Membership is open and conference participants typically include senior engineering staff from tier 1 and tier 2 ISPs. Coordination among network service providers helps ensure the stability of overall service to network users. The group's original charter is available here . The three-day meetings typically run from Sunday evening through Tuesday afternoon.
Tutorials focus on introductory to moderate-level instruction for network operators.
An Introduction to Protection Mechanisms Demonstrations of freely available Internet software tools have also been offered on Sunday afternoon or evening. There is a single track of presentations during the day on Monday and Tuesday. Repeated audience feedback shows that the most successful talks focus on operational experience, research results, or case studies. Operational issues are always fairly immediate, with perhaps a window of about six months into the future. Anything beyond that is philosophy, wishful thinking or IETF standard-setting material.