Notes on the Internet for Bell Heads

Fri Jul 12 00:24:38 UTC 2002

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Scott Call wrote:
> Working for a Telco with an ISP division, I can tell you the best thing to
> to do is wait for the Bell Heads to retire for the third time and keep
> them away from your gear until then :)

Yes, several people mentioned that the two groups should just maintain
their seperate ways.  There is this thing called convergence.  If you
squint real hard MPLS can almost make an IP network look like a telephone
network. Add into the mix the government is desprately seeking ways to
make the Internet "secure." So many vendors are trying their darndest to
find a problem so they can sell a solution, even if that means creating
the problem in the first place.

I don't know which is scarier.  Lucent/Bell Labs trying to design the next
generation Internet architecture, or Cisco trying to design the next
generation DCN/SS7 architecture.

> (who is still trying to get back the IQ points lost in trying to
> understand the SS7 network and being amazed that calls ever make it
> through)

I'm certain the Bell heads are equally amazed that packets ever make it
through the Internet.  The public telephone network is still the largest
network on the planet, and some amazing engineering went into creating it.
I'm not going to diss telco engineers.  But a Babalfish to translate would
be useful.

How do you explain Internet security to a telco engineer.  Or the concept
that the Internet doesn't have a LERG, but somehow ISPs figure out how to
get traffic from point A to point B.  Or the biggie, that stuff is
expected to fail, so that's why you buy lots of simple, cheap ones instead
of one big, expensive, never-fail box.