This year flew by fast while we went around the globe talking about the importance of and reasons for documenting Best Current Operational Practices. We helped facilitate several regional efforts for operators to document their BCOPs and agree on what is technically sound and used in everyday production networks and operations. We helped them start working on the content and output, with the idea to get some regional documents published and then think about global coordination and cooperation between the regional BCOP efforts to create truly global best practices.
The North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG) formed a BCOP team this year. So far, they’ve set up a website at http://bcop.nanog.org/ to highlight several documents they’ve already published and continue work on several more drafts that are currently underway.
In Europe, Benno Overeinder (NLNET Labs) and I helped create and are now co-chairs of the RIPE Operations Task Force. There are no published documents yet, but the first submission will probably be “Generic IPv6 troubleshooting procedures for helpdesks around the world,” co-authored by many prominent representatives of big operators. We are also looking into some IXP-related BCOP documents.
BCOP efforts also took off in Latin America and Africa. Both regions have enthusiastic groups of people ready and willing to help get their regions started. In Latin America, there’s now a LACNIC BCOP Task Force and in Africa we held a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session at AfriNIC19 in Ivory Coast to move the region toward creating its own formal BCOP group.
We’re encouraged to see so many people stepping up and getting involved, but as with so many other projects in this industry, finding time to do the work becomes an issue. BCOP is a marathon, not a sprint – everyone agrees it’s a good and necessary initiative, but we but we must still be diligent and persistent to get all the regional BCOP efforts fully underway. It’s a community process, owned by operators, done by operators – for operators. The DO team and I are just trying to help make it happen.
Rest assured, our efforts will continue into 2014! I hope that our paths cross at some BCOP task force meetings and we can work together to help make the Internet a better place. Let me know if you’d like to get involved by commenting here or on our social media channels.