Swiss Network Operators Group
 | |
| Abbreviation | SwiNOG |
|---|---|
| Formation | 24 February 2000 (community) 27 July 2009 (association) |
| Type | Community and voluntary association (Verein) |
| Headquarters | Zürich, Switzerland |
Region served | Switzerland |
| Website | swinog |
The Swiss Network Operators Group (SwiNOG) is an informal community of engineers and operators who work on the design and operation of the Internet in Switzerland. It is the Swiss counterpart of regional network operators' groups such as NANOG in North America.[1] The community was established in February 2000, held its first meeting in October 2000 and has met roughly twice a year since.[2][3]
History
[edit]SwiNOG was founded as a community on 24 February 2000; its first meeting took place in Bern on 18 October 2000.[2][4] In 2004 the Swiss IT weekly Netzwoche described the group as the "quality guardian" of the Swiss Internet, whose mailing list allowed technicians of competing Internet service providers to resolve operational issues directly, bypassing slower official channels.[3]
In 2008, the group was presented at RIPE 56 as an example of a regional network operators' group, with two yearly meetings in Bern attended by more than 100 participants.[1]
On 27 July 2009 the SwiNOG Organisation was founded as a non-profit association (Verein) under Articles 60 ff. of the Swiss Civil Code. It provides the legal and organisational basis for the community: it holds the domain, website and mailing lists, handles sponsorship and finances, and organises the meetings. Membership of the association is not required to take part in the community.[2][5]
The 40th meeting in June 2025 marked the group's 25th anniversary.[6]
Activities
[edit]Mailing list
[edit]The central instrument of the group is the swinog mailing list, used for operational discussions such as outages, peering and MTU issues. It is hosted on GNU Mailman with a public archive. Smaller lists exist for specific topics, including an anti-spam working group and job postings.[2][7] The group also operates DNS-based blocklists (SwiNOG DNSRBL and URIBL).[8]
Meetings
[edit]SwiNOG meetings are held about twice a year. They consist of a single track of technical presentations followed by a social event; attendance is open to everyone and the meetings are funded by sponsors.[2] Topics have ranged from out-of-band management[9] and SDN/NFV[10] to RPKI, BGP data collection and optical transceivers.[11] Presentations are selected through a public call for papers, and slides of every meeting since 2000 and video recordings since 2014 are published in the group's archive.[4]
From 2004 to 2019 the meetings were held in Bern, first at the Altes Tramdepot and from 2010 on the Gurten. The 42nd meeting, in October 2026, is the first two-day meeting and the first held outside Bern since 2001, at the Enter Technikwelt in Derendingen near Solothurn.[4][12]
Beer Events
[edit]In addition to the meetings, members of the community organised informal monthly SwiNOG Beer Events in Zürich, a social gathering for the exchange of information between network operators. The Zürich Beer Events were founded by Viktor Steinmann and Steven Glogger and organised for many years by Glogger, who handed them over at the end of 2015; from 2016 they were continued by Emanuel Kleindienst and revived in 2018 by Steinmann.[13][14][15] More than 160 such events were held between the 2000s and the late 2010s; they are no longer held on a regular basis.[1][16][17]
List of meetings
[edit]All meetings, with dates and venues, are documented in the SwiNOG archive.[4]
| Meeting | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| SwiNOG #42 | 20–21 October 2026 | Derendingen, Enter Technikwelt Solothurn |
| SwiNOG #41 | 28 April 2026 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #40 | 24 June 2025 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #39 | 25 September 2024 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #38 | 21 June 2023 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #37 | 2 December 2021 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #36 | 14 November 2019 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #35 | 8 May 2019 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #34 | 30 October 2018 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #33 | 24 May 2018 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #32 | 9 November 2017 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #31 | 30 May 2017 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #30 | 4 November 2016 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #29 | 5 November 2015 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #28 | 6 May 2015 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #27 | 22 October 2014 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #26 | 26 May 2013 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #25 | 7 November 2012 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #24 | 10 May 2012 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #23 | 10 November 2011 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #22 | 9 May 2011 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #21 | 11 November 2010 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #20 | 1 June 2010 | Bern, Gurten |
| SwiNOG #19 | 29 September 2009 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #18 | 2 April 2009 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #17 | 22 October 2008 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #16 | 14 May 2008 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #15 | 4 December 2007 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #14 | 30 May 2007 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #13 | 1 November 2006 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #12 | 4 May 2006 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #11 | 20 October 2005 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #10 | 20 April 2005 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #9 | 29 September 2004 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #8 | 24 March 2004 | Bern, Altes Tramdepot |
| SwiNOG #7 | 22 October 2003 | Bern |
| SwiNOG #6 | 10 April 2003 | Bern |
| SwiNOG #5 | 25 September 2002 | Bern |
| SwiNOG #4 | 17 April 2002 | Bern |
| SwiNOG #3 | 19 September 2001 | Bern |
| SwiNOG #2 | 21 March 2001 | Zürich |
| SwiNOG #1 | 18 October 2000 | Bern |
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 Smith, Philip (May 2008). Network Operations Groups (PDF). RIPE 56. Berlin. pp. 27–29. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Charter". swinog.ch. SwiNOG Organisation. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- 1 2 Monachesi, Alessandro (28 January 2004). "Qualitätswächter des Internets" (PDF). Netzwoche (in German). No. 4/2004. Netzmedien AG. p. 4. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 "Meetings – Archive". swinog.ch. SwiNOG Organisation. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG#22 – Call for Papers". swinog (Mailing list). 2011. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG #40 – A milestone event for the Swiss networking community". swinog.ch. 2 July 2025. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG Mailing Lists". SwiNOG Organisation. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG Antispam". Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG27: OOB". 22 October 2014. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG 27". Anuta Networks. 19 November 2014. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG #41". swinog.ch. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG #42". swinog.ch. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ Steinmann, Viktor (20 December 2016). "Re: SwiNOG Beer Event". swinog (Mailing list). Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG-BE149 – Beer Event 149". swinog (Mailing list). October 2015. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "SwiNOG-BE151 – Beer Event 151". swinog (Mailing list). January 2016. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "Swinog-BE165 – Beer Event 165". swinog (Mailing list). March 2018. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
- ↑ "Events". swinog.ch. SwiNOG Organisation. Retrieved 8 October 2026.