The 49th meeting of the IETF was held in San Diego from December 10-15, 2000. We re-established the trend of the final meeting of the year being the most attended. Yes, it is true: we set yet another attendance record in San Diego.
Our previous meeting (Pittsburgh) meeting was 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. It is now Number 3.
We broke through the 2500 attendee level in San Diego. We also broke through the 2600 and 2700 high water marks. As far as actual attendees, there were just less than 2800 in San Diego. If we include the number of folks who paid but did not attend, that number rises to 2801.
Plenary Presentations
Randy Bush started off the Plenary Presentations providing an operational perspective on the DNS. His presentation, "The DNS Today: Are we Overloading the Saddlebags on an Old Horse?" did much to bring the attendees up to speed on the concerns being addressed, and was certainly successful as it got people thinking (a point derived based on the number of conversations taking place long after the presentation was over). Randy certainly earned his sushi for the day!
Continuing with the theme of controversial topics, Tony Hain gave a presentation titled "RFC 2993 Architectural Implications of NAT." Tony's presentation touched on the advantages of NATs, problems with NATs (including the breaking of the traditional end-to-end model of the Internet). He concluded his presentation providing some guidelines if one chooses to deploy a NAT.
Geoff Huston made a presentation on the Next Steps for QoS: A report of an IAB collaboration examining the state of QoS architectures for IP networks. Geoff's presentation reviewed the efforts of the Integrated Services Working Group and the Differentiated Services Working Group, and then went into detail of the issues addressed in RFC2900.
All three presentations cover important topics facing the Internet Engineering and Operations community today, and readers are encouraged to review the actual presentation slides included in this document.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Qualcomm and Cisco Systems for co-hosting what many have claimed to be the best terminal room in the history of the IETF and for arranging the social event. I would especially like to recognize the efforts of John Noerenberg of Qualcomm and Erica Wagner of Cisco for the outstanding job they and their teams did in supporting the attendees of the meeting.
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:
Qualcomm, Inc.
Cisco Systems
Next Wave
XO Communications
Western Multiplex
Verio Networks
The staff at the Westin Sheraton San Diego
Upcoming Meetings
The first meeting of the new century also marks the 50th meeting of the IETF. The IETF returns to Minneapolis the week of March 18. The Terminal Room facilities are being provided by Lucent Technologies.
The summer of 2001 finds the IETF in jolly ol' England from August 5-10, 2001. The Secretariat is still working on the final meeting of 2001, but it looks like the IETF will precede the Winter Olympics, traveling to Salt Lake City in December, 2001. Be advised. That IS still tentative.
For information about future meetings, visit the IETF Web Page. Our URL is
http://www.ietf.org/home.html
Steve <scoya@ietf.org>