Re: Why does Valdis trust UL?

Since interoperability on a one-to-many scale would be a problem,
perhaps approaching it from the many-to-one point of view would be
better.

Einar's ideas are good, but still difficult to implement. What happens
when a company fails to find every device it should be tested against?
It almost seems that what we need is the concept of a reference
platform.

Having a reference platform allows for a single point of contact for
everyone wanting "IETF Certification".

I would also suggest that the task of implementing such a platform
should be up to the WGs creating the standards or the companies
authoring the standard. This would also give you a group that could
administer the platform. Of course there would have to be some rules of
conduct so that nobody could be excluded from performing their
interoperability testing. (Do I smell a BOF here?) I'm sure groups
holding reference platforms could find some way to make money off of
this without breaking the rules.

I'm not saying this would be easy to implement, but it might be worth a
thought. 

mark---------------

At 00:25 1/29/02, Einar Stefferud wrote:

Well now, an idea blinked on here;-)...

As Paul Hoffman noted, it costs a small fortune for an entire set of 
vendor products to be tested against all other interworking products 
(N**2 pairs is the estimate) and there is no proffered business model 
for doing this for the entire involved industry..

But, maybe someone can devise a business model for testing one 
product against all the others that claim to conform to the standard 
under test.

I know that HP did this ounce for their Internet products by hiring a 
person to do it from one of their customer's sites on the Internet. 
It does not matter here who or where it was done.

But, this puts the burden on the vendors that wish to be able to 
claim inter-workability with all others, or with some subset of their 
choice.

Or they can identify those that do not interwork for the benefit of 
those that want to know such stuff.

This then becomes an individual company decision, and does not 
require massed agreement, or require synchronized work schedules. 
Just put your system on the net and find someone out there to test 
against.  Doing it on the real net is just fine for this testing 
model.

Of course, the vendors that do this can brag or not, as they wish.

And here is no great concern for whether every vendor does it or not.

And the market can make up its mind by itself.

For my view, I have trouble believing that all those vendors are not 
vitally interested in inter-working among their products.

And, in addition, I would hope that someone might mount an open 
discussion mailing list for people to use to post their private 
experiences with what does or does not work.

And last:  This is no longer a useful IETF discussion;-)...\Stef


At 09:01 -0800 28/01/02, John  W Noerenberg II wrote:

At 10:19 PM -0500 1/26/02, Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:


I have in my bedroom a night light, which I purchased at a local
grocery store.  It has a UL logo on it, which doesn't tell me much
about its suitability as a night light (I can't tell if it's bright
enough, or if it's too bright, or what its power consumption is),
but it *does* tell me 2 things:

1) It has been *tested* and found free of any known safety design problems.
It may not *work* as a night light, but it won't shock me when I go to
throw it in the trash can because it's not suitable.

2) A high enough percentage of night light manufacturers get UL listed
that I can afford to be suspicious of any company that doesn't have
the logo on their product.


Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.  is a non-profit corporation that 
was founded in 1894.  This 
<http://www.ul.com/about/otm/otmv3n2/labdata.htm>article describes 
the process UL uses for developing their standards.  Many UL 
standards receive ANSI certification.  According to the article, UL 
relies on information from a number of sources while developing a 
standard.

UL tests products submitted by its customers for *conformance* to 
its standards.  UL's reputation depends on the rigor and 
independence of their testing.  I don't know how it costs to submit 
a product for testing, but obtaining UL certification isn't free. 
UL's certification program is successful, because when consumers 
like Valdis (and me) see a UL label, they believe in its value.  As 
Valdis points out, the value of the label has limits.

Certification isn't the work of a volunteer organization like the 
IETF.  It could be the work of an organization like Underwriters 
Labs.  This would be a good thing for Internet standards, imho.

One idea proposed multiple times in this meandering discussion is 
that those advocating testing should put up or shut up -- create a 
testing organization or move on to other topics.  I concur with both 
those suggestions.  I'm sure you'll all be pleased this is my last 
word on the topic.

best,
--

john noerenberg
jwn2(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com
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