Hurricanes redefined!

Mon Jul 8 23:14:36 UTC 1996

On Mon, 8 Jul 1996, Michael Dillon wrote:

==>The official definition of a hurricane is winds in excess of 5 km/hr
==>for a duration of at least 1 hour. Read all about it at
==>http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/metcalfe/metcalfe.htm

Interesting as well is Bob's incorrectness once again:

                "Uh-oh, this despite Netcom's
                trademarked slogan: The Network
                Works. No Excuses. "

See http://www.cisco.com/public/copyright.html, in which you'll find:

"All rights reserved.  No portion of this service may be reproduced in any
form, or by any means, without prior written permission from Cisco
Systems, Inc.  [...], The Network Works.  No Excuses. are service marks;
[...] of Cisco Systems, Inc.[...]"

Bob also states that:

                "Cisco should
                continuously improve the software with
                which its routers are programmed so
                that catastrophic human errors are less
                likely. "

Which gives the connotation that cisco Systems doesn't constantly improve
IOS;  everyone who's worked with cisco's software knows it's constantly
being improved. 

Bob also states the following:

                "Unfortunately, my favorite of such
                meetings, those of the North American
                Network Operators Group (NANOG),
                are not likely to take systematic outage
                analysis seriously. As one NANOG
                wag put it, "This is the 'net, people, deal
                with it.""

What Bob fails to mention is that no one has a service-level agreement
with the Internet.  The Internet is designed this way--my network connects
to your network.  It is _NOT_ under control of one body.  It's very hard
to GUARANTEE outages to _anyone_ without monetary value involved.  And
generally, "my networks connects to your network" does not have enough
monetary value to warrant SLA contracts of service.  Bob, I challenge you
to find an Internet Service Provider that gives an END-TO-END service
level agreement for the Internet.  That is, if my web site isn't fast
enough, you have escalation/remedy procedures.  If Joe Blow's sendmail has
crapped out, you have escalation/remedy procedures.  I'll buy you dinner
if you find one.

Bob once again forgets the original purpose behind the Internet, and he
apparently has permanently doffed his engineer hat for his non-technical
businessperson hat long ago.

/cah