Hi,
This thread is helpful to me.
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.
I agree so far.
But who pays the operators' bills, and do we need to encourage participation at
that level as well?
Adrian