Subject: Travel Considerations

From: "Eric Burger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:32:45 -0700

Here is an interesting optimization problem: it turns out the most
polluting part of a conference is people taking jets to fly to the
conference.  Minimize that and the planet wins.  Favors hub cities over
spokes, like San Diego or Prague, where you "can't get there from here",
no matter where "here" is.

See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/318/5847/36.pdf

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---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:59:42 +0100

> See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/318/5847/36.pdf
Which seems to be only available to those prepared to pay.

Stewart

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:10:35 -0400

> See http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/318/5847/36.pdf

If the Internet really uses 9.4% of total US electricity consumption,  
as is claimed here,

http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=724

then the problem is much worse than travel to IETF meetings.

Regards
Marshall

>
> Notice:  This email message, together with any attachments, may  
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> and  affiliated entities,  that may be confidential,  proprietary,   
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---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:30:28 -0700 (PDT)

You're assuming that if 1000 people decide not to fly to Prague
some weekend that the number of planes burning jet fuel to fly there
will be different. I don't think so.

  Maybe you can start a "Boycott Prague The Spoke City" campaign which,
if wildly successful, will reduce demand to fly there by some discernable
amount and thereby reduce the number of planes flying there and the amount
of jet fuel they would've burned. Well, as long as the planes that aren't
flying to Prague aren't used to fly to Heathrow or Frankfurt or some other
hub city. Also doubtful.

  I do not intend on making ietf-discuss into a forum for discussing
the pluses and minuses resulting from a degree centigrade temperature
change but let me just say that "the planet wins" is a somewhat dubious
statement.

  Dan.

On Fri, October 12, 2007 7:32 am, Eric Burger wrote:
> Notice:  This email message, together with any attachments, may contain
> information  of  BEA Systems,  Inc.,  its subsidiaries  and  affiliated
> entities,  that may be confidential,  proprietary,  copyrighted  and/or
> legally privileged, and is intended solely for the use of the individual
> or entity named in this message. If you are not the intended recipient,
> and have received this message in error, please immediately return this by
> email and then delete it.
>

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:49:12 -0700

> no matter where "here" is.

Ecological arguments merely add to the list of reasons that major 
international hubs are the better choice.

Additional travel time for each participant. Typically additional travel cost. 
Travel connections, that introduce subsantially higher risks of delays, lost 
luggage, etc.  Fragile air linkage -- fewer carriers and fewer flights means 
that it is easier to interrupt service.

The only logistical factor that can be in favor of secondary venues is cost. 
If the on-site costs are low enough, they might offset the travel factors that 
increase the cost.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:17:53 -0500

Unfortunately, using this logic -- I can buy a tank and get 2 
gallons-to-the-mile mileage because the rest of the planet (or at 
least America) is still buying SUVs that get horrible mileage too, 
since there will be nearly an unmeasurable difference to global 
warming if I drive my tank or not... so why not drive it anyway.

There is an individual responsibility to change what we each can 
change to help.  As an organization, we can have a greater positive 
affect if we reduce demand for such spoke flights by only flying to 
hub sites of major airlines -- if we're going to continue to meet in person.

If other organizations see ours as an example, and do the same, then 
the positive affect is greater on us doing the right thing...

Doing the right thing in mass has to start somewhere -- why does it 
have to start somewhere else here?

It's Friday...

---

From: "Eric Gray" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:31:47 -0500

Wow, has this conversation wandered into the weeds, or what?

Time out for station identification; this is the "Internet
Engineering Task Force."

Thanks!

--
Eric Gray
Principal Engineer
Ericsson  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James M. Polk [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 3:18 PM
> To: Dan Harkins; Eric Burger
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Travel Considerations
>

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:04:03 -0400

> Time out for station identification; this is the "Internet

I tend to think of it as at least in part an engineering question.
Obvious questions about tradeoffs and whatnot, and then the question
of engineering for errors/exceptions.  What are the consequences of
assuming <x> and being incorrect?  What are the consequences of being
incorrect about the alternative?  etc.

