At 02:30 PM 10/10/2003, Leif Johansson wrote:
With all due respect, it seems that it would be beneficial for both camps
(for and against SL) to hear, even now, the real concerns directly from
the operation people and to let them participate in the decision
themselves. ... <snip>
Been there. Done that. Didn't work. This vast Moral Majority of the
Site-Locals either don't exist or live entierly behind NATs or other boxes
which prevent them from receiving the call to arms to participate in the
debate. ;-)
Let's at least try to be fair and realistic. There is a fairly large and
vocal camp from tier 1 and tier 2 operators in the IETF which presumes that
the needs of a backbone service provider are the only needs that are
relevant in any network and go around blasting anything they don't need as
"clueless". But not all tier 1/2 operators are represented or choose to
speak publicly, and not all networks are tier 1/2 networks. I have a fairly
long history of sitting in the room with people from certain tier 1/2
operators who will tell me at dinner or in the hallway what they think
about this or that, but are precluded from speaking for themselves publicly
by the policy or culture of their employers. I'm not naming names, because
that would be inappropriate (if they can't/won't speak for themselves
because their employer doesn't want to tip a business hand, who am I to tip
it for them?). But I guarantee you that they are present, and they don't
necessarily agree with the vocal operators.
When it comes to tertiary operators and enterprises, let's face it. They're
vastly under-represented, and perhaps not at all represented. If they were
represented as completely as the Tier 1/2 operators are, we would routinely
have meetings with multiples of 10K attendees. They don't come to IETF
meetings. They read about them in Network World and Computer Week, they
tell their vendors what they are willing to buy, and their vendors come
talk about the features smaller operators and enterprises are asking for.
The vendors take a beating from the operational elite, who tell us
- we have no clue how to run a network
- we have no idea what features a network needs
- there is no deployed (pick your protocol that is perhaps inappropriate in
a Tier 1 backbone) in the whole wide world
- Specifically, there is no operational deployment of the diffserv
architecture (having heard this extensively from the gentleman from
Telstra,
I wonder if he ever talks to the gentleman from Comindico that I spoke
with
last week; they seem to live on different planets)
- That everything we produce and talk about is what we want to sell, not
what the tier 1/2 operators or anybody else wants to buy.
- That whatever we say is inherently invalid because we are vendors.
Interesting. Do we do these things for our health? Do we go generate
features and then try to sell them to people? Do we keep beat our heads
against the wall for a decade or more while there is no market and all
problems are trivially solved using other technologies?
Are we that idiotic?
You know, I'd like to see a little more respect for people, and for the
reports they make. Yes, it would be much better if operational staff from
each of the Fortune 500 companies and larger tertiary operators came to the
IETF and spoke for themselves. They don't, and that doesn't make their
opinions or requirements irrelevant.