- NANOG - lists.nanog.org

Have we fallen of the face of the earth?
by Matt Taber 18 Sep '05

18 Sep '05

Is this thing on... Anyone? Beuller? Beuller? http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-5867642.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed Sounds like it's going in the right direction. MRT

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national hardware price quote registry - project clarifications
by Matt Bazan 17 Sep '05

17 Sep '05

There's been a fair bit of confusion as to what the price quote registry is about. As this confusion is mainly due to my lack of clarity I hope this email will rectify the ambiguity. Let me set the record straight on what my original intentions for this project were: 1) The original intent of the project was an online price quote registry aimed at small to medium businesses for quotes in the $20-$100K range. Larger quotes would of course be welcome but as these are almost always bound by NDAs in all likelihood these quotes would rarely find their way into the registry. 2) I do not, have not, and will not advocate people violate their respective NDAs (or quote confidentiality clauses). However, if a person chooses to do so that's their perogative hence the anonymous nature of the system. 3) I never intended the registry to be for 'big ticket' items. I, personally, have no interest in those. The thread seemed to devolve into discussing multi-million dollar quotes and the ramifications of opening up this process to public inspection. While I disagree with many of the conclusions that my fellow NANOGers have drawn about the likely outcome of opening this process up, I understand your concerns. My interest lies in the much smaller sub $100K quotes that are not bound by NDAs. 4) If, as others have suggested, you don't like the sytem, then don't use it. If enough people feel this will it will soon whither into the ether. Matt

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RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
by Eric Pylko 17 Sep '05

17 Sep '05

> -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price > quote registry > From: "Matt Bazan" <Mbazan(a)onelegal.com> > Date: Fri, September 16, 2005 6:37 pm ... > > Now I fully realize that it's not a light matter to put ones job on the > line for this. However, I doubt, that in most cases, someone would get > fired for a first time offense. And, if worried, start with something > small. Bottom line is, the system's never been tested - anonymously. > Who knows what would happen? It's all essentially speculation until > it's tried. So your basic line of reasoning is "We can do it because we won't get caught."? Violating an NDA is violating an NDA. If you don't want to be bound by one don't sign it. You can get the Cisco pricing for the New York State contract here: http://www.ogs.state.ny.us/disclaim/default.asp?url=http://www.cisco.com/wa… Of course unless you are a NYS government agency you can't get that pricing. It also indicates NYS gets 32% off and it shows list price. -Eric

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Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
by Matt Bazan 17 Sep '05

17 Sep '05

I don't know about you, but how many times have you wanted to know the price of hardware vendor a, vendor b and vendor c's product offering only to find out that you have to contact one of their sales reps, give them all your contact & company info (I'm sure you know the drill) listen to a sales spiel (or two, or three) maybe a webinar, or conference call or..etc. before finally getting a quote some time later? Only to then be bothered by endless follow up sales calls? Wouldn't it be great if there was an online, updated daily, website that listed real quotes oraganized by region in the country and company size? That way, if you wanted to, say, know that latest prices for 2TB fibre channel SAN enclosures from company A and company B you pull up the site and boom, you have a nice fairly accurate idea of what you'll pay for a company of your size and location? I think so. Here's what I propose. I will design and host a web site to organize just such info. What I will need from all of you out there is your real time quotes (anonymously submitted is just fine, black out all the relevant personal/company info) and just include some general info on location (state for instance) and rough size of company. I'll take care of the rest. Comments? Matt

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RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
by Matt Bazan 17 Sep '05

17 Sep '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: Charles Gucker [mailto:cgucker@onesc.net] > > Well, httpd style logs will certainly "tell" where the > information came from. > No logging info of any sort would be enabled. > > Uhh, make sure the data isn't stored anywhere vendor > X's attornies can get to it. Rest assured, whoever hosts the > site would be sent paperwork in hours, if not minutes from > it's discovery. > If need be I'll off shore it. Matt

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AOL whitelisting - a heads-up and a request for assistance
by Omar Thameen 17 Sep '05

17 Sep '05

Hi Folks, This is both a request for assistance and a warning which I hope will benefit others. We've been on AOL's whitelist for more than 5 years. We've been reorganizing our delivery servers in the past month or so with no problems. A recent spike in complaints from one of our clients' lists (which we've isolated) has alerted us to the fact that our historically whitelisted IP addresses are no longer whitelisted. A call to AOL's postmaster line confirms that no IPs are listed for our company, either whitelisted or blacklisted. That is, our IPs have been dropped from the whitelist database or lost. In re-applying for whitelisting, I do see that AOