20402 routing entries (renumbering)

Sat Apr 16 00:22:25 UTC 1994

Sounds like the same kind of mentality that lets people in LA
drive cars with a 20 miles/gallon mileage.

 Me:     You have to use cars with better mileage!
 Users:  Again? OK - but why? And what's in it for me?
 Me:     (explanation of air overload of pullutants deleted)
 Users:  So you are saying that of the 200 tons (or whatever) of the
         total pollution in LA's air due to the usage of gas in cars,
         that my buying a 60 miles/gallon car saves just a few pounds?
 Me:     Err, yes.
 Users:  Don't ring us, we'll ring you!

  .... later ...

 Users:  Uuuuhhhh, this cancer is KILLing me ...

  .... much later  (Users: are dead by now) ...

 Quiz:   Should Users: have saved 2 gallons/day or moved to Alaska?

>Renumbering workstations in principle *is* a no-brainer. But there are
>always wrinkles. And if those workstations are running a particle
>accelerator (as when a year or so ago I coordinated some renumbering at
>SLAC), you better have a damn good reason for doing it. A $20M facility
>running 7*24 expects good reasons for you to possibly screw it up, and
>their operational philosophy is to assume you will.
>
>I was able to renumber two largish groups of machines (200 or so in each),
>with quite a bit of coordination needed, and because of the various
>overlapping schedules it took a while before I could even start. Then, for
>each group I had to assemble numerous experts (Macs, Amigas, PCs, Next,
>RS/6000, Sun, Ultrix, VAX, Cisco). Luckily we had a good database of
>workstations so that I could tell the platform experts which machines were
>going to be involved. In some cases changes had to be backed out a couple
>of times because of something the platform experts forgot (or didn't know
>about).
>
>Now, can you imagine the conversation I might have had if still working
>there and SLAC agrees to exchange its class B (with about 1k out of 64k
>addresses assigned) for some number of class C:
>
>Me:     SLAC has to renumber!
>Users:  Again? OK Tim - but why? And what's in it for us?
>Me:     (explanation of routing overload deleted)
>Users:  So you are saying that of the 20k or so addresses in routers,
>        SLAC renumbering saves just one entry?
>Me:     Err, yes.
>Users:  Don't ring us, we'll ring you!
>
>As Marty says, there is (unfortunately) no carrot - and users resent the
>stick. You apply the stick too often and you are out the door, either as an
>external provider or internal expert. Users barely (in some instances) know
>what an IP address is. They expect the network to be like the phone or
>power outlets; you just plug in where you happen to be. If we expect
>renumbering and provider-based addressing to be feasible, it seems to me
>that w/s vendors need to provide powerful tools to enable *transparent*
>*on-the-fly* renumbering - else it won't happen. And even if they do (and
>where's the carrot for *them*?), it will be quite a while before such tools
>are ubiquitous enough to make the process always easy. Should we be working
>with vendors in this area?
>
>Now will you all *go* *home* - it's the weekend, damnit!
>
>Tim Streater, DANTE.    t.c.streater at dante.org.uk   +44 223 302992
>
>
>