I probably should have included this picture in my slideshow * : http://yikes.com/~ole/store/MCI-IETF34.jpg Ten years ago, MCI hosted the IETF in Dallas. Someone thought it would be a nice idea to give every attendee an MCI card that would be good for free calls to anywhere in the world during the IETF week. Of course, the IETF community being what it is, a number of people decided that "free calls anywhere" was a concept that needed to be tested, fully. By Tuesday afternoon the hotel switchboard was overloaded and hastily-created signs began appearing in the hallways, elevators and elsewhere saying something to the effect of "please disconnect your permanent connections..." A number of folks had nailed up PPP connections from their hotel rooms to Sweden, Japan, Germany, you name it. Back at MCI the security folks were ready to pull the plug on the entire batch of MCI cards as the projected bill kept mounting, but they were told to keep it all running until the end of the week. We'll probably never know how much this particular "good idea" cost, but it was lots of fun :-) WorldPhone, indeed. Note to Nokia: Although we'd love a free cellphone and a SIM card for the week, you might want to consider the consequences... Ole * http://yikes.com/~ole/store/IETF-20years.pdf and http://yikes.com/~ole/store/IETF-20years.key.zip Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal Academic Research and Technology Initiatives, Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972 GSM: +1 415-370-4628 E-mail: ole@xxxxxxxxx URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
