The Past, Present, and Future of NANOG

November 14, 2025·48 min·4 clips

Steve Feldman explains how NANOG emerged from the NSF's Regional Tech meetings in the early 1990s as the internet commercialized.

This episode of Heavy Networking explores the history and ongoing mission of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG). Host Ethan Banks interviews Steve Feldman, a board member and former CEO of NANOG, who attended the very first meeting. Feldman explains that NANOG evolved from the National Science Foundation's Regional Tech meetings in the early 1990s as the internet became commercialized. The initial purpose was to provide a forum for the small community of early internet operators to coordinate protocols, solve problems, and put faces to names. A significant organizational milestone occurred around 2010-2011 when NANOG incorporated as its own nonprofit, separating from its original home at the University of Michigan. The organization maintains a unique membership model where individuals, not companies, can join for a nominal fee to vote for the board of directors. Feldman notes the lines have blurred between traditional service provider networks and large enterprise networks, leading NANOG to adapt its content to remain relevant to both audiences. He describes NANOG's role during various industry hype cycles, like OpenFlow and now AI, as a place where engineers can evaluate new technologies. The episode details NANOG's operational cadence of three in-person events per year, which typically attract around 800 attendees. Feldman outlines the organization's governance, including a volunteer program committee that vets and shepherds presentation proposals to ensure technical, non-marketing content. A key community resource is the historical mailing list, whose archives contain discussions from internet pioneers, and NANOG has recently launched a Discord server. The organization maintains a technology-agnostic, educational stance, providing a platform for content like IPv6 adoption without advocating for it. Feldman explains how NANOG manages the vendor-practitioner dynamic by keeping sponsor activities separate from the plenary sessions. Upcoming meeting focus topics include AI and network infrastructure for NANOG 96 and site reliability engineering for NANOG 97. The tone is a conversational and informative interview between two knowledgeable figures in the networking community. Listeners interested in internet history, network operator culture, and the evolution of technical communities will find this episode engaging. Those seeking deep technical tutorials or vendor product details may find the organizational focus less immediately applicable.

As heard by us

A practical look at NANOG's role in keeping operators informed without turning prescriptive.

NANOG is treated here as more than nostalgia. The piece frames it as a working community that still has value as the network shifts, tracing its history and its continued usefulness for hands-on engineers before settling into IPv6 as a slow, uneven adoption story.

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Why you'd press play

You want the backstory behind NANOG and the IPv6 debate that keeps resurfacing.

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