Re: RIP: Bill Manning

[Eric Kuhnke <eric.kuhnke () gmail com>]

Chris Caputo posted the following to the SIX mailing list a few days ago. I
think this really shows Bill in action, helping a new IX get set up. He
will be missed.

Bill Manning died unexpectedly this morning, January 25th, at his home.

It was Bill's presentations on June 5th, 1997 at NANOG in Tampa that
provided the impetus to evolve the private interconnect between IXA and
Wolfe to expand to include 3 networks, thus forming the IXP.  These were
the presentations:

   - "International Exchange Points: Growth & Trends", Bill Manning, ISI

   - "Large & Small Exchange Points: Advantages, Tradeoffs, Futures",
Bill Manning, ISI

Bill explained that once 3 networks connect to a common fabric, other
networks will be motivated to join.  Only 3!  Nikos and I looked at each
other and decided at that point to connect my network to his (IXA), on the
same ethernet fabric that IXA and Wolfe were communicating.  I'll never
forget the moment and 15 days later my network was connected.

Per the below emails, after a few months we switched to Bill's address
space, and it was used for the SIX subnets until July 19th, 2010, almost
13 years.

Our earliest members will recall that Bill would email the SIX mailing
list to announce each new IP assignment.  The first using his address
space is below.  This tradition of Bill's continues today.

He will be missed.

Chris

----------
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 17:10:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Chris Caputo <ccaputo () alt net> <ccaputo () alt net>
To: bmanning () isi edu
Subject: new exchange point - SIX

Hi Bill.  We have a new exchange point for the West Coast section of the
"North American Exchange Points" web page.  The exchange is the SIX -
Seattle Internet Exchange.  We now have a web page up at:

    http://www.altopia.com/six/

Currently there are 4 participants and we are using address space from one
of the participants.  Since we are interested in growing the number of
participants and being taken seriously, would now be an appropriate time
to renumber into a neutral address block provided by you?  How do we
petition for this?

Once the address space issues are settled, we'll probably announce the
exchange on NANOG.  Are there more appropriate forums for such an
announcement?

Thanks for your time.

Chris

----------
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 1997 10:58:33 -0800 (PST)
From: bmanning () ISI EDU
To: Chris Caputo <ccaputo () alt net> <ccaputo () alt net>
Cc: bmanning () ISI EDU
Subject: Re: new exchange point - SIX


Hi Bill.  We have a new exchange point for the West Coast section of the
"North American Exchange Points" web page.  The exchange is the SIX -
Seattle Internet Exchange.  We now have a web page up at:

    http://www.altopia.com/six/

        Cool!


Currently there are 4 participants and we are using address space from one
of the participants.  Since we are interested in growing the number of
participants and being taken seriously, would now be an appropriate time
to renumber into a neutral address block provided by you?  How do we
petition for this?

        Now is as good as any.  The details are found at:

        http://www.isi.edu/div7/naps/basics.html

Once the address space issues are settled, we'll probably announce the
exchange on NANOG.  Are there more appropriate forums for such an
announcement?

Thanks for your time.

Chris



-- 
--bill

----------
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 08:28:57 -0800 (PST)
From: bmanning () ISI EDU
To: six-members () alt net
Subject: Welcome


;; QUERY SECTION:
;;      10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa, type = ANY, class = IN

;; ANSWER SECTION:
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN PTR  six.alt.net.
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN TXT  "NOC-phone:425-888-1965"
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN TXT  "NOC-email:noc () alt net"
<NOC-email:noc () alt net>
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN TXT  "TC-Name:Chris Caputo"
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN TXT  "TC-Phone:425-888-1965"
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN TXT  "TC-EMail:ccaputo () alt net"
<TC-EMail:ccaputo () alt net>
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN TXT  "ASN:6456"
10.180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.  1D IN TXT  "Orign-date:11/17/97"


-- 
--bill

----------
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:37:27 +0000 (UTC)
From: Chris Caputo <ccaputo () alt net> <ccaputo () alt net>
To: Bill Manning <bmanning () ep net> <bmanning () ep net>
Cc: Bill Chris Jared Mike Nick Nikos Patrick Troy <info () seattleix net>
<info () seattleix net>
Subject: SIX return of 198.32.180/24

Bill,

The SIX has 100% finished renumbering out of 198.32.180/24 and so we now
return it to EP.NET for re-use elsewhere.  The same goes for
2001:478:180::/64 and the previously returned 198.32.140/24.

Please turn off all pulls from ns1.alt.net (208.90.169.2) and
ns1.semaphore.net (209.221.128.1) if any.

I attach the below email to note the historical significance.  Thank you
for the almost 13 years of helping the SIX.  We wouldn't have grown like
we did without your neutral address space.

Sincerely,
Chris and the rest of the SIX crew

---
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 13:24:27 -0800 (PST)
From: bmanning () ISI EDU
To: ccaputo () alt net
Cc: bmanning () ISI EDU, six-members () alt net, six-info () alt net
Subject: Re: new exchange point - SIX


Welcome

SIX -  ;; QUESTIONS:
;;      180.32.198.in-addr.arpa, type = NS, class = IN

;; ANSWERS:
180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.        82074   NS      ns1.alt.net.
180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.        82074   NS      ns1.ixa.net.
180.32.198.in-addr.arpa.        82074   NS      NS.ISI.EDU.