Melinda

---

From: "Dan Harkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:03:25 -0700 (PDT)

Hi James,

  I think you're missing the point. I'm not advocating being wasteful
because everyone else is. I'm saying that this effort is futile and
will not result in _any_ "win" for the planet. Your analogy to driving
an SUV is incorrect because not driving the SUV (or driving an
electric car instead) results in less emissions. A trivial amount but
every little bit helps. Flying 1000 people to Frankfurt instead of
Prague does not result in any less emissions. Encouraging other
organizations to follow our lead-- having 10000 people scattered over
the course of a year fly to a hub instead of through the hub to a
spoke-- won't either. The demand is still there to fly to places like
Prague and San Diego and airlines typically fly at less than 100%
capacity, sometimes significantly so.

  If you think there is an individual responsibility to change what
you can then please don't waste your effort on something that won't
have any effect! Do something that will make a difference.

  I for one would rather fly to (spoke) Prague than (hub) Frankfurt;
to (spoke) San Diego than to (hub) Chicago; and anywhere (spoke) on
God's green earth (yes, it's still green in spite of the IETF World
Tour) than (hub) London.

  Dan.

On Fri, October 12, 2007 12:17 pm, James M. Polk wrote:
>> contain

---

From: Hadriel Kaplan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:39:05 -0400

If 1000 fewer people board planes, I'm pretty sure it consumes some trivial amount less in jet fuel, simply due to the lighter weight of the plane.  But that difference would be more than made up by the proximity of the hotel to the airport and available mass transit to it, which would put San Diego's Sheraton pretty high up on the list.

Also, there is probably some proportional relationship of how many people attend the IETF meetings compared to the reachability of their locations; so having it at hub airports may be worse, and we should really have it at less accessible destinations... such as an island in the middle of a big ocean.  Therefore, I vote for Kauai, Hawaii, as the future permanent host island.

-hadriel

> From: Dan Harkins [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 5:03 PM
> To: James M. Polk
> Cc: [email-masked]

---

From: "Clint Chaplin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:57:47 -0700

> Also, there is probably some proportional relationship of how many people attend the IETF meetings compared to the reachability of their locations; so having it at hub airports may be worse, and we…

+1

-- 
Clint (JOATMON) Chaplin
Principal Engineer
Corporate Standardization (US)
SISA

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 04:01:23 +0100

> Here is an interesting optimization problem: it turns out the 
> most polluting part of a conference is people taking jets to 
> fly to the conference.  Minimize that and the planet wins.  

Simple solution. Only allow people to attend if they take a train or bus
to the conference. Enforce this by including tickets for train or bus
(your choice) when registering to attend a conference. It makes
trans-continental conferences impossible (although you might add an
ocean liner option) but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  What is
wrong with have several different continental chapters of the IETF,
given that all decisionmaking is supposed to be done online, not in
meetings?

--Michael Dillon

P.S. if you look at a map of Europe, Prague is rather centrally located
an makes an ideal location for a "green" conference like this.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 06:25:13 +0300

Mr Chairman, I have a suggestion. I suggest that we have a BOF at the  
next IETF on heat transfer issues, and subsequently open a working  
group. It can deal with this issue right after it solves the leakage  
current problem in fine lithography silicon, which I imagine  
contributes quite a bit to the use of electricity by the Internet.

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 06:24:41 +0300

I asked James this privately, but if we're going to get into an off- 
topic discussion of global warming, I'll ask it publicly to whoever  
has a good answer.

We all agree that global warming is happening. If you go to the  
terminal moraine, the farthest south that the ice went doing the  
largest or perhaps the most recent ice age, and you don't see any  
ice, the earth is provably warmer than it once was.

That said, do we not see ice at the terminal moraine because people  
drive SUVs, or because warming and cooling is something that has been  
happening since God created the earth? In the latter case,  
specifically what scientific evidence do we have that our current  
global warming event (which started in the 16th century, which was a  
mini-ice-age) is related to emissions? What scientific evidence do we  
have that changing emissions behavior will change global warming in  
any way?

