critique of NANOG meeting

Wed Jun 19 03:31:10 UTC 1996

metcalfe understands the issues only too well.  only the truly
blessed can blindly exploit half-truths.  he is not blessed and
he is not blind. 

unfortunately, mr. metcalfe is living in the world of suits.
very expensive suits.  the type worn by what we might not so 
affectionately call the 'marketeers'.  it doesn't matter what 
a small group of technically saavy internet engineers might
think, this is yellow journalism and it sells papers.  metcalfe
is the figure-head of a well-laid plan of  calculated risk.  no 
matter what the outcome of his predictions, he and his paper will 
claim the high road.  if there are catastrophic failures in 
the internet, he will claim victory and will continue to report
on the 'clean-up.'  if not, before his rantings become tiresome, his 
handlers will recall him.  he will again proclaim victory
(remember, he was the nagging conscience of the internet for
oh so many months who fortold and therefore, prevented disaster).

he will move on, perhaps attacking some other large and mis-understood
entity, making predictions that have reasonable probability and
limited risk until the risk pays off.  

i have no doubt that his campaign will succeed.  he is bright, has
built companies, used to be a technically saavy engineer.  the trick
will be to bide our time, he will go away in the end.  hopefully his
winnings will be modest this time.

Jeff Young
young at mci.net

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> From: avg at postman.ncube.com (Vadim Antonov)
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> Subject: Re:critique of NANOG meeting
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> 
> >From: Michael Dillon <michael at memra.com>
> >I don't know if you folks are following Metcalfe's columns...
> 
> The guy is seriously out of touch with reality.  He seems to be
> completely unable to comprehend the fact that packet loss is
> not a malfunction but rather the nature's way to say "you need
> more bandwidth".  And the fact that it was exactly suits who
> got Internet to that point; engineers keet screaming about
> inadequate facilities for as long as i could remember.
> 
> And if he thinks backbone engineers have time to prepare slides
> (or have secretaries to do that for them) i'd like to move to the
> world he's living in.
> 
> --vadim