the real world, and so operators lose faith/interest in IETF,
and participate even less.
ultimately call the IETF's legitimacy and long-term future into
question. As you suggest, we may have good vendor participation
but the operators are ultimately the folks who pay the vendor's
bills.
...
As I told someone in another thread, I threw the NOG idea out as
an example without thinking through all of the possible
dynamics. It may be a terrible idea... or even a good idea that
won't work usefully.
Part of that discussion included an observation that is probably
a corollary to one of yours. Many operators, either
individually or in groups, don't perceive that they have much
incentive to review IETF documents, much less get dragged into
the document development and consensus-forming process.
Certainly, we are unlikely to get very many people who are not
active IETF participants to do work for the good of the IETF.
From that perspective, the very best incentive for reviewing a
document pre-standardization is the perceived risk that it will
make one's life worse if it goes through without input from your
perspective. If we throw documents over the wall without clear
motivation as to why people on the other side of the wall should
care,... well, that is as much a setup for failure as the model
in some other Internet bodies of soliciting input and then not
paying any attention to it. (In the latter case, there may be
organizational advantages to being able to say "we received NN
comments", but that does not apply to the IETF.)
More generally, and borrowing (but altered somewhat) from
another thread: The real point I'm trying to make is that, if
our goal is really to do outreach to other communities to get
better input or reviews with broader perspective, then we better
start thinking more creatively than trying to persuade people
(and their organizations and budgets) to sign up for the IETF,
three extra week-long meetings a year, reading mailing lists
that contain dozens of messages a day on topics that may be of
no interest at all, etc. Instead, in your terminology, Warren,
we should be looking for ways in which they can do what
simultaneously benefits them, us, and the Internet as much as
possible within their own cultural framework. At least we need
to distinguish between the goals of "better input and review
from affected communities" and "increasing IETF active
participation".
And, coming back to the supposed topic of this thread, dragging
circa 1000 people to a place that doesn't have a lot of
participation already is unlikely to accomplish either goal.
There may be, and probably are, perfectly good reasons why more
geographic diversity would be a good idea, but justifying doing
so on the basis that it is a good investment in growing
long-term active IETF participation just doesn't, IMO, fly.
john