[27867] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Cisco's CNR vs ISC Bind/DHCP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Scott McGrath)
Tue Mar 21 09:30:24 2000
Message-ID: <38D786A1.3DA27E54@bexair.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 09:26:41 -0500
From: "Scott McGrath" <s_mcgrath@bexair.com>
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To: fkittred@sss1.gwi.net, nanog@merit.edu
Cc: Thomas Novak <kavon@apk.net>
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I am glad that I am not the only person who dreams in IOS!
Fletcher E Kittredge wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Mar 2000 19:44:28 -0500 Thomas Novak wrote:
> >
> > If you are looking at CNR and are running in a cable modem
> >
> > Have you inquired/looked at the Cisco CSRC product for provisioning it?
> >
> > You might want to look at CNR as it is part of the CSRC solution for
> > provisioning/managing not only Cisco but any DOCSIS compliant cable modem
>
> Thanks for your suggestion Thomas! We have tested, evaluated and used
> CSRC in production. We think that tftp still works pretty well.
>
> Different applications need different tools. The right tool for a
> large business which is not an ISP is not necessarily the right tool
> for an ISP. It can be a high quality tool for a non-ISP, and not be
> right for an ISP.
>
> I have noticed over the last 15 years, the rise of the assumption that
> GUIs (or in the last 7 the web interface) are useful under a wide
> variety of circumstances and are always better than command line or
> API interfaces. For some set of high value clients, a GUI or web
> interface, if it adds bugs, is actually a negative.
>
> For people like us, we want efficient, reliable service components
> with clean, clearly documented APIs. Our job is to build reliable
> systems with high performance integration with other system
> components, such as metering, monitoring and billing systems. In
> general, GUIs are for untrained and casual users. I like these for
> things like Visio and Spreadsheets which are not core applications for
> me. If you are working with tens of thousands of simultaneous
> connections, you better not be maintaining your DHCP records and
> DOCSIS configurations with a GUI!
>
> Once again, I would draw the analogy with Cisco's (or
> Livingston,Xyzel,Bay,etc,etc,insert router vendor here) "router
> configuration GUI". If router configuration is tangential to your
> core business, you probably use one of these. If router configuration
> is your core business, I bet you dream in IOS command line syntax from
> time to time.
>
> Any how, I sincerely appreciate all the input I have recieved from all
> of you. It has been generally high quality yet colorful, like most
> NANOG discussions. I am sorry if my initial request for feedback
> seemed flippant. While I do hope the bug count for CSRC/CNR goes
> down, I would guess that for a large market segment, it is the best
> tool. For us, we will stick with the ISC DNS/DHCP/tftp suite.
>
> regards,
> fletcher