quietly....

Thu Feb 3 22:42:15 UTC 2011

> > Seems there's a lot of engineers out there that only want to make sure
> > last year's protocols work, and are willing to totally ignore next year's=
> .
> 
> It really is a different universe for  University/ISP versus corporate netw=
> orks. Neither is wrong or right, but both have different needs. My complain=
> t is that my sense is that Ipv6 was designed and favors the ISP environment=
>  rather than corporate networks.
> 
> A corporate network really does want to ignore next year's new hot protocol=
>  unless it makes business sense to support it. There may be regulatory reas=
> ons to block it (we are required to archive all email and instant messages)=
>  or management may decide it's a waste of time to support or management may=
>  feel it's a waste of people's work time to use. Obviously as a end-user wi=
> th residential FTTH, I want something completely different from my ISP.

This is not necessarily a good reason for taking business policies and
using them to engineer a network that _cannot_ work with next year's new
hot protocol.

If we rewind ten years, you might find that the IP component of many
business networks was merely another protocol stack alongside their
existing one and a Socks proxy connecting to the Internet which was
set up to "enforce policy"; I cannot recall having seen one of these
setups survive the last decade.  It seemed like a great idea at the
time, but didn't really allow for many of the new technologies that
businesses now use and rely on.

Of course, the best consultants will advise you to implement that
type of "great idea", because it means that they'll be seeing you 
again in a few years when you want your network to support that next
new hot protocol.

It may be better, however, and also simultaneously less disruptive in
the long run, to engineer a network that *can* implement that next, new 
hot protocol and just use firewall policy to prevent it.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.