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:55:59 -0400

On Oct 12, 2007, at 11:24 PM, Fred Baker wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> drive SUVs, or because warming and cooling is something that has  
> been happening since God created the earth? In the latter case,  
> global warming event (which started in the 16th century, which was  
> a mini-ice-age) is related to emissions? What scientific evidence  
> do we have that changing emissions behavior will change global  
> warming in any way?
>

<ridiculously off topic - you have been warned>

Dear Fred;

As a physicist who worked a little in climate change in the late  
1980's, let me give a capsule answer and then shut up. I will look,  
in turn, at the Greenhouse effect, at the CO2 changes, and at  
possible effects of the ongoing human forcing of the climate.

If the Earth's atmosphere did not trap heat, the mean surface  
temperature would be well below freezing. This math is not too  
difficult; you know the solar constant (input heating), mean albedo  
and rotation rate (the Earth warms during the day, cools at night by  
radiation) and you set up a spherically uniform model, which can be  
solved analytically. Instead, the Earth's mean surface is above  
freezing. (Supposedly, at this moment as I write the globally mean  
surface temp is 6.72 C, but the annual average is more like 14 C. The  
Northern hemisphere, having a good deal more land, dominates the  
annual cycle.) The difference between observed and  no-atmosphere  
predicted mean temperatures for the Earth is about 40 C.

This difference is caused by the so called "Greenhouse" effect, the  
blockage of IR radiation out from the Earth's surface. (Actual  
Greenhouses work mostly by stopping convection, not IR heat loss.)  
This blockage is mostly due to CO2, but Methane (from cows!) and  
other trace gases are also important, as is water vapor due to its  
prevalence. The simple uniform models do a reasonable job predicting  
the average lunar temperature; the lunar mean surface temperature is  
-50 C, which shows what an atmosphere can do for you.

Thus, there is no doubt of the existence of the Greenhouse effect;  
not only does the physics work out approximately well not only for  
the Earth and Moon, but also for Mars (a little Greenhouse, but  
noticeable) and Venus. Venus is a very interesting case, being so  
similar to the Earth in size and composition.  On the Earth, CO2 is  
mostly in certain rocks, like limestone, then dissolved in the  
Oceans, then in the Atmosphere, by a relative proportion of roughly  
 >10,000:50:1. On Venus, a comparable amount of CO2 is all in the  
atmosphere, and, as a result, the surface is very hot (mean  
temperature ~ 460 C). This is _not_ primarily due it being closer to  
the Sun, if it had terrestrial oceans and a terrestrial atmosphere,  
it would be a temperate place. (By isotopic evidence Venus used to  
have oceans, but it lost them - note that the rocks that contain  CO2  
here would mostly give it up at 400+ C - apparently, once Venus  
heated up all the CO2 went into the atmosphere and now it can never  
cool down.)

So, we have 4 objects (Earth, Moon, Venus, Mars), 3 of which have  
Greenhouse effects, and for all 4 of which we can calculate the  
observed surface temperatures reasonably well from fairly simple  
first principles. So, I regard the greenhouse effect as about as well  
proven as anything in planetary physics.

You might have seen in the press that we just passed the 50th  
anniversary of Sputnik 1; this being launched as part of the IGY. As  
another part of the IGY,  we started measuring CO2 from the top of  
Mauna Loa, Hawaii, on a daily basis. This is not only the longest CO2  
measurement series, but it's also a good place to do it, as the top  
of the volcano is above the local effects, and samples air mixed over  
a good portion of the Northern hemisphere. These and other data show  
without a doubt that the CO2 is rising, and match reasonably well  
with estimates of human forcing. Other trace gases are also  
important, and they are also increasing (such as methane from  
increased beef production).

