Subject: Proposals to improve the scribe situation

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 12:26:35 -0400

In many of the working groups that I participate in, I have noticed
that it is increasingly difficult to find scribes (whether old-style  
or jabber).
I know that some WG simply give up and have one of the Co-chairs  
scribe. I would regard this as extremely suboptimal in the WG where I  
am a Co-chair, as my co-chairs and I bring different strengths and  
abilities to
the table, and regard this as a bad sign and a clear implications of  
the need for some improvements.

Here are some thoughts and suggestions about this situation :

1.) Is it really necessary to have a jabber scribe and a regular  
scribe as a separate
position ? We had 117 sessions in Dublin, finding 234 scribes is  
clearly harder than finding 117.

I find that scribing on jabber has a number of advantages

- you frequently get corrections if you didn't get a speakers name,  
missed
the spelling of an acronym, etc.

- you can frequently get an instant backup if you need a brief bio- 
break.

- people in the audience can expand on topics, provide background, etc.

- the notes are archived instantly and cannot be lost if the scribe's  
computer crashes (as has happened to me).

The only "con" I can think of is that some scribes might use a  
stenographic style
that would not lend itself to exposure on jabber. (I would note,  
though, that some WGs
are much more jabber involved than others.) If there is sufficient  
interest, we could even offer
two jabber sessions per meeting - one for the scribe and comments, one  
for general discussion.

2.) Would it be possible to have a volunteer list for scribes in  
advance of the meeting ? I would be willing to volunteer to sign-up to  
scribe one or two sessions in WG that need a scribe, and suspect  
others would too. Surely with doodle and other modern tools, we could  
offer some sort of sign-up mechanism. I would even suggest 2 - a list  
of people willing to volunteer in general, and a agenda or calendar  
with slots in each session for the scribe for that session.

3.) A minor point, but I would urge WG chairs to formally designate  
someone (possibly themselves) to
relay questions from jabber. This seems to fall to the jabber scribe,  
even though it is impossible to stand at the
mike and scribe at the same time !

Regards
Marshall

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 23:00:20 -0500

Hi, Marshall,

Speaking as a scribe...

My biggest obstacle to using jabber for scribing is that we still (used to 
be frequently, now very rarely, but it happened in Dublin) experience 
networking problems on the wireless LAN. The typical Monday morning problems 
of long ago kept me from trying it for about two years ("once burned, twice 
shy").

If we could run one ethernet cable for the chairs/scribe, I bet we'd have 
more volunteers (I remember that offering power for the scribes worked as an 
inducement in Yokohama and in Vienna, and probably other places as well).

Beyond that ... so how many working groups have formal secretaries?

Spencer

> that it is increasingly difficult to find scribes (whether old-style  or 
> jabber).
> I know that some WG simply give up and have one of the Co-chairs  scribe. 
> I would regard this as extremely suboptimal in the WG where I  am a 
> Co-chair, as my co-chairs and I bring different strengths and  abilities 
> to
> the table, and regard this as a bad sign and a clear implications of  the 
> need for some improvements.
>
> 1.) Is it really necessary to have a jabber scribe and a regular  scribe 
> as a separate
> position ? We had 117 sessions in Dublin, finding 234 scribes is  clearly 
> harder than finding 117.
>
> - you can frequently get an instant backup if you need a brief bio- break.
>
> that would not lend itself to exposure on jabber. (I would note,  though, 
> that some WGs
> 2.) Would it be possible to have a volunteer list for scribes in  advance 
> of the meeting ? I would be willing to volunteer to sign-up to  scribe one 
> or two sessions in WG that need a scribe, and suspect  others would too. 
> Surely with doodle and other modern tools, we could  offer some sort of 
> sign-up mechanism. I would even suggest 2 - a list  of people willing to 
> volunteer in general, and a agenda or calendar  with slots in each session 
> for the scribe for that session.
>

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:36:42 +0200

> I find that scribing on jabber has a number of advantages

On the other hand, having the jabber room monopolized by the scribe  
reduces its usefulness as an additional channel for communication.

Now that we have audio for all sessions (although sometimes the  
quality is far from ideal) is it really necessary to repeat everything  
that's being said in jabber?

