Re: Admission Control to the IETF 78 and IETF 79 Networks

[Dave CROCKER <[e-mail]>]

On 7/1/2010 8:26 AM, Fred Baker wrote:
> While it is new in IETF meetings, it is far from unusual in WiFi networks to
> find some form of authentication. This happens at coffee shops, college
> campuses, corporate campuses, and people's apartments. I think I would need
> some more data before I concluded this was unreasonable.


+1

Small towns often have an environment that makes it reasonable to leave one's 
doors unlocked.  Large cities rarely do.  The IETF is now part of a very big 
city.  Restricting wifi access to authorized personnel has become not only the 
norm, but the expected and often the required.

Small added note about physical security:

As SM noted, we don't have monitors at the meeting room doors.  Even with them, 
meeting attendance includes many local folk.  Once upon a time, IETF meetings 
constituted an extremely collegial environment among folks who knew each other. 
  Today, attendance is much more diverse.

One aspect of the diversity is that we need to treat meetings rooms as fully 
public places, with the attendant risks.  The risk is not terrible, but it /is/ 
real.

There have been thefts in these rooms, in multiple meeting cities, where 
property was stolen rather boldly, such as from underneath the seat of an attendee.

We need to watch our personal property as if the person sitting next to us, or 
behind us, might steal it.

Because some of them have.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net