[128129] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Addressing plan exercise for our IPv6 course
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Conrad)
Sun Jul 25 03:12:43 2010
From: David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>
In-Reply-To: <4C4BE035.6080903@brightok.net>
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:12:24 +0200
To: Jack Bates <jbates@brightok.net>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jul 25, 2010, at 8:56 AM, Jack Bates wrote:
> David Conrad wrote:
>> On Jul 24, 2010, at 7:52 PM, Brandon Butterworth wrote:
>>> Indeed, best not listen to vendors
>> As it is best not to listen to doctors that tell you if you continue =
chain smoking or eating 5000 calories a day, you'll likely regret it.
>=20
> Bad analogy. A doctor tells you these things for your well being. In =
fact, the doctor's advice, while meeting the goals of his oath, conflict =
with his business needs (your regret of not following his advice will be =
lots more doctor bills).
I'll stick by the analogy. There are engineers inside routing vendors =
who have been quite loud in saying that we can't keep adding more routes =
to the routing system and expect costs to remain linear. Those same =
engineers will also tell you that the companies they work for will be =
happy to build what the customer wants, even if it will cost the =
customer 3 arms and 4 legs.
> Vendors care about their bottom line. Some will happily lie for a =
sale. Most will highlight their strong points and gloss over their =
weaknesses. More care goes to those who pay the most.
Which, according to numerous studies, also describes the health care =
system in the US, but that's not an appropriate topic for this list.
> An engineer is closer to a doctor. The engineer cares about the health =
of their network and how well it performs, even if it means begging for =
more expensive gear from management. The engineer is less concerned with =
the bottom line and more concerned with doing things right (especially =
if it means less work, less headaches, and less problems for the same =
amount of pay).
All vendors that expect to remain in business for any length of time =
have engineering staff that behave as you describe. For just one =
example, look at the folks behind LISP (not the language). Or the =
active participants in the IRTF RRG working group.=20
Regards,
-drc