I think the jabber scribe function should be reduced to announcing new  
speakers and giving some hints about which slides are on the screen.  
The jabber room can then be used by local and remote participants as  
an extra channel rather than a reduced bandwidth copy of the audio.

> relay questions from jabber. This seems to fall to the jabber  
> scribe, even though it is impossible to stand at the

An extra microphone for the question relayer would also be useful.  
What I always try to do in this situation is sit next to the mike...
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From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:03:53 +0200

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
 
> quality is far from ideal) is it really necessary to repeat
> everything that's being said in jabber?
 
> I think the jabber scribe function should be reduced to announcing
> new speakers and giving some hints about which slides are on the
> screen.  The jabber room can then be used by local and remote
> participants as an extra channel rather than a reduced bandwidth
> copy of the audio.

It helps to have a good approximation of what later ends up in
the minutes on jabber.  As you say the audio was sometimes not
good:  Not loud enough to hear anything while pressing my ear
to the speaker, a position where I can't see the jabber room ;-)

On another day there were two intersting sessions at the same
time - actually more, but I tried two, one with jabber + audio,
the other only jabber.

A "reduced bandwidth" version of the audio could in fact help,
but good scribes - again thanks to those who volunteered, and
to folks channeling remote remarks - are more important.

All this doesn't prevent folks from using jabber as an extra
channel. 

 Frank

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:13:25 +0200

> All this doesn't prevent folks from using jabber as an extra

Maybe not in theory, but I think it does to a large degree in practice.

Maybe Marshall's idea of having two different rooms makes sense.
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From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:41:15 +0200

> Maybe Marshall's idea of having two different rooms makes sense.

Dunno, I tried that once in an SPF debate, one room had a public
log, the other was "off the record", and it was rather confusing.

For participants (remote or physically elsewhere) it could be
also confusing to have two jabber rooms for each meeting they
are interested in.  Likely your eyes are sharper than mine, and
you can afford lots of simultaneously open chat windows... :-)

 Frank

---

From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 08:27:31 -0400

I don't think the problems were related to the wireless network. My  
ssh and IMAP session didn't blink, while the plenary jabber room would  
periodically kick out a large fraction of the participants.

Having formal secretaries seems like a better long-term approach; it  
also provides recognition to the individuals and, in some cases, a  
training ground for future WG chairs. Professional organizations, such  
as IEEE and ACM, often use such "junior" leadership positions in such  
a fashion.

Henning

On Aug 4, 2008, at 12:00 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> Hi, Marshall,
>
> Speaking as a scribe...
>
> My biggest obstacle to using jabber for scribing is that we still  
> (used to be frequently, now very rarely, but it happened in Dublin)  
> experience networking problems on the wireless LAN. The typical  
> Monday morning problems of long ago kept me from trying it for about  
> two years ("once burned, twice shy").
>
> If we could run one ethernet cable for the chairs/scribe, I bet we'd  
> have more volunteers (I remember that offering power for the scribes  
> worked as an inducement in Yokohama and in Vienna, and probably  
> other places as well).
>

---

From: Matthew J Zekauskas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:26:52 -0400

> An extra microphone for the question relayer would also be useful. What 
> I always try to do in this situation is sit next to the mike...

When acting a WG chair, and often as a room participant, I try to 
monitor Jabber for messages (and even wheen I'm scribe too; I personally 
like to jot down way too much, so jabber clients aren't my preferred 
mode for taking notes (and my fingers are also Emacs-trained ;) ).

One thought that came up this week -- a second projector showing the 
current Jabber chat... or even just switching to it during long Q&A 
sessions.  This might more easily allow some of the qustioners in. 
Actually, it probably gives them priority over folks at the mic, so 
maybe it's not such a good idea.

--Matt

---

From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:56:15 -0400

Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> experience networking problems on the wireless LAN.
> 

   There certainly have been wireless problems, and they certainly could
recur.

>> worked as an inducement in Yokohama and in Vienna, and probably  

   It would be good to have ethernet and power for the jabber scribes.
Might I suggest a microphone as well, in case the jabber scribe can't
figure out who's speaking, or finds the need to channel a jabber
question?

> training ground for future WG chairs.

   By all means!

   (Don't forget the other direction: after graduating from WGC, you'll
have a leg up on judging what deserves to be recorded in minutes, and
you'll have a better chance of gleaning a name from the mumbled sylables
before speakers actually get close enough to the mike.)

--
John Leslie <[email-masked]>
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From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:07:38 -0700

At Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:36:42 +0200,
> What I always try to do in this situation is sit next to the mike...

Actually, what I think would be very useful would be to have a second
screen that shows the jabber channel. The burden of having to run
everything through the scribe is just too high to allow meaningful
participation.

-Ekr

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:10:51 -0400

> figure out who's speaking, or finds the need to channel a jabber

If there is a separate microphone plus projection screen for scribes,  
this would probably double this
meeting fee

Audio Visual & Polycom Rental $ 26,824

i.e., add about $ 25 to registration. Not saying that that is a bad  
thing, but nothing comes for free.

>> training ground for future WG chairs.

My reaction to this as a WG chair is that, if it is hard to find a  
scribe, it will be
harder to find a Secretary.

Of course, one solution that some organizations use is to require time  
at a lower position to
rise to another, but I personally do not want to go down that road.

I also worry about mission creep here - not too long ago, most WG just  
used a single Chair.
Now, we are talking about 3 people as the ideal.

> before speakers actually get close enough to the mike.)

Indeed. I have, however, yet to get a former chair to scribe.

Regards
Marshall

---

From: Dan York <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:17:51 -0400

Answers inline prefixed with "DY>" answering both Spencer's and  
Marshall's points:

> two years ("once burned, twice shy").

DY> Yes, either the wireless network - or the *Jabber server* - can  
potentially be a serious challenge.  I was a frequent Jabber scribe at  
IETF 71 in Philadelphia in the RAI sessions and those of you who  
attended those sessions will recall my quite frequent trips to the mic  
to say for the remote attendees who were listening to the audio stream  
something like "the jabber server is done. help has been requested" or  
"the jabber server is back up".

DY> Having said that, the Jabber server performance was rock solid at  
IETF 72 (and I know we switched to using a new Jabber server) and I  
saw no issues whatsoever with its performance as a remote attendee.  I  
did, though, see comments from a few of the folks who were Jabber- 
scribing saying that they were having wireless network access problems  
in a few of the rooms there.
> Beyond that ... so how many working groups have formal secretaries?

DY> Certainly an excellent idea for working groups.

>> clearly harder than finding 117.

DY> I think there is value in having two separate roles.  In my view,  
the "regular" scribe is there to record the activities and  
particularly the *actions* of the working group.  The notes from the  
regular scribes can be a great asset for the chairs and can also be an  
excellent resource for people who were unable to attend.  For  
instance, I have several times in the past found Spencer's detailed  
minutes extremely helpful in catching up with what happened at a RAI  
meeting that I could not attend.

DY> I also personally see value in an edited set of "minutes" for a  
meeting along the lines of those produced by regular scribes.  A  
chatroom log file is not the same as it is filled with other  
conversations (as well as the inevitable notices from Jabber clients  
as they join/leave the room).

DY> In contrast, I see the Jabber scribe primarily as the connection  
to remote participants (where "remote" could be people who are not  
attending the meeting or who may be at the meeting but in another  
session).  There is a degree of interactivity here that is not true of  
the regular scribe.  The Jabber scribe needs to be able to relay  
questions from those in the Jabber room, answer questions the remote  
participants may have ("which slide are we on?"), etc.  That necessary  
interactivity, though, may distract the Jabber scribe from the  
detailed note-taking the regular scribe may be doing.

DY> Like you, Marshall, I have found the Jabber scribe to be immensely  
helpful in such ways as filling in speakers' names.  When I was  a  
regular scribe at IETF 71, I was *also* monitoring the Jabber scribe  
for exactly this kind of information, which I then recorded in the  
regular minutes.
>> advance of the meeting ?

DY> Definitely a good idea.  For a couple of the working groups I  
follow, the chairs sent out the request for scribes (regular and  
Jabber) several days in advance.

>> I would even suggest 2 - a list  of people willing to volunteer in  
>> general, and a agenda or calendar  with slots in each session for  
>> the scribe for that session.

DY> Good idea.
>> mike and scribe at the same time !

DY> For me I dealt with this by sitting very close to the mic for the  
sessions in which I knew I was going to be a Jabber scribe.  In  
several sessions the chairs were also clear that the Jabber scribe  
could "jump to the front of the line" and stand up quickly to relay a  
question, which was very helpful.

Regards,
Dan

-- 
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Office of the CTO    Voxeo Corporation     [email-masked]
Phone: +1-407-455-5859  Skype: danyork  http://www.voxeo.com
Blogs: http://blogs.voxeo.com  http://www.disruptivetelephony.com

Build voice applications based on open standards.
Find out how at http://www.voxeo.com/free

---

From: Dan York <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:26:18 -0400

> maybe it's not such a good idea.

DY> I've been to conferences where some chat room was broadcast on a  
second screen in the room as a "backchannel".  Typically it was an IRC  
chat room or a Twitter feed tied to a keyword or hashtag.  While I  
applauded the efforts to make the sessions more "open", I found it  
incredibly distracting to have that second screen there. People seemed  
to follow that chat instead of following the listener... resulting in  
the oddity of people sitting in the audience watching the screen to  
see what people in the audience thought about the person talking to  
the audience! (And then some were writing in the chat room about the  
people watching the chat room to see the people writing about.....)

DY> Having a second screen would certainly increase the ability of  
remote participants to communicate, but I would wonder about how you  
then integrate those questions in with people waiting patiently at the  
microphone.  I could also very easily see people *in the room* using  
it as a way to post questions as well and jump over the mic line.   
(Which has also happened to me with our current system where I've  
'jumped the line' to relay a question for someone in the chat room  
only to find out later that they were in the same room but just didn't  
want to go to the mic line.)

My 2 cents,
Dan

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:10:16 -0700

Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
> I don't think the problems were related to the wireless network. My ssh 
> and IMAP session didn't blink, while the plenary jabber room would 

There's potentiallly an interesting logical fallacy expressed here, as 
wireless quality and tcp reset related events are probably not unrelated.

 From the perspective of the panopticon that the centrally managed 
wireless controller model offers, some wireless users experienced fairly 
chronic issues, most did not. I'd love to offer the users in the 
minority a magic bullet but I don't have one. I suspect that if they 
have anything with an intel 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's 
probably time to upgrade preferably with a fresh os as well...

There are particular elements of the building layout at city west that 
exacerbated rf planning but we rarely use venues that are free from 
these issues.
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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:25:49 +1200

Hi Marshall,

On 2008-08-04 04:26, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
...
> position ? We had 117 sessions in Dublin, finding 234 scribes is clearly

According to BCP 25, the minutes of a meeting "should include the agenda
for the session, an account of the discussion including any decisions made,
and a list of attendees." Even if we forget about the list of attendees,
this is very different from a jabber log. So if the two jobs are
combined, the scribe will have to spend a lot of time after the session
summarising and clarifying things to focus on decisions.  I see no problem
in that if the scribe is willing to do it.

See a previous round of discussion starting at
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg42847.html

    Brian

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 11:56:44 +0200

On 5 aug 2008, at 0:10, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

> wireless controller model offers, some wireless users experienced  
> fairly chronic issues, most did not. I'd love to offer the users in  
> the minority a magic bullet but I don't have one. I suspect that if  
> they have anything with an intel 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless  
> chipset it's probably time to upgrade preferably with a fresh os as  
> well...

I was on the 5 GHz network almost exclusively, mostly by choice (by  
putting the ietf-a network in the list above the ietf network) but  
even if I did use the 2.4+5 GHz network my computer was smart enough  
to use 5 GHz most of the time. It worked just great, very good  
connectivity even during the plenaries.

My 802.11b/g iPhone wasn't so happy on 2.4 GHz during the plenary,  
though...

So good job having 5 GHz stuff in the first place and also as a  
separate SSID so those of us who are able to, can choose this manually  
and let the others duke it out in the overpopulated 2.4 GHz band.

I wasn't not overly impressed with the room network though, not only  
the performance on some days but also that the network was dead on  
friday evening and saturday morning. Thanks to Eircom for their free  
wifi access point, but it really wasn't upto the task even with the  
small contingent of IETFers still around on saturday morning.

