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
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