NANOG Organization

From NANOG

1 About NANOG

About NANOG

Thanks for your interest in the North American Network Operators Group! NANOG is an educational and operational forum for the coordination and dissemination of technical information related to backbone/enterprise networking technologies and operational practices.

NANOG meetings are held three times each year, and include presentations, tutorials, and BOFs. The meetings are informal, and membership is open. Conference participants typically include senior engineering staff from tier 1 and tier 2 ISPs. Participating researchers present short summaries of their work for operator feedback.

NANOG meetings are organized by Merit Network, Inc., a non-profit Michigan organization, and are hosted by Merit and other organizations around the U.S. and Canada. Leadership is provided by the NANOG Steering Committee, established in 2005, and the Program Committee which is appointed by the Steering Committee.

NANOG evolved from the NSFNET "Regional-Techs" meetings, where technical staff from the regional networks met to discuss operational issues of common concern with the Merit engineering staff. At the February 1994 regional techs meeting in San Diego, the group revised its charter to include a broader base of network service providers, and subsequently adopted NANOG as its new name.

Funding for NANOG originally came from the National Science Foundation, as part of two projects Merit undertook in partnership with NSF and other organizations: the NSFNET Backbone Service and the Routing Arbiter project. All NANOG funds now come from conference registration fees and donations from vendors.

NANOG meetings provide a forum for the exchange of technical information, and promote discussion of implementation issues that require community cooperation. Coordination among network service providers helps ensure the stability of overall service to network users.

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Charter

In 2005, with the cooperation of Merit and a small group in the community, a process was begun to evolve control from a corporate like structure with Merit at the top of the pyramid to a more cooperative structure organized through elections and appointments from withing the community. The result was a document called The Charter.

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Steering Committee

The NANOG community elected its first NANOG Steering Committee in summer 2005. As noted in the NANOG charter, the Steering Committee selects the Program Committee and email list administrators, advises Merit on the NANOG budget, and liaises with other organizations. The six-member group can be reached at steering@nanog.org. Minutes for Steering Committee minutes are online. Members include:

Joe Abley, Afilias (Chair)

Betty Burke, Merit

Randy Bush, IIJ

Chris Morrow, Verizon Business

Bill Norton, Equinix

Joe Provo, ITA Software

Philip Smith, Cisco

Past Members of the Steering Committee

Jared Mauch, NTT America

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Program Committee

The Program Committee of NANOG is appointed by the Steering Committee. The Chairman of the PC is an observer on the SC with no vote. The Program committee can be reached by mailing nanogpc@nanogpc.org.

Nick Feamster, Georgia Tech

Steve Feldman, CNET (Chair, ex-officio SC)

Igor Gashinsky, Yahoo!

Daniel Golding, Tier 1 Research

Kobi Hsu

Mike Hughes, LINX

Joel Jaeggli, University of Oregon

Josh Snowhorn, Terremark