Meet our new IETF NOC Lead

Joe Clarke has been appointed as the new IETF Network Operations Center (NOC) Lead and in this post Joe introduces himself and sets out his priorities for the IETF Network.

You may have seen the announcement from the IETF Executive Director that I have been appointed as the new IETF NOC Lead. Before I say anything else, I want to thank Sean Croghan. Sean led the NOC for seven years and cared about getting the network right for every meeting. Anyone who worked with him knows the standard he set. On behalf of the whole NOC, thank you, Sean.

For those unfamiliar with the IETF Network Operations Center, we build and operate the IETF Network during IETF Meetings. We are a group of volunteers from the IETF community, a specialist contractor in Linespeed who provide similar services for organizations such as NANOG, and our Remote Participation Services Provider, Meetecho. I have been a contributor to the IETF community for many years, co-chair of the Operations and Management Area Working Group (opsawg), reviewer for the OPS Directorate, YANG Catalog guy, and a member of the IETF NOC for 13 years. My appointment marks a return to a volunteer-managed IETF NOC, and I am glad for the chance to lead it.

Since COVID, the IETF Network sits in the critical path for a successful meeting. My view is simple: the network has to work. That reality shapes where I want to take things, and I hope to hit the ground running with changes starting at IETF 127 in San Francisco.

The first thing I want to bring is greater transparency for the community. At IETF 126 in Vienna, we unveiled a new dashboard landing page that gives the community a window into how the network is performing, including general network stats and the number of users online at any given time. This dashboard will keep growing, and one recent addition came straight from a community request. When we were asked to monitor ECN use on the internet, we added that data to the dashboard for everyone to see.