Now, it is true that when you go a little further into the physics,  
things get messy fast. There are sources and sinks of everything. (If  
the top 50 meters of the oceans warm, will that increase or decrease  
the dissolved CO2 ?Will increased CO2 make forests grow faster and  
thus absorb more CO2 ? What about albedo from increased cloudiness ?  
Etc. etc. etc.) It's also hard to measure things consistently over  
decades. (For one of many examples, both the US and the USSR changed  
the way they measured temperature for their weather services soon  
after World War II, both in ways that caused biases in their  
temperature series. That's a good part of the Northern hemisphere,  
all messed up more or less at once.) And, as you say, there are  
considerable natural climate variations, which could mask, confuse or  
amplify any effects from human forcings. However, there are people  
who worry about all of these things, and their models (the complexity  
of the system requires numerical modeling to do anything detailed)  
agree roughly with what's observed.

So, to me the basic situation is pretty simple. You have a system  
where the amount of CO2 and other trace gases in the atmosphere  
controls the surface temperature. You (we) are increasing the amount  
of CO2 and other trace gases in the atmosphere. The surface  
temperature is going up, unusually so. This was predicted back in the  
1980's, if not before, which is always nice in any scientific test.  
As far as I am concerned, this is all pretty conclusive and puts the  
burden of proof on anyone who says that there is not any temperature  
rise due to human forcing.

It is as if someone started eating a lot more, and started gaining  
weight. If they protested that their weight gain had nothing to do  
with the increase in their diet, their Doctor would probably be  
dubious, and would probably recommend a reduction in their intake.

> What scientific evidence do we have that changing emissions  
> behavior will change global warming in any way?

That is a good question. A related one is, if we reduced or even  
stopped emissions, would the CO2 go back to where it was before ?  
That requires more models, but it seems that the answer is, not for a  
good while (a century or so).
So, we are in for a ride, no matter what we do.

The scary thing is that the climate is highly non-linear, and the  
rough equivalent of congestive collapse (rapid change to a less  
favorable state when certain conditions are met) is possible, as such  
things have happened in the past. Our ability to model such rapid  
state changes is poor, especially if they are unprecedented in recent  
times. Note that things can go either way - model failures can under  
or over predict what really happens.

An example of this is the story of the Ozone hole. In the 1960's,  
people started worrying about the effects of human produced gasses in  
the upper atmosphere. There were some scare stories about the entire  
Ozone layer going in a few decades. By the 1970's, the consensus was  
that the situation wasn't so bad - the models showed that there just  
wasn't enough Freon etc. up there to "eat" the entire Ozone layer.  
The discovery of the Ozone hole over Antarctica was a complete  
surprise. The models (due to the lack of computing resources back  
then) had dealt mostly with global averages. No one had thought how  
in the polar winter the polar atmosphere at altitude doesn't mix much  
with lower latitudes. Ozone is formed by sunlight, of which there is  
none during the polar winter. So, the Ozone over the pole sits with  
Freon and other antagonists all winter long, and there is no  
replenishment. In those conditions, there _is_ enough Freon etc. to  
"eat" the local Ozone, and nothing to replace it, so a hole forms.  
Now it is modeled reasonably well, but the models missed it then.  
Likewise, there could be some bad things in store with the climate  
not anticipated by the current modeling.

Here is a paraphrase of what I said back in 1987, which I think is  
still pretty sound : We are undertaking a vast unplanned experiment  
in climate modification which could have unpleasant consequences.  
Prudence would suggest that we take steps to mitigate  these  
consequences. To argue about what these steps should be is  
reasonable, but to totally ignore the situation is not.

Hope this helps. As I said before, I'll shut up about this now, at  
least on this list.

Regards
Marshall

>>>> flying to Prague aren't used to fly to Heathrow or Frankfurt or  
>>>> some
>>>> other
>>>> hub city. Also doubtful.
>>>>
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From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:44:24 +0300

Please save the planet by working on a better Internet, not
by posting to an off-topic mail thread.

Jari

---

From: "Darryl \(Dassa\) Lynch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:27:47 +1000

>> by posting to an off-topic mail thread.

Perhaps the IETF should consider purchasing carbon credits for each
standards track document produced :)

Darryl (Dassa) Lynch

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:17:42 -0700

> <ridiculously off topic - you have been warned>

For this thread, perhaps you meant "you have been warmed."

