Brian E. Carpenter - Network Geeks

Brian E. Carpenter 1

(1)

Abstract

Imagine that you are sitting in a very large room. Its a hotel ballroom, with a grandiose name like Regency or Continental . Its a square box with plain walls and no windows. The ceiling is high, three metres above you. Theres little decoration, the colours are neutral, and the double wooden doors at the back are only impressive when viewed from a distance. Theres an annoying background of air-conditioning noise, but the lighting isnt harsh. Theres a generic, characterless carpet.

Imagine that you are sitting in a very large room. Its a hotel ballroom, with a grandiose name like Regency or Continental . Its a square box with plain walls and no windows. The ceiling is high, three metres above you. Theres little decoration, the colours are neutral, and the double wooden doors at the back are only impressive when viewed from a distance. Theres an annoying background of air-conditioning noise, but the lighting isnt harsh. Theres a generic, characterless carpet.

Youre sitting on a plain stackable chair with a metal frame and a firm cloth-covered seat. Its hooked onto another chair at left and right. Its one of a long row, part of a large block of chairs, and there are three or four such blocks separated by aisles. Altogether, about a thousand seats face a low stage at one end of the room. On stage, theres a long table with 15 chairs behind it and a podium in the middle. There are microphones and water glasses on the table. Obviously, theres going to be a panel of experts up there, and a lecturer at the podium.

At each side of the stage stands a large projector screen. It looks as if somebodys holiday snapshots and cat pictures are being shown in sequence. A woman in casual clothes is messing around with a laptop computer on the podium; she must be a technician setting things up.

You start to look around you. In the aisles between the blocks of seating are microphone stands, so it seems as if audience participation is expected. But if this is a typical industry conference, where are the posters, banners and sponsorship logos to remind you where you are? As you wonder whether youve arrived an hour too soon, before the room has been properly set up, you are startled by what sounds like live music. Indeed it is; a few people have appeared in the front row with small drums and have started drumming together, in a pleasant and soothing rhythm. But why? What has this to do with the Internet? You thought you were attending a serious conference about Internet technical standards.

More people are drifting in. Heres a busy-looking person in business clothes going up onto the stage. The woman already there looks up and says something to him. He presses a couple of buttons and says One, two, three into a microphone; the loudspeakers are now on. This is all backwards the casually dressed woman seems to be giving the orders, and the smart young man in a business suit is the hotels audio technician.

The people coming into the room are an odd looking bunch. Most of them are white males of various ages, but none of them are dressed for a serious meeting. Despite the air conditioning, several are wearing shorts and sandals. Many are wearing T-shirts, some of which appear to have a computer program printed on the back. One guy is wearing a tie-dye shirt that seems to be left over from the 1970s. Theres a scattering of grey or bald heads, many pairs of jeans, and a few men with long hair and beards that look older than the tie-dye. Is this a convention for superannuated hippies?

Ah, wait, here come a couple of men in proper business dress and ties. One of them is even wearing a neat grey three-piece suit. Its funny, because he looks just like someone you once saw on the front cover of a magazine wearing a silly T-shirt. Hes talking animatedly with another man wearing a black suit and a Homburg hat, which he swiftly replaces with a yarmulke. Surely, these must at last be the people in charge. However, they wander down the aisle, greeting others as they go, and finally choose seats near the front.

A few of the people coming in are women, neatly but casually dressed. Quite a few of the men appear to be Asian, but there is only a scattering of black people. The buzz of conversation is in many languages. Even when it seems to be in English, the snatches you hear make little sense. Yes, but whats the threat model? You cant announce a slash twenty-six and expect anyone to route it! I mean, hes still trying to use MD5, what use is that?

Almost everyone is carrying a laptop computer, and as they sit down, they scrabble around on the floor. You look down to understand why and see a line of interconnected blocks of power outlets snaking across the carpet. People are plugging in their laptops, and at least half of them are using adaptors for plugs from another country. As more and more people arrive, they construct small sculptures of adaptors plugged into adaptors and extension cords plugged into extension cords. By the time everyone is seated, the floor is a seething mass of cables and connectors. The conversation moves on: Whats the SSID? Is IPv6-only working for you? Oh no, I lost my VPN again. And most bizarrely Whats the jabber room?

The drumming from the front reaches a crescendo and stops, followed by scattered applause. It seems that the drummers were just regular participants in the meeting who like to drum. The cat photos on the big screens have been replaced by a slide saying Welcome to Plenary and some letters and numbers. There is also a geeky-looking logo. The woman on stage is hovering near the speakers podium. The audience, if thats the right way to describe such a ragtag assembly, is slowly settling. A tall blind man with long blond hair comes in, finds his way to the front row and sits down. He too has a laptop computer, on which hes soon busy typing quickly, while talking to his neighbours, and apparently listening to the computer talking back to him through a small earpiece.

Theres a call for silence and some loud shushing. People still standing at the back find seats, and somebody closes the doors, which are immediately pushed open by latecomers, letting in bursts of loud talk and laughter from the lobby area. The woman at the front says a firm Hello into the microphone, and the residual conversations subside. It finally dawns on you that shes in charge.

Your mind drifts back to this morning. You arrived from the airport late last night, stumbled from the taxi to the front desk, checked in and went straight to bed, ignoring the raucous crowd in the hotel bar. This morning, you dressed smartly, as one does for a meeting, and went down on the dot of 8 oclock to register and collect the promised breakfast. Registration was easy, but instead of a nice conference bag, all you got was a name badge, a Manilla envelope and a free T-shirt. Then you found yourself competing for breakfast items with several hundred other people, all going for the usual hotel bagels, breads and bananas. A few of them looked as lost as you felt, but most of them were deep in conversation as if theyd been there all night, or they were sitting on the floor deeply absorbed in their laptops, sipping coffee or orange juice and dropping crumbs freely onto their keyboards. Standing juggling your computer bag, your newly acquired Manilla envelope, your bagel plate and your coffee mug, you held a stilted conversation with someone from China who works for a very large company you had never heard of. As your bagel landed face down on the hotel carpet, he was telling you that he was here for sipping and simple, or at least thats what you thought he said, and then he asked if you were going to boff. It made no sense whatever; in fact it seemed vaguely insulting, until you consulted the agenda in the Manilla envelope, to find out what SIPPING and SIMPLE and BOF meant.