---

From: "Romascanu, Dan (Dan)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:43:10 +0200

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Joel Jaeggli

> 
>  From the perspective of the panopticon that the centrally 
> managed wireless controller model offers, some wireless users 
> experienced fairly chronic issues, most did not. I'd love to 
> offer the users in the minority a magic bullet but I don't 
> have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an intel 
> 2100 or with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to 
> upgrade preferably with a fresh os as well...
> 

Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at
ease. 

Dan

---

From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 04:17:44 -0700

Dan,

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 12:43:10PM +0200, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> From Joel Jaeggli
> [ ... ]

But is that a problem for you or for the network team ?

There is a point where certain legacy hardware is just not going to
cut it anymore and I don't believe that that is the fault of the
network team. 

Basically, whether you like it or not, this is a problem between you
and your IT department (and yes, I do understand that that is not
necessary an issue that you would like to deal with).

David Kessens
---

---

From: "Romascanu, Dan (Dan)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:28:52 +0200

> From: David Kessens [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 2:18 PM
> To: Romascanu, Dan (Dan)
> Cc: Joel Jaeggli; Henning Schulzrinne; IETF Discussion
> Subject: Re: Proposals to improve the scribe situation
> 
> 
> Dan,
> 
> > > have one. I suspect that if they have anything with an 
> intel 2100 or 
> > > with a prism 2 wireless chipset it's probably time to upgrade 
> > > preferably with a fresh os as well...
> > 
> There is a point where certain legacy hardware is just not 
> going to cut it anymore and I don't believe that that is the 
> fault of the network team. 
> 
> Basically, whether you like it or not, this is a problem 
> between you and your IT department (and yes, I do understand 
> that that is not necessary an issue that you would like to deal with).
> 
> David Kessens
> ---
> 

I respectfully disagree. I would claim that the problem is one of the
network team, as long as the hardware is standards compliant and not
something exotic. An IBM ThinkPad acquired three years ago running
Windows XP is still one of the most popular machines, it is carried by
many people and will continue to be carried for another two-three years.
As it is fully IEEE standards compliant and some kind of industry
standard (whatever this means) many people expect to be able to use it
at an IETF standards meeting. Telling people that they have 'a problem
between you and your IT department' does not help at all, as most of the
people have no influence on their company's buying or IT policies.
Actually telling this means that we tell them 'you need to buy another
machine in order to efficiently attend an IETF meeting'. 

Dan

(speaking as an individual) 
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From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 07:29:27 -0400

Dear Iljitsch;

On Aug 5, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> separate SSID so those of us who are able to, can choose this  
> manually and let the others duke it out in the overpopulated 2.4 GHz  
> band.
>

That was an accident, not according to any plan, and was not due to  
our volunteer team.

Having said that, if we enhance the hotel network during the IETF, an  
end-to-end test after we remove any
enhancement should be part of the future checklist. (In other words,  
in the future we should verify connectivity in the hotel rooms after  
the original hotel network is restored.)

Regards
Marshall

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:38:38 +0200

> at an IETF standards meeting.

What are the limitations of such a machine?

A year ago I replaced a four-year-old laptop that came with 802.11g  
built in. I don't think it would be unreasonable to turn off 802.11b  
support by now and set the multicast speed to 6 Mbps or more in order  
to make the 2.4 GHz band more usable.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:52:43 -0400

--On Tuesday, 05 August, 2008 13:38 +0200 Iljitsch van Beijnum
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
>> As it is fully IEEE standards compliant and some kind of
>> industry standard (whatever this means) many people expect to
>> be able to use it at an IETF standards meeting.
> 
> A year ago I replaced a four-year-old laptop that came with
> 802.11g built in. I don't think it would be unreasonable to
> turn off 802.11b support by now and set the multicast speed to
> 6 Mbps or more in order to make the 2.4 GHz band more usable.

With the understanding that I don't expect IETF to support
either my 900 MHz RoamAbout hardware or the FHSS card I bought
some years ago specifically for IETF use, please note that the
comment above is yet another way to increase costs to
participants.

   john

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 06:58:44 -0500

Wow. I know I've spent more time raving at the IETF during the past 10 days 
than I had during the previous ten years, but could we get back to having a 
conversation that is remotely

(1) on topic FOR THIS THREAD, which Marshall kicked off to try to improve 
the scribe situation, and

(2) somewhat focused on getting the work of the IETF done?

