Re: Services Operations WG

[Bernhard Stockman <]

Ran,

>   There are already known cases of campus/corporate network
> operations folks with real operational input and wisdom that
> are in fact being turned away by the IEPG.  

IEPG have had several attendees that were there due to there believed
expertise in areas covered at a specific meeting.

> For example, several
> corporate networks are actually large enough that they should
> have been included in BGP-4 discussions.

BGP-4 deployment is, as pointed out bay Yakov, extensively treated
within IETF BGPD WG. When comming to the operational coordination this
happened also within IEPG as within a group of major transit backbones
having the responsibility to take the lead in that deployment (aka the
CIDR core group).

>   If the IEPG are not COMPLETELY open, then they simply are incapable
> of handling the pressing need for a forum for the network operations
> folks at the campus/corporate level to meet.

IEPG today, with its regionalization, works at several levels.  There
is now evolving groups that may be more suitable for taking up the
needs you are addressing. E.g. in Europe the European Engineering and
Planning Group (EEPG) was recently formed and is a completely open
group for operational coordination of network services. The EEPG terms
of reference can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from nic.nordu.net,
directory iepg.

>   I confess that I am astonished by the amount of power politics
> that the IEPG appears to be involved in.

That comment surprises me a lot. To my experience the IEPG is just
the opposite of power politics being a pragmatic group of mainly
technical people with the ambition of coordinate network services
on a technical level.

Regards,

  Bernhard.