NANOG Organization

From NANOG

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.

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.

Steering Committee

The NANOG community elected its first Steering Committee in summer 2005. As noted in the NANOG charter, the Steering Committee selects the Program Committee and Mailing List Committee, advises Merit on the NANOG budget, and liaises with other organizations. The SC can be reached at steering@nanog.org. Minutes for Steering Committee minutes are online. Current members:

Betty Burke, Merit

Steve Feldman, CBS Interactive

Kris Foster, BitGravity (ex-officio MLC)

Patrick W. Gilmore, Akamai Technologies

Jared Mauch, NTT America

Chris Morrow, Google, Inc

Joe Provo, ITA Software (Chair)

Robert Seastrom, ClueTrust

Todd Underwood, PacketFabric (ex-officio PC)

Past Members of the Steering Committee

Joe Abley, Afilias (former Chair)

Randy Bush, IIJ

Bill Norton, Equinix

Philip Smith, Cisco (former Chair)

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 [mailto:nanogpc@nanog.org nanogpc@nanog.org].

Nina Bargisen, TDC

Larry Blunk, Merit

Tom Daly, Dynamic Network Services, Inc.

Brian Deardorff, Level (3)

Chris Morrow, Google, Inc (ex-officio SC)

Igor Gashinsky, Yahoo!

Mike Hughes, LINX

Joel Jaeggli, University of Oregon

Rodney Joffe, NeuStar

Sylvie LaPerrière, VSNL International

David Meyer, Cisco Systems

Kevin Oberman, ESnet