Ascend GRF400

Thu Apr 24 10:12:43 UTC 1997

[snip]
Warning.  only the end of this is truly relevant to nanog, IMO.  Clobber
the message now if you want to avoid a mini-rant about ascend.

I'm a right tool for the right job person myself, so I'm glad that
people have found ascends to work for them, but I have to interrupt the
love-in long enough to point out
	- the grf is not all of ascend.  maybe they finally got things
	 right?
	- ascend CPE equipment is constantly shipped with incorrect
	 cables 
	- ascend CPE equipment has poor design on the human-interface
	 and the electrics.  That is, people will, can and do plug the
	 wrong cable into the wrong port which in turn fries the unit.
	 They have a very smooth RMA process, which says something about
	 how often it has to be used.
	- software-of-the-week releases that are rife with regression
	 faults
	- nigh-abandonment of product with no warning:  see software
	 version 5.x for the p400 series?  see it coming anytime soon?

All that said, we have had good luck with scend on the higher-end gear,
MAXes et al, so maybe the GRF is done right.  But that's a co$tly
"maybe".

Lastly, the bit that's really relevant, how to the GRF-users automate
things in their networks?  I'll cast a hairy eyeball on claims that
"cisco-free" is a good thing until I see other products that give high
flexibility on route tuning and a method to programatically alter
configs.  Asking for vendors to have a common programatic interface is a
bit much to ask, so I'll settle for sane, regexp-parsable files...

Disclaim, disclam; affiliation, not representation; etc etc.

Joe

--
Joe Provo, Network Architect                         800.763.8111 x3006
Network Operations Center                            Fax   508.229.2375
UltraNet Communications, Inc.                        <jprovo at ultra.net>