(I think what Warren, Randy, and others have to say is more relevant to most of this than my opinion - unless you count a handful of end networks with VPN connections among a subset of them, I haven't had either ops responsibility or even direct or indirect management responsibility for those who do for a very long time. I haven't been to a NOG meeting for even longer. And I have absolutely no delusion that I'm current. So the following comments are observations about general principles only.) --On Friday, May 31, 2013 02:19 +0100 Adrian Farrel <adrian@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > This thread is helpful to me. >... >> 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? The customers of the ISPs. The technical sophistication of those folks and their (non-ISP, non-operator) support structure differs hugely, but most of them neither speak network nor have any desire to learn. That is not necessarily bad. Let me suggest an analogy. The electrical distribution industry has its own standards and standards development processes. In most countries, those standards body attract engineers and designers, but very few of the actual operators who run the power plants and worry about the mains. You presumably pay utility bills (directly or indirectly) and thereby support the whole process. But your ability or mine to plug something into a mains socket and take advantage of the stuff that comes out does not, in general, qualify us to participate in the process of defining transmission standards. And that standards body should probably not lose much sleep over the fact that we aren't showing up. Indeed, if we did show up, we would probably be out of place, wouldn't speak the technical language, and might not understand the culture. At least in my case, if I made a suggestion, it would probably be stupid enough that people would either feel that my presence was wasting their time or would feel obligated to try to explain basic principles to me in the interest of outreach (or both). There are certainly engineers with protocol design background who have ended up with operations responsibilities and acquired a good deal of additional perspective as a result. Several of them have made significant contributions to the IETF and, at least IMO, that dual perspective has helped. But I'm pretty sure that the majority of ops people don't have that background. For those who don't, who needs to know that the equipment and configurations they use will work but who may not have strong preferences about the details of how, and, when things don't work, are a lot more likely to blame vendors (or other ISPs) than us, maybe "how do we get more of them to come to the IETF and participate in the ways that those of us on this list participate" is just not the right question. best, john