Subject: Minneapolis terminal room post-mortem

From: Matt Holdrege <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 17:18:49 -0800

We aren't actually ready to kill the terminal room yet, but I wanted to get
this out now rather than later.

Overall, the Terminal Room and indeed the total operations of this IETF
meeting went very well. But, as always, there were some snags. Here is a
brief list for the Terminal Room.

Connectivity problems on Sunday. Despite my efforts to use stable software
in all places, some brand new untested router code snuck by me. We didn't
notice any problems till the room started getting busy. Then the Ethernet
card on the router started rebooting every few minutes. Analysis showed us
that a programmer left the Ethernet card in debug and it was writing a log
entry for each packet it forwarded. The large amount of traffic was killing
the card in this mode. A quick recompile followed and we were back in
business.

Wavelan issues. The distances in the hotel were an problem. We wanted to
cover the lobby and bar area, but the run was beyond Ethernet 10base/T
limits. We tried for a few workarounds, but nothing was feasible. Had we
more time and money it could have been done in advance.

DHCP issues. Due to the concerns about NT DHCP at the last IETF, some folks
said they would provide an alternative solution to the NT DHCP server. But
that solution didn't arrive in time and we started out with the NT server.
Later during the week, pressure from various quarters convinced the
volunteer staff to try to switch to a unix based DHCP server. This led to a
lengthy period of instability for some DHCP users. It could have been
handled better, but the volunteer staff on duty at the time did the best
they could. The problem seemed to only last a few hours and things were
running fine from then on. 

DHCP & Wavelan issues. Some people using Wavelan had DHCP problems while
the Ethernet LAN users had no problems. It was theorized that the inheirent
packet loss issues with wireless LAN's led to imperfect DHCP behavior. No
one has had time to perform an intrusive analysis on our network so it's
just a theory. But the fact is that some wireless clients worked much
better with static IP addresses. The vast majority of Ethernet DHCP users
worked fine whether they had Microsoft stacks or non-Microsoft stacks.

As for our guesses on quantity, I think we did OK. We installed 6 T1's in
redundant fashion, but the WAN traffic only peaked above 3.5Mbps once. The
average utilization was less than 1.5Mbps. We had 70 NT workstations and 15
unix workstations and it was rare that they were all in use. We had 100
Ethernet drops for laptops and while we peaked out a few times, most people
were able to work when they needed to. We had 3 high speed paper printers
which seemed to be just the right number. We had one transparency printer
which also seemed fine.

I want to thank all the volunteer workers from Ascend, MR Net, Compaq and
the MBONE staff for the hard work they put in preparing and executing the
setup and operation of the Terminal Room. I also want to thank the IETF
Secretariat for their very helpful assistance. 

Undoubtedly a full time professional outfit that handled all the IETF
terminal rooms would do a better job. But I can tell you that paying for
such a service without corporate sponsorship would cost a very large amount
of money. The IETF needs to decide if the requirements of a perfectly
functioning, adequately furnished Terminal Room is worth the cost. And I'll
remind everyone that our attendance fees pay for the existing meeting
costs. So if we want to pay for better service, it will cost us all more.
The current working alternative is to accept volunteer assistance and live
with whatever bugs we get.

Matt Holdrege		http://www.ascend.com	[email-masked]

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 23:13:51 -0500

Matt, if you are getting flamed about anything, it's not making it through
the ietf+moderated filters...

Seriously - thanks to you and to Ascend for doing a really great job as
hosts for this IETF. I hope you can have a well-deserved rest SOON!

Spencer

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Matt Holdrege [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Thursday, March 18, 1999 7:19 PM
> To:	[email-masked]
> Subject:	Minneapolis terminal room post-mortem
> 
> -
> This message was passed through [email-masked], which
> is a sublist of [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed.
> Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Harald Alvestrand.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 23:13:51 -0500

Spencer

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 23:56:40 -0600

>this out now rather than later.

Other than the dhcp problems one evening, I thought things worked fairly
well.  I had to get a static address at one point; soon thereafter,
dhcp started giving me an address on a different subnet, and all was fine.

Here's a suggestion for the future, though:  let IETF members sign up
for permanent domain names under meetings.ietf.org or some such.  Then
couple the dhcp server with a dynamic dns update.  It's always fun to
eat your own dog food...

---

From: Maurizio Codogno <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 17:20:37 +0100 (MET)

I know that I am in minority (everyone seems to use PalmPilot, nowadays...)
but could it be possible to have in the future some PCs with IRDA and
PsiWin 2, to exchange data with the Psion family ?

ciao, .mau.

---

From: Dennis Fazio <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 11:09:01 -0600

--On Wed, Mar 24, 1999 10:07 AM -0500 "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>   So
> why can't we simply use the ISC dhcpd from the beginning, instead of
> waiting until people complain to fix things?

