In response to my previous post about performing occasional BGP best-practice reviews, Sean writes:
Where does one go to keep on top of these things? Too much noise on NANOG. Hrm, maybe if RIPE offered an RSS feed of those documents…
And taking the bull by the horns, he then created his own RIPE RSS feed. Here it is:
https://ertw.com/~sean/ripe.xml
Thanks, Sean! Since you have already taken care of the last part of your question, I’ll follow your lead and work my way backwards through the rest:
I agree about the noise on the NANOG mailing list. I too get frustrated with the endless bickering about what is and is not off-topic, and go through periods of ignoring it completely. But because the NANOG list is the premier gathering place for professionals on the front lines of operating BGP-based networks, it remains—noise and all—the best resource for keeping up with BGP developments. If you have the patience to wade through the muck, you’ll occasionally strike your toe on a gold nugget.
And if you (or better yet, your employer) have the time and money, the NANOG meetings are geared toward sharing operational experiences and educating newcomers. In the previous post I wrote, “There are a tremendous number of amazingly intelligent, diligent, committed people striving to make the Internet better.” Well, you can find most of those people at NANOG. While not as raucous as the mailing list, the attendees at the meetings are strictly focused on what makes the Internet—or at least their little pieces of it—run better, and they do not suffer fools patiently. Anyone had darned well better know what they’re talking about before approaching a microphone. (Hence, I mostly keep my mouth shut at NANOG meetings.)
If you are not in North America, there are plenty of counterparts to NANOG in other parts of the world: JANOG, SANOG, RIPE, APRICOT, and others. In fact I seem to wind up at APRICOT much more often than NANOG. They are all excellent forums for learning and sharing.
The other essential resource for staying on top of BGP is the IETF Inter-Domain Routing Working Group. And if you want to stay abreast of what’s being contemplated for the future, subscribe to the IRTF’s Routing Research Group.