-- 
--bill


On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 12:35 PM Brett Watson <brett () the-watsons org> wrote:

> I was saddened to see this yesterday, that Bill Manning had passed. I was
> surprised this morning that it hadn’t hit NANOG yet but thought I’d post
> something because I have a ton of respect for Bill as I’m sure many here do.
>
> I met Bill as a very young, thought-I-knew-everything network engineer
> around ’92 when I was starting my internet life at a small ISP in Houston.
> Bill was visiting Stan Barber @ Sesquinet, which was my upstream provider
> at the time via T1, if I remember it all correctly.
>
> I was young, fresh out of college with a CS degree, and learning this
> “internet thing.” I met with Bill on campus at Rice University to discuss
> networking/routing, and Bill taught me CIDR, which I had no f-ing idea at
> that time what it was. Bill was always gracious and willing to share/teach.
> We always chatted and stayed in touch at NANOG and IETF conferences and
> through his relationship with Los Nettos over the years. Most notable, to
> me, was 2007 when my youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer, and I
> believe Bill’s wife had (or previously battled) cancer as well. I hadn’t
> seen Bill for a few years, but he immediately reached out, shared his
> positive thoughts/prayers, and kept in touch during the battle we went
> through. Bill cared about people, and as noted below, he was smart as hell,
> and always had a crazy idea for how to solve a problem. Also as noted in
> Rod’s note below, Bill had a wealth of music knowledge and could always
> recommend something new and interesting to listen to.
>
> I’ll definitely miss Bill, and his passing makes me feel the years, and
> the mileage, but in a good way.
>
> -b
>
> > > This morning I talked to Julie Manning, Bill's wife. Bill died early
> > > Saturday morning, at home in Oregon.  Most of you know Bill was
> > > waiting for a new heart. He would perhaps have gotten one next
> > > month. I guess the old one just wouldn't hold out long enough.
> > >
> > > I first met Bill in about 1995, when I returned to ISI after my first
> > > stint in Japan.  He had taken a position in the Los Nettos project at
> > > ISI, a regional network project in the days when Internet service and
> > > operations work was still heavily shared between business and
> > > academia.  Bill brought an operator's eye to the project, often seeing
> > > things differently from the researchers in the group.
> > >
> > > Bill kept the most erratic hours of any non-student I've ever met.  He
> > > might be in the office at 2am or at 2pm, either was equally likely.
> > > I'd ask, "Bill, what time did you come in?" He'd reply, "10am."  "I
> > > was here before that, and you were already here, it must have been
> > > earlier."  "Greenwich Mean Time."
> > >
> > > And in one phase of life, "Bill, where do you live?" "Seat 4A."  He
> > > would speculate about his average altitude and speed over the previous
> > > month.
> > >
> > > And, like any good geek, Bill had a spectacular collection of tie-dye
> > > t-shirts.  He came by the look honestly: growing up in the Bay Area,
> > > he had actually snuck into Grateful Dead rehearsals held in a barn,
> > > and had traveled as a deadhead for a while.
> > >
> > > At ISI, we called Bill "the bad idea fairy".  He always brought a
> > > slightly-off-kilter view of technical problems, which triggered
> > > endless discussions of fascinating, if usually implausible,
> > > alternatives.
> > >
> > > He had the most broad-ranging musical tastes of anyone I knew, and
> > > would eat almost anything (though, like me, he didn't drink alcohol).
> > > I was often envious of his eating and musical experiences.  He
> > > certainly lived life to its fullest.
> > >
> > > On one occasion, I recall, we were eating lunch in a Thai restaurant
> > > for the first time.  Bill called for the food "the way you'd make it
> > > in Thailand".  The waiter went back into the kitchen and came out with
> > > a few raw Thai chiles.  Bill ate one whole, without even breaking a
> > > sweat.  The owner of the restaurant immediately came out to see who
> > > was eating them.  Pam became a friend to our group.
> > >
> > > On other occasions, when the waiter asked for his order, Bill would
> > > point to another person at the table, and say, "I'll have what she's
> > > having."  "Well, what is she having?" "I don't know, I haven't heard
> > > her say."  Once in a while, he would point to someone else in the
> > > restaurant and say, "I'll have what they are having."  It was funny
> > > and sometimes disconcerting, which was very Bill, and it was also his
> > > way of making sure he himself was eating (and thinking and doing) as
> > > broadly as possible, without getting stale.
> > >
> > > Bill worked in a bakery before joining Texas Instruments and
> > > accidentally falling into computer networking.  (When we first met, he
> > > was commuting between Houston and L.A.; Julie and the kids were still
> > > in Houston.)  I believe he attended a series of colleges but never
> > > finished his bachelor's degree.  Just a few years ago, however, Jun
> > > Murai convinced him to get a Ph.D.; this took clearing administrative
> > > hoops to demonstrate that Bill's life experience matched that of a
> > > bachelor's degree, which it certainly did.  I was honored to be on his
> > > Ph.D. committee.  I literally created a "trouble ticket" accounting
> > > scheme to track change requests for his thesis.
> > >
> > > Bill was a valued member of the WIDE Project here in Japan.  He worked
> > > with the DNS root operations group here, and participated in as many
> > > WIDE meetings as he could.  He also came to Keio University's Shonan
> > > Fujisawa Campus when he was in Japan, and one of the best things about
> > > Bill was how seriously he took the students and their work, treating
> > > them like adult colleagues.
> > >
> > > Bill had friends on all seven continents, and for all I know on the
> > > International Space Station, as well. He was loved by us all.
> > >
> > > Julie does not plan to have a funeral immediately, so there is no need
> > > for flowers or the like. The family may do a memorial service in Utah
> > > in the spring.
> > >
> > > He was a unique and wonderful human being. And a good friend.
> > > Rest in peace, Bill.
> > >
> > > —Rod
>
> >