The 48th meeting of the IETF was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from July 31 through August 4, 2000. For a while though, it seemed that a remote meeting would be held simultaneously in the Chicago Airport!
The Pittsburgh meeting was very (VERY) well attended! In fact, it turned out to be the meeting with the second highest attendance of all time. Prior to Pittsburgh, the two most attended meetings were the 43rd meeting in Orlando (2124) and the 46th meeting in Washington, DC (2379). The Pittsburgh meeting had 2347 attendees, coming in at Number 2 overall.
The first time we broke 1000 was at the first San Jose meeting, which happened to be the last meeting of the year. I used to type the "fall" meeting, but my friends down under kept sending me mail about life below the equator... but I digress. Since then, EVERY high-water mark with respect to attendance has been in the fal\\\final meeting of the year... with one exception: Chicago - which was the last summer (oops, I mean mid-year) meeting we held in the US until Pittsburgh. I am looking forward to the meeting in San Diego, even though we might set yet another highpoint. I just hope the cost of coffee and cookies isn't toooooo high.
Plenary Presentations
Fred Baker made the first plenary presentation of the evening, providing a peek at the inner workings of the IESG. This informative presentation answered questions such as "why does it take so long" and, more importantly, what happens after a Working Group submits a document to the IESG asking that it be considered for publication as an RFC.
Jürgen Schönwälder of the Network Management Research Group followed with a presentation on Improving/Enhancing SNMP and SMI. This presentation introduced and provided background on the Network Management Research Group (part of the IRTF), and then launched into a description of then problems with SNMP, primarily the bulk retrieval process, and on SMI. Be sure to check out the presentation slides in these proceedings.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Marconi Communications for hosting this meeting of the IETF, for providing the terminal room facilities, and arranging the social event. I would especially like to recognize the efforts of David Grus, a new hire of Marcaoni who was called in at the last minute to assume the reigns and who worked around the clock to support the attendees.
The configuration of the terminal room facilities depends a great deal on the generosity of equipment vendors and service providers, and I want to thank the following organizations for their contributions and assistance:
Marconi Systems |
All networking equipment |
Compaq |
Desktop PCs and monitors |
Microsoft |
Desktop software |
Sun Microsystems |
Multicast Equipment |
Hewlett-Packard |
Printers |
Cabletron |
Wireless access points & LAN cards |
AT&T Broadband |
WAN connectivity |
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center |
Internet portal |
Rexel Datacomm |
All fiber and cables |
Coca Cola |
Massive amounts of caffine |
Upcoming Meetings
The final meeting of 2000, co-hosted by Qualcomm and Cisco, will be held in San Diego, California, from December 11-15th. The first meeting of the new century also marks the 50th meeting of the IETF which, by the way, is being hosted by Lucent The IETF returns to Minneapolis the week of March 18.
The summer of 2001 find the IETF in jolly ol' England during the month of August. The Secretariat is still working on the final meeting of 2001.
For information about future meetings, visit the IETF Web Page. Our URL is
http://www.ietf.org/home.html
Steve <scoya@ietf.org>