Subject: Re: [67ATTENDEES] IETF 67 Network goes down at 12:00

From: "Burger, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:12:13 -0500

This was by far the best wireless coverage and connectivity to the Internet that I have had at an IETF in recent memory!  Excellent job!!!

--
Sent from my wireless device. Sorry if terse. Can't wait for lemonade!  What is lemonade? See <http://flyingfox.cantata.com/i-d/lemonade>

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Bernie Hoeneisen [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent:	Friday, November 10, 2006 01:54 PM Eastern Standard Time
To:	Jim Martin
Cc:	[email-masked]
Subject:	Re: [67ATTENDEES] IETF 67 Network goes down at 12:00

Dear NOC team!

Congratulations!

The network has worked really great! I've had no problems, no 
interruptions, and IPv6 was running smoothly too. Even in my hotel room I 
could use the IETF Wireless LAN network (access points in the pool area).

Thanks to the whole NOC Team for the excellent connectivity we've 
experienced during this meeting!

c.u. in Prague,
  Bernie

On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Jim Martin wrote:

> Gentlepeople,
> 	Consider this the traditional 10am warning that the IETF network will 
> go down today at Noon. Alas, we've got a very tight shipping schedule today, 
> so we'll have to bring everything down immediately at 12. The hotel wireless 
> in the lobby of both buildings should be available again (for registered 
> guests) on or before noon to provide continuing connectivity for folks.
>
> 	Hope everyone had a good week, and see you all in Prague!
>
> 	- Jim
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 67ATTENDEES mailing list
> [email-masked]
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From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:30:12 -0500

I would like to second that. Even during plenary, I had no troubles.

Regards
Marshall

On Nov 10, 2006, at 2:12 PM, Burger, Eric wrote:

> This was by far the best wireless coverage and connectivity to the  
> Internet that I have had at an IETF in recent memory!  Excellent  
> job!!!
>
> --
> Sent from my wireless device. Sorry if terse. Can't wait for  
> lemonade!  What is lemonade? See <http://flyingfox.cantata.com/i-d/ 
> lemonade>
>

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:49:18 -0500

> I would like to second that. Even during plenary, I had no troubles.
Indeed.  I don't recall another week where I had literally zero trouble
with the IETF net.  In fact, during the plenary I tried a brief ttcp test
and could manage 5M bps from Seattle to my laptop using 802.11a.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---

From: Ken Raeburn <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 08:04:10 -0500

> I would like to second that. Even during plenary, I had no troubles.

I hate to say it, but on the 802.11b/g network, I did have some  
problems during the plenary sessions -- fell off the network once or  
twice.  But when I switched off the built-in 802.11b/g card in my  
laptop and plugged in an 802.11a card, everything was fine....  Aside  
from the plenary, though, I had no problems at all, even while I was  
lounging out by the pool.  Very nice.

Ken

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:41:48 +0000

> lounging out by the pool.  Very nice.

I suspect this is one of the reasons why thinghs are getting better. 
By using 11a we get better quality for the 11a users and reduce contention
for the 11b/g people (though I suspect most g's fall back to b?).

Any charts of volumes of use? :)

I loved the analysis paper done for the network a couple of years ago;
any more documentation/discussion like that is very welcome.

-- 
Tim

---

From: Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 07:53:27 -0800

>Any charts of volumes of use? :)

Yes, I have an rrd file with data of "total b/g" and "total a"
users over the week (actually one for 65 and one for 67).  The
server it's on is currently in shipment but maybe if you remind
me next week I can dig up a graph or two...

>any more documentation/discussion like that is very welcome.

Got a pointer?  I don't remember this and would be interested
to see.

Thanks,
  Bill

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:59:01 +0000

> Got a pointer?  I don't remember this and would be interested

I may have a PDF somewhere, but my paper copy is:

"IEEE 802.11 in the Large: Observations at an IETF Meeting"
Andrea G. Forte, Sangho Shin, Henning Schulzrinne

It's actually IETF65 data, thought it was older.  They focus on one
room, and had some interesting views on unecessary handoffs and overheads
on those, amongst other things.   No mention of canoes ;)

-- 
Tim

---

From: "Richard Barnes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:30:26 -0500

Google turned it up at the following:
<http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~andreaf/downloads/ietf_measures.pdf>

--Richard

---

From: "Peter Lovell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:14:30 -0500

>for the 11b/g people (though I suspect most g's fall back to b?).