The NT DHCP was set up so we could get the Compaqs running during setup. We
were under the impression that the ISC dhcpd would be used because of these
very complaints about the NT version from the past, but as Matt pointed out
in his initial summary, it was not available in time for opening day.  
> 
> I'm really glad we're having this terminal room post-mortem discussion,
> and kudos the Ascend folks for starting this conversation.  Hopefully we
> can learn from what went well and what didn't work well, instead of
> apparently forcing each host to learn about these pitfalls as they go
> during the IETF week.

That is why I recommend that the IETF Secretariat take permanent
responsibility for the Terminal Room in my previous posting. The bulk of
the work and funding can be done by the local host, but there has to be a
permanent project manager, who can be compensated or be volunteer, but who
can provide continuity, prevent anything from being overlooked or done
incorrectly, and provide the ability to learn from experience. 

It seems that all of the ongoing glitches are not that difficult to prevent
but still repeat each time because there is always a novice crew putting it
together. For them, it's their first version. What was the old saying? Plan
to build a prototype that you will throw away, because if you don't, it
will be built anyway, it will just be called Version 1.0 or Model 100.

--
Dennis Fazio, MRNet
GabNet: 612-362-5850

---

From: Dennis Fazio <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 11:09:01 -0600

--
Dennis Fazio, MRNet
GabNet: 612-362-5850

---

From: John Ioannidis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 07:40:04 -0500 (EST)

Whatever happend to Pangaea Consulting?  They were running the terminal
room in the last few IETFs, and things were going much smoother then.

/ji

---

From: John Ioannidis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 07:40:04 -0500 (EST)

/ji

---

From: John Ioannidis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 07:47:59 -0500 (EST)

> A generalization would be to let someone open a small 
> concession, perhaps as an adjunct to shirt-selling, with 
> small accessories that people should have had the sense to 
>

That's what Staples, Office-Max, CompUSA, even Radio Shack, or
whatever, are for.  Or even mail-order places, which will happily
FedEx stuff next-business-morning.  I don't know about guided tours,
though :-)

/ji

PS: Maybe part of the information for newbies should be what
facilities to expect at the IETF terminal room?  Like, male RJ45
10BaseT drops and power strips that don't accomodate wall-warts, so if
they have other kinds of equipment they should bring the necessary
conversion hardware.

---

From: John Ioannidis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 07:47:59 -0500 (EST)

/ji

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 09:31 -0800 (PST)

Taking the suggestion below a little farther, how about adding
       some questions to the IETF registration asking about access
       'desirements'.

       I propose a set of questions like:

       -) Are you bringing a laptop? (please bring a laptop ;-) )
       -) If yes:
            -) How do you plan to access the network? (modem,
       ethernet, wavelan)
            -) What operating system do you run?
            -) Do you require a fixed IP address?

       -) If no:
            -) What operating system do you prefer?
            -) What type of security do you need?

       This might help tweak the balance of access methods and save
       the host some money while better supporting the attendees.

       ...just a thought...

       --aaron

       From: [email-masked] AT mime on 03/24/99 07:18 AM

       To:   [email-masked] AT mime@PMDF-IMP@HUB-H4@CCMAIL
       cc:   [email-masked] AT mime@PMDF-IMP@HUB-H4@CCMAIL (bcc: Aaron
             D Falk/ES1/ES/HSC)

       Subject:  Re: Minneapolis terminal room post-mortem

               I saw a wide mix of Linux, Windows 95, Windows NT,
       Solaris (some Sparc book, some x86) and *BSD.  It would be REAL
       interesting to get some feedback about experiences in the
       terminal room broken down by operating system and see if there
       WAS a correlation.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 09:31 -0800 (PST)

-) If no:

       ...just a thought...

       --aaron

---

From: Tony Hain <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 10:31:40 -0800

Useful information to have, but by the time registration opens the decisions
about what to provide will already have been made.  It would be most useful
to collect this a full meeting ahead of time. If it were tracked by
percentage of attendees some trends could help in the planning as well.

=============================================================
Tony Hain
[email-masked]

Technical solutions to political problems R us.

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	[email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent:	Thursday, March 25, 1999 9:31 AM
To:	[email-masked]
Cc:	[email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject:	Re: Minneapolis terminal room post-mortem

 << File: ATT1018579.txt >> 

       -) If no:

       ...just a thought...

       --aaron

---

From: Tony Hain <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 10:31:40 -0800

-----Original Message-----
From: 	[email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent:	Thursday, March 25, 1999 9:31 AM
To:	[email-masked]
Cc:	[email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject:	Re: Minneapolis terminal room post-mortem

       -) If no:

       ...just a thought...

       --aaron