>> > > preferably with a fresh os as well...

IMO, Joel's observation here was reasonable. I read it as "ya know, if old 
technology is getting in the way of jabber scribing, newer technology would 
probably help", which seems fair to point out ...

>> > Many people do not have the liberty of upgrading machines or OSs at

IMO, Dan also made a statement I understand to be true. But pretty quickly 
after that, we went someplace very strange.

I was astounded at the threads on the 72attendees lists where we came very 
close to debugging Mary Barnes' dietary restrictions, so I guess I'm not 
surprised that some people are coming very close to saying that if you don't 
replace your hardware and OS before the warranty runs out, you're doing 
something unreasonable.

I carried two laptops for years at the IETF, keeping my IETF life completely 
separate from my professional life. I look forward to doing that again, in 
the very near future, for reasons that have nothing to do with technology. 
But people who don't have a personal laptop might also want to participate 
in the IETF.

I should also say that my IT-provided laptop's three-year warranty expired 
in June, and I am filling out the replacement paperwork now, so this is not 
about MY ability to carry a Compaq Luggable from 1985 to IETF meetings and 
expect IETF-provided dialup support in the meeting rooms.

Did anyone notice the plenary slides on where participants at this IETF came 
from to attend this IETF?

We are getting more and more participants from countries that are not among 
the richest countries in the world. Those participants are often the 
technical elites from their countries, but they aren't always the economic 
elites from those same countries.

I'm also seeing (especially outside the RAI area) an increasing number of 
self-funded participants who are "borrowing" hotel rooms because they aren't 
currently employed. Again, we as the community can choose to accommodate 
them, or we can choose to tell them that they won't have IETF network access 
if there's a more recent IEEE 802 wireless variant than their personal 
computer supports, but the culture we've had was to encourage individual 
participation, not just corporate-funded participation.

If that is changing, please feel free to let me know.

And have a wonderful week, of course.

Spencer

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 14:09:29 +0200

On 5 aug 2008, at 13:52, John C Klensin wrote:

>> I don't think it would be unreasonable to

> comment above is yet another way to increase costs to

No it isn't. You are welcome to use the wired ethernet if the one-time  
$30 investment in a 802.11g USB dongle is the straw that breaks the  
camel's back. That is of course highly inconvenient (until the "wired  
ether for the jabber scribe" policy is implemented), but only for a  
few people. Several hundreds of other participants who have 802.11g  
(or 2.4 GHz n) but not 802.11a / 5 GHz n will be much happier because  
the network works much better.

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:38:15 +0100

> fault of the network team. 

Given the subject line above that started this thread, are you
sure you are taking the discussion in the right direction? 
Demanding perfection from wireless networks is probably not
the way to go, and demanding perfection from participants'
laptops doesn't seem to be the right way either.

One thing that does seem interesting to explore is whether
scribing could be made easier by building a special piece 
of software to support the scribing activity. Such software
could include a Jabber client that has some more robust features
to deal specifically with the type of intermittent connectivity
problems that occur on wifi networks at conferences, not just 
the IETF ones. The scribe could just keep on typing and the software
would log every keystroke locally, and automatically log in 
and send anything that was missed. In addition you could add
features to make typing easier as in "predictive texting".

If you think of this in terms of "Meeting Scribe" software,
not a special Jabber client, then it could have a bunch of
other features as well, such as uploading the transcripts
to a website, assisting the scribe in producing summary minutes
from a transcript, downloading a list of meeting participants 
to use in entering the names into the appropriate points in
the transcript, managing two Jabber channels, one with pure
transcript, and the other with transcript and other chatter.

--Michael Dillon

---

From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 06:30:10 -0700

Spencer,

> elites from those same countries.

I am way more concerned about the registration fees, hotel prices and
airline tickets in the context of the cheapest, but nevertheless
modern laptops being available for around $400 and even lower when one
does a bit of an effort to find a good deal. 

Eg. even if one buys a laptop just for IETF attendance, it is not
inconceivable that this will cost you $65 per meeting if the laptop
last for just 2 years.