I also had excellent results all week. This was with 802.11a, which is
built-in on recent Macs. I'm not sure how far back it goes, perhaps all
Intel-based MacBook/MacBook Pro's. 

Kudos to the network crew.

---

From: Jim Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:10:12 -0800

> Intel-based MacBook/MacBook Pro's.

	Glad you had a good experience!

	Alas, this seems to have been a short-lived win. Indeed all the Core  
Duo MacBooks and MacBook Pros have an Atheros A/B/G card, but the OS  
doesn't support selecting A over B/G, unless you have A only (or B/G  
only) SSIDs. This is why we had the ietf67a and ietf67b SSIDs for the  
specific technologies.

	Unfortunately, with the release of the new Core 2 Duo based units,  
Apple switched from A/B/G to B/G/pre-N. This makes sense, since that  
keeps all their technologies at 2.4G (one antenna), and fits with  
Steve's clearly stated belief that 802.11a isn't relevant. The bummer  
is that 802.11a is much more suited to high density, high demand/ 
performance "enterprise" networks like the IETF.

> Kudos to the network crew.

	Many thanks!

	- Jim

---

From: "Peter Lovell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:14:41 -0500

>> Kudos to the network crew.

That's exactly what I do have. And thanks to the excellent instructions
I did select "a", as (this being new) I wouldn't have recognized the
difference otherwise.

Cheers.....Peter

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:19:11 +0000

> I did select "a", as (this being new) I wouldn't have recognized the

I have an older Mac and a newer Thinkpad.  The Thinkpad supports a/b/g,
and while the interface for media selection is rather clunky, it does
work very well.    

Is there any feeling for what IETF events will support in the future?
I hope the 11a/b/g support continues, and you don't listen to Jobs :)

-- 
Tim

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 07:54:49 -0800

On Nov 14, 2006, at 4:19 AM, Tim Chown wrote:
> Is there any feeling for what IETF events will support in the  
> future? I hope the 11a/b/g support continues, and you don't listen  
> to Jobs :)

I would expect at least 11a/g support for the foreseeable future. 11g  
is a superset of 11b, so 11b continues to work.

---

From: Markus Stenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 10:18:23 +0900

> I hope the 11a/b/g support continues, and you don't listen to Jobs :)

I'm hoping the 11a goes away, if it leads to more b/g coverage (unlikely,
considering they're probably provided by the same access points, but I live
in hope).

Why is that? I have a Japanese 11a/b/g both in my Thinkpad and Panasonic
laptops. Unfortunately, it seems that some moron's been in charge when the
frequency sets for 11a were chosen (or I'm a moron), as I can't see the 11a
networks in IETFs at all. I _suspect_ it is our good friend region-coding
that is acting up - apparently both of my laptops subscribe to the ZZJ
(Japan) frequency set according to the Intel driver in Linux, and
unfortunately I can't change that while travelling.

Wireless hardware for fixed operations? sigh..

And as a side note.. 67th IETF was the first one where I maintained network
connectivity throughout the plenaries, good job!

Cheers,

-Markus

---

From: "Tom Alexander" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:11:55 -0800

The legal set of 5 GHz channel frequencies assigned for 802.11 WLAN
operations in Japan are completely disjoint from those in the USA. These
frequency assignments are not under the control of the vendor, or even the
IEEE, but are made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in
Japan, and the Federal Communications Commission in the USA.

As the 5 GHz band is not assigned to WLANs on a primary basis, but shared
with other country-specific services such as satellite downlinks and
microwave landing systems, it is not surprising that different countries
have different regulations concerning this band. I think vendors are
prohibited from allowing their customers to switch frequency sets at will -
that is, a laptop sold in Japan is only allowed to see the Japanese
frequency set. Otherwise, a consumer device could wind up causing serious
interference to licensed services, even though inadvertent.