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:28:47 -0700

I think that whole conversation is missing the point. While one conference with one and a half thousand participants has a significant carbon footprint the more significant issue is the net impact of Internet technology. We can do far more by enabling changes in the behavior of the billion plus Internet users than our own use.

Whether your objective is to reduce carbon emissions because of global warming concerns or reduce dependence on fossil fuels that are increasingly in short supply, there is a real incentive to reduce energy use. 

Here are some options:

1) Teleconferencing that works.

If teleconferencing actually worked the need to hold face to face meetings would be reduced. By work I mean really work, not almost, not provided there is no NAT, not provided the firewall has pinhole router configuration. Today this is simply not the case, in fact it is pretty much impossible to get the software providers to even tell you which ports they use. For fun try to find the information on Microsoft's site.

This one is in scope for the IETF.

2) Enable better power management. 

While I do not believe the claims that the Internet takes 9% of the US energy supply, data centers are increasingly power hungry and the cost of electricity and equally important, cooling is a major factor in decisions to locate new data centers. Despite this, most data centers operate far below peak capacity and even when a data center is operating at 'capacity' the majority of the actual servers are not, only the ones that are the bottleneck.

Make it possible to spin up additional machines as needed to respond to increases in demand and standby machines can be powered down.

Certain approaches are in scope for IETF, others are not.

3) Removal of waste heat

Today most data centers use active cooling, albeit in a pretty inefficient fashion. Air is cooled to room temperature using refrigeration equipment, blown through the racks and the waste heat expelled into the atmosphere. So we use vast amounts of energy to make heat and then use more energy to vent it to the atmosphere.

First problem here is that air is not an efficient means of heat transfer, its loud and you have to use air at human-comfortable temperatures. This means that your racks are always going to be warm. Cool racks are more reliable than hot ones.

Passive technology such as heat pipes are much more attractive. I believe that future data centers will be built around equipment racks that contain separate busses for low voltage power, network and heat elimination. The heat busses will connect together to form a cooling grid for the machine room which will in turn vent to the outside air. Rather than using energy to expel the heat the process could be used to extract energy, even though the heat is low grade (below boiling point of water at atmospheric pressure) it is clean.

Getting the temperature down below the external ambient temperature would require an energy input of course, that might make sense if you were going to go to a really low temperature and overclock your way out of a performance crunch (i.e. liquid nitrogen temperatures).

This one is out of scope for the IETF, in fact its pretty much out of scope everywhere at the moment, its one of those issues that falls between the cracks of mechanical engineering and electrical. There are plenty of folk who think about these issues on the small scale but rather fewer thinking about what a data center built around these ideas would look like.

---

From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:29:39 -0400

Hallam-Baker, Phillip <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Whether your objective is to reduce carbon emissions because of
> global warming concerns or reduce dependence on fossil fuels that are
> increasingly in short supply, there is a real incentive to reduce
> energy use. 
> 
> If teleconferencing actually worked the need to hold face to face
> meetings would be reduced.

   I am constantly surprised how little interest there is within IETF
for teleconferecing that works well.

> By work I mean really work, not almost, not provided there is no NAT,
> not provided the firewall has pinhole router configuration.

   These are all "security" issues, for which we could find end-runs.
The problem I see is that we just don't care. :^(

--
John Leslie <[email-masked]>

---

From: Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:54:26 -0400

>for teleconferecing that works well.

Indeed. I raised this point over the years. Even offering to pay a 
"remote attendance fee" if there were in fact the ability to see and 
hear sessions, and participate. The IETF for many years crowed about 
the Mbone connectivity as being innovative, but got stuck there, and 
didn't progress when comercial solutions bypassed that flawed technology.

>The problem I see is that we just don't care. :^(

Indeed, we can all use various conferencing methods today, which all 
work regardless of firewalls, whether incorporating NAT or not. But 
of course those technologies were not born of the IETF. The 
marketplace notwithstanding, those approaches are given less credence.

