Are network operators morons? [was: CloudFlare issues?]

Tue Jun 25 12:31:52 UTC 2019

[Removing the attribution, because many people have made statements like this over the last day - or year. Just selecting this one as a succinct and recent example to illustrate the point.]

>> This blog post, and your CEO on Twitter today, took every opportunity to say “DAMN THOSE MORONS AT 701!”.
> Damn those morons at 701, period.

I must be old. All I can think is Kids These Days, and maybe Get Off My BGP, er Lawn.

Any company running a large, high complex infrastructure is going to make mistakes. Period.

It is not like 701 is causing problems every week, or even ever year. If you think this one incident proves they are ‘morons’, you are only showing you are neither experienced nor mature enough to make that judgement.

To be clear, they may well be morons. I no longer know many people architecting and operating 701’s backbone, so I cannot tell you first-hand how smart they are. Maybe they are stupid, but exceptionally lucky. However, the facts at hand do not support your blanket assertion, and making it does not speak well of you.

OTOH, I do have first-hand experience with previous CF blog posts, and to say they spin things in their favor is being generous. But then, it’s a blog post, i.e. Marketing. What else would you expect?

I know it is anathema to the ethos of the network engineers & architects to work together instead of hurling insults, but it would probably result in a better Internet. And isn’t that what we all (supposedly) want?

-- 
TTFN,
patrick