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What Topics Are Appropriate for the NANOG List?

   

These comments by John Hawkinson of BBNplanet shed some light on topics that are appropriate for the NANOG mailing list. 

Editor's note: we've edited the text a bit, but the flavor of Jhawk's comments remains... 

Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 18:26:45 -0500 (EST)
From: John Hawkinson
To: "Roeland M.J. Meyer"
Cc: nanog mailing list

Subject: Re: Question about NANOG charter (Re: heads up ... another

There are mailing lists for people who manage networks.
There are mailing lists for people who manage end-systems.
NANOG is one of the former, not the latter.

Yes, most people with networks have end-systems. Yes, most people with end-systems have networks. This doesn't mean that end-system issues belong on network-management
mailing lists.

Given that there are a lot more end-system administrators than network operators (at least, for North American Networks that are Large, which is what NANOG is for),
it makes sense for end-system issues to be addressed in an end-system-specific forum, so that all the end-system administrators can find out.

The charter of the NANOG list was written to avoid being too specific and to not preclude useful network-relevent discussion, because sometimes this kind of thing
is appropriate, but trying to cleanly delineate it is harder than most tasks in the life of a network engineer...

--jhawk