Perhaps if the IETF did have to consider its carbon footprint in its 
meeting planning, those ideas would be given some credence.

I rarely get on airplanes any more, and so have not been to an IETF 
meeting in some time. The "appearance of security" in place to harass 
the public and make us feel safe as un-screened cargo is loaded into 
cargo holds below your feet is not worth the aggrivation. My vote is 
to cut my own carbon footprint by not flying.

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:30:30 -0700

Daniel Senie wrote:
> hear sessions, and participate. The IETF for many years crowed about the
> Mbone connectivity as being innovative, but got stuck there, and didn't
> progress when comercial solutions bypassed that flawed technology.

I don't recall crowing about multicast.

I also don't recall you volunteering to show up and help enable remote
participation...

The volunteers built a model that was sustainable with a modest amount
of capital and time. both jabber and and streaming audio.

I respectfully suggest that if you put more in, you might get more out.

joelja

---

From: Daniel Senie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:09:07 -0400

>I also don't recall you volunteering to show up and help enable remote

No. I offered that I would pay a fee and NOT show up.

>I respectfully suggest that if you put more in, you might get more out.

So in order to participate remotely, I needed to show up and run 
cameras. I'm sorry, but that does not make sense. I'm also sorry if 
you thought I was criticizing the people who put in the time to 
broadcast the meetings over Mbone. It was a great effort. Not one I 
could watch, mind you, since multicast connectivity didn't reach most 
of the places I've worked, but nice that someone did it nonetheless.

What I suggested, at plenaries and such, was that I would have been 
happy to pay a meeting fee, despite not being there, if the money 
went toward interactive, remote attendance instead of to cookies, ice 
cream, pretzels and danish.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:18:21 +1300

Joel,

> of capital and time. both jabber and and streaming audio.

For which many thanks from many of us, I'm sure. Also, the Secretariat
built a tool so that all slides can be uploaded before each session,
or even in real time during the session.

Of course, it isn't the same thing as telepresence over dedicated bandwidth,
but that's in a different financial league.

     Brian

---

From: Douglas Otis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:31:25 -0700

On Oct 15, 2007, at 5:18 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> Joel,
>
>> The volunteers built a model that was sustainable with a modest  
>> amount of capital and time. both jabber and and streaming audio.
>
> For which many thanks from many of us, I'm sure. Also, the  
> Secretariat built a tool so that all slides can be uploaded before  
> each session, or even in real time during the session.
>
> Of course, it isn't the same thing as telepresence over dedicated  
> bandwidth, but that's in a different financial league.

IM conversations or debates using text only are difficult, to type  
the least.  Few have the patience needed to wait for others to finish  
typing before changing the topic.  Access to the room microphone  
remotely would be nice.  Perhaps a fee-based vetting might be used to  
limit access to this expensive resource.  Also, those attending would  
not want to contend with thousands of others queued up on-line to ask  
their question and then perhaps one follow-up.

Many IETF participants already use Skype.  Skype runs on Linux, OSX,  
and Windows.  Skype works through many different firewalls as well.   
It could be interesting to find whether a phone bridge can be easily  
controlled by the room moderator is available.  The cost may not be  
too great when using network based voice clients and a soft switch?   
Is there an open-source alternative?

-Doug

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:42:55 +0200

On 15-okt-2007, at 18:28, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:

> I think that whole conversation is missing the point. While one  
> conference with one and a half thousand participants has a  
> significant carbon footprint the more significant issue is the net  
> impact of Internet technology. We can do far more by enabling  
> changes in the behavior of the billion plus Internet users than our  
> own use.
>

Good point. So let's see if we can raise the average packet size used  
on the internet. If the router and switch vendors build their  
equipment such that they mostly use energy when actually doing stuff  
(such as routing table lookups) a reduction in the number of packets  
for the same amount of data would reduce the amount of power used to  
perform the data transfer.

A lot of equipment out there is already capable of using packets  
larger than 1500 bytes but the protocols are too limited to use this  
capability where it exists in a manageable way.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-van-beijnum-multi-mtu-01.txt