On 4/14/16, 8:59 AM, "ietf on behalf of Phillip Hallam-Baker"
<ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org on behalf of
phill(_at_)hallambaker(_dot_)com> wrote:
This morning I spent an hour debugging the network to print out two
class projects that were due. Some points:
1) My ability to debug the network is better than 99% of the population
2) The interaction of Bonjour, DHCP and auto power saving is unfortunate
3) Things should still work after I have been away for a week
4) If vendors want to be selling all that IoT gear, they have to solve
these issues.
5) I want someone to blame. Right now when the network doesn't work, I
don't know who is the cause. I want one point of contact. Whoever is
that point of contact will get most of my networking money.
One of the biggest headaches in debugging is that 'smart hubs' are
not. They are actually very stupid. They make assumptions of network
topology that are not true. Another is the unfortunate implementation
of DHCP.
I don't use SNMP for a simple reason - it is not available to most
ordinary people. I want to understand networking for the 99%, not the
IETF 1%-ers.
All this networking gear is presented to me as black boxes over which
I have absolutely no control (which is fine-ish) and no visibility.
What visibility do you want? Error messages on the printer's console?
Syslog messages?
SNMP traps? Oh, apparently not, since "SNMP isn't available most ordinary
people."
It seems to me that there is a business opportunity for any vendor who
takes the rather obvious step of simplifying the system.
If a vendor tries to solve the problem, they'll just add more intelligence,
which will neither simplify nor stabilize the system.
What should have happened many moons ago was that DHCP should have
become a bidirectional protocol or a bootstrap to a bidirectional
protocol. So when a printer joins the network, it authenticates and
tells the network what it is. And this is all defined in one set of
specifications from one organization, none of which assumes that
security is an 'advanced', 'optional' or 'enterprise' feature.
See Homenet.
Lee