IP address fee??

Fri Sep 6 21:54:51 UTC 2002

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Joe Abley wrote:

> > Actually, I would assume it to be the other way around: if you only
> > communicate with people who are active in the field who are aware of
> > all the new tricks, how are you going to learn about obsolete stuff?

> I think there is often a directed graph of information flow for
> particular subjects. There will be nodes in the graph which correspond
> to people who have done research, and who speak with some accuracy.
> There are other nodes which listen selectively to the interpretations
> of others, derive rules of thumb and pass their filtered wisdom onto
> other nodes, but do no research from sources that might be considered
> authoritative.

The trouble with authorative sources is that they may deliver high quality
data, but usually not very much of it. You can't build and operate a
network using only scientific facts. You also need experience, rules of
thumb, and common sense.

And it never ceases to amaze me how researches carefully remove all
interesting variables until they arrive at data that while being
incredibly accurate, has no longer any meaning in the real world.

> The effectiveness of this information-sharing network is hampered by
> the unreliability of individual nodes to filter information they
> receive, the inconsistent manner in which the information is processed,
> the near-complete absense of filters on information passed to other
> nodes, and the ad-hoc summarisation that happens throughout the network
> regardless of the intentions of the origin nodes. Sounds almost eerily
> familiar.

Yes, it sound a lot like Usenet when the S/N ratio was still not much
worse than that of NANOG. While each and every fact posted on Usenet is
completely unreliable, entire discussions more often than not help you a
good deal into the direction of a usable answer.

> Many ISPs provide a fertile learning environment for people who are
> able and willing to learn, regardless (in spite of!) of initial
> training and qualification.

I wonder if they still do.

> However, I seem to think that there are lots of people in organisations
> that run IP networks who don't have the opportunity to learn how to do
> lots of different things, and many of them don't have the time, ability
> or inclination to go research questions from the bottom up. Rules of
> thumb and networking myths abound in that environment.

Still, in this day and age anyone who remains ignorant for a significant
period of time has only him/herself to blame. If information isn't
available on the web in the first place, you can order books on subjects
they don't even know how to spell at your local bookstore. (For instance,
there are more than 4300 books on "computer networking" on Amazon.)

>    "ICMP is a security risk."
>    "You can't use the first and last subnets."

"You can't get more than 50% throughput on shared ethernet."

Iljitsch