Summary

  • Five candidates are on NANOG’s 2026 Board slate: Tom Beecher, Marlin Martes, Michael Still, Adair Thaxton and Jiahong (Jenny) Zhang. Two staggered director terms are due to expire this year.
  • NANOG 98 hosts short, in-person candidate presentations on 20 October, when voting also opens. The ballot remains open through 26 October; the Elections Committee is to announce results by 28 October.

Analysis

The contest is not confined to the conference room. NANOG says five people are running for its Board of Directors, while its bylaws schedule two of the six elected-director terms to expire each year. The current Board roster lists Vincent Paul Celindro and steve ulrich with 2026 term-end dates, matching the two seats in this cycle.

Members have a defined sequence to follow. Nominations opened on 17 August and closed on 14 September. Candidate statements of support opened on 15 September and remain open through 19 October. NANOG’s election page says a member’s status must be current by 23:59 EDT on 19 October to cast a ballot. The five candidates named in NANOG’s 25 September announcement are Tom Beecher, Marlin Martes, Michael Still, Adair Thaxton and Jiahong, also identified as Jenny, Zhang.

The conference supplies a public introduction, not the entire decision window. NANOG 98 runs in Miami from 19 to 21 October. The candidates are scheduled to make short, in-person presentations on 20 October. Voting for Board candidates begins that day and closes on 26 October. The Elections Committee will review the results and announce them to members no later than 28 October. The official schedule does not specify the ballot’s closing hour, so members should use the election page’s live instructions rather than infer a time zone from the status deadline.

That calendar matters because it separates three actions that are easy to collapse: expressing support for a candidate, hearing candidates at the meeting, and casting a ballot. A presentation on the NANOG 98 stage is not itself a vote. Nor does the event’s 21 October end date close the election: the published ballot window continues for several days afterwards.

The successful candidates also do not begin a full director term immediately. NANOG says they will serve as Board-Elect members for the remainder of 2026 as an observation and transition period. The page schedules their attendance at a Board conference call on 20 November and at the Board offsite on 2–3 December. Under the bylaws, the three-year terms begin on 1 January 2027 and end on 31 December 2029. Selection of 2027 Board officers is reserved for the Board’s first meeting of that year.

The Board’s authority is internal to NANOG’s governance and work with its committees. The public election record identifies the process and term, not the candidates’ comparative programmes or the effect of this vote on any operator’s routing, customers or network. As of 8 October, the result remains pending; the verifiable news is the five-person slate and a ballot that extends beyond the meeting that hosts its presentations.

Sources