Addressing plan exercise for our IPv6 course

David Conrad drc at virtualized.org
Sun Jul 25 07:12:24 UTC 2010


On Jul 25, 2010, at 8:56 AM, Jack Bates wrote:
> David Conrad wrote:
>> On Jul 24, 2010, at 7:52 PM, Brandon Butterworth wrote:
>>> Indeed, best not listen to vendors
>> As it is best not to listen to doctors that tell you if you continue chain smoking or eating 5000 calories a day, you'll likely regret it.
> 
> Bad analogy. A doctor tells you these things for your well being. In fact, the doctor's advice, while meeting the goals of his oath, conflict with his business needs (your regret of not following his advice will be lots more doctor bills).

I'll stick by the analogy.  There are engineers inside routing vendors who have been quite loud in saying that we can't keep adding more routes to the routing system and expect costs to remain linear.  Those same engineers will also tell you that the companies they work for will be happy to build what the customer wants, even if it will cost the customer 3 arms and 4 legs.

> Vendors care about their bottom line. Some will happily lie for a sale. Most will highlight their strong points and gloss over their weaknesses.  More care goes to those who pay the most.

Which, according to numerous studies, also describes the health care system in the US, but that's not an appropriate topic for this list.

> An engineer is closer to a doctor. The engineer cares about the health of their network and how well it performs, even if it means begging for more expensive gear from management. The engineer is less concerned with the bottom line and more concerned with doing things right (especially if it means less work, less headaches, and less problems for the same amount of pay).

All vendors that expect to remain in business for any length of time have engineering staff that behave as you describe.  For just one example, look at the folks behind LISP (not the language).  Or the active participants in the IRTF RRG working group. 

Regards,
-drc





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