Just one of the many interesting wireless pitfalls ...

- Tom A.

-----Original Message-----
From: Markus Stenberg [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 5:18 PM
To: Tim Chown
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Re(4): [67ATTENDEES] IETF 67 Network goes down at 12:00

Cheers,

-Markus

---

From: YOSHIFUJI Hideaki / 吉藤英明<[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:31:02 -0800 (PST)

> operations in Japan are completely disjoint from those in the USA. These
:

They (J52 channels; 34, 38, 42 and 46) used to be.

The reguration was changed in May 2005, and
the new W52/W53 channels (36, 40, 44 and 48 / 52, 56, 60 and 64),
which are basically compatible with 802.11a in US,
are now available in Japan.

Current products should support new channels.

--yoshfuji

---

From: Tim Thome <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:41:32 -0600

>I did select "a", as (this being new) I wouldn't have recognized the

I purchased an A/B/G card specifically for IETF, and I must assume that 
others purchased or spec'ed out cards based on the feedback from the group.

IETF65 was my first IETF meeting, and one of the requirements was that 
802.11a must be supported, so I went ahead and requisitioned through 
multiple layers of management to get support for my laptop.

802.11a/b/g is enough for the next few meetings... 802.11n is a ways out, 
and will be backwards compat with our systems...

Tim

(in Dallas for the IEEE 802P session this week, good news is that 16ng 
inputs did make it back to the IEEE working groups)
--
Tim Thome <mailto:[email-masked]>
Senior Staff Engineer
Kyocera Telecommunications Research Corp.
San Diego, CA
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From: Simon Leinen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 10:52:43 +0100

Markus Stenberg writes:
> I'm hoping the 11a goes away, if it leads to more b/g coverage
> (unlikely, considering they're probably provided by the same access
> points, but I live in hope).

The problem is not so much that 11a and b/g are provided by the same
access points.  The problem is more that the ~2.4GHz spectrum
available for 11b/g is very limited compared to the ~5GHz spectrum for
11a.  This makes it much harder for to come up with a good channel
allocation plan for b/g than for a.

> Why is that? I have a Japanese 11a/b/g both in my Thinkpad and
> Panasonic laptops. Unfortunately, it seems that some moron's been in
> charge when the frequency sets for 11a were chosen (or I'm a moron),
> as I can't see the 11a networks in IETFs at all. I _suspect_ it is
> our good friend region-coding that is acting up - apparently both of
> my laptops subscribe to the ZZJ (Japan) frequency set according to
> the Intel driver in Linux, and unfortunately I can't change that
> while travelling.

Shouldn't that be possible, e.g. by flashing the card with different
firmware when you change continents? And as someone else said,
regulations in Japan seem to have changed anyway, so maybe you can
upgrade firmware to the newer Japanese channel set, or the common
subset of that and the other regions.
-- 
Simon.

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:07:57 -0500

Please keep 11a - it's been great for the last few meetings.  And 
thanks for the two SSIDs - using the same SSID was a problem when we 
first starting using 11a.

Thanks,
Andy

----------

---

From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:15:27 -0800 (PST)

On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Jim Martin wrote:

> Apple switched from A/B/G to B/G/pre-N. This makes sense, since that keeps 
> all their technologies at 2.4G (one antenna), and fits with Steve's clearly 
> stated belief that 802.11a isn't relevant. The bummer is that 802.11a is much 
> more suited to high density, high demand/performance "enterprise" networks 
> like the IETF.

Similarly, 802.11a cards are becoming harder to find.  For example,
Fry's doesn't carry any (at least online at frys.com).  I bought a
Netgear WAG511 (A/B/G) card from Amazon for this meeting, and it is
the earlier-generation packaging (dark blue rather than silver).

                                                         -- Steve

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:10:39 +0000

> me next week I can dig up a graph or two...

Hi Bill, if you do have the data available in any form, it would be interesting
to see the comparison.

-- 
Tim