David Kessens
---

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:53:08 -0400

Well, I personally would not recommend that $30 investment.
My machine speaks B and G (I don't think it speaks N, although the site 
monitor can detect that.)  I had repeatedly awful connectivity.  When 
rooms were sparse, (i.e. away from Convention 1, 2, &3 or before morning 
start) things worked great.  However, in those main rooms, during 
sessions, I was lucky to be able to use the net.  I could usually get an 
IP address.  But much of the time I could not actually reach anything 
over the net.  No DNS, no responses from anything I could test.  It got 
very tiresome repeatedly re-establishing my network connection so that I 
would get something that worked.

So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.  And 11a 
has much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it included in my 
laptop.

Just what it looks like to me,
Yours,
Joel

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> ether for the jabber scribe" policy is implemented), but only for a few 
> people. Several hundreds of other participants who have 802.11g (or 2.4 
> GHz n) but not 802.11a / 5 GHz n will be much happier because the 
> network works much better.
>

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 17:35:30 +0200

On 5 aug 2008, at 16:53, Joel M. Halpern wrote:

> My machine speaks B and G (I don't think it speaks N, although the  
> site monitor can detect that.)  I had repeatedly awful connectivity.

> So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.

There are three issues. Two are immediately dependent on support for  
802.11b and one is mostly unrelated.

Issue 1:

802.11b stations must send and receive at a maximum of 11 Mbps, which  
is only 20% of the speed of a 802.11g station. The former can reach a  
throughput of about 700 kilobytes/sec on a good day, the latter 3 MB/ 
sec. So a b user using 175 kB/sec uses up 25% of the total channel  
capacity but if that user upgrades to g, it's only 6% of the total  
channel capacity. So fewer b users means more capacity for everyone  
else.

Issue 2:

802.11g and n stations use encodings that 802.11b stations don't  
understand. To avoid collisions, whenever a b station is present on  
the channel, g stations use an extra two-packet exchange to reserve  
the channel before sending the actual data. This reduces 802.11g  
performance by about 50%.

Issue 3:

In order to make sure that everyone receives all broadcasts and  
multicasts (which is a significant amount of traffic on a network with  
hundreds of nodes that are all ARPing, DHCPing, RAing and many use  
multicast DNS), these are sent at a very low speed, typically 2 Mbps.  
This speed can usually be set higher at the expense of some reliability.

So using 802.11g won't help an individual user much, but moving as  
many users as possible to 802.11g will help some, and turning off  
802.11b support will probably help a lot.

Increasing broadcast speed will also help.

> And 11a has much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it  
> included in my laptop.

Well, it gets you fast and reliable connectivity at IETF meetings...
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---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:55:49 -0700

Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> something exotic.

The early ipw2100 driver/firmware combo has some serious quality 
(roaming without dissasociating, keying up and transmitting from power 
save mode without listening to the air etc) if there still people 
running it then they aren't doing themselves or us (the APs) any favors. 
That's not something we could do about from the air short of 
blacklisting clients that exhibit that behavior.

> An IBM ThinkPad acquired three years ago running

That's fine and we're not going to stop supporting it, but there's a 
limit within the engineering constraints we are faced with as to how 
well we can make it work. investing in a b/g radio or an a/b/g radio or 
an a/b/g/n will result in a more reliable experience in this enivironment.

> Telling people that they have 'a problem

Odds are you'll have a better experience. not doing so won't preclude 
access.

---

From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:53:30 -0700

Joel,

On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 10:53:08AM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
>
> So I do not think that telling people to use 11g is an answer.  And 11a has 
> much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it included in my laptop.

It is not hard to find 11a capable minipci or pccards that sell for
less than what shipping of the card costs. I cannot speak for you, but
these are prices I stop using words like "investment" but instead you
could consider just buying one as an experiment and see how far it gets you. 

David Kessens
---

---

From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 15:57:24 -0400

I used 802.11a (on a PowerBook Pro) in Dublin, and it didn't help with  
the Jabber server flakiness. Otherwise (ssh, etc.), it was rock-solid.

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:02:07 -0700

> has much to limited use for me to pay extra to have it included in my 

Strickly speaking, 8 indoor and 3 outdoor non-overlapping channels 
coupled with better attenuation makes the map coloring problem a lot 
easier than only 3 (or 4 in .jp).

Magic bullets are not in the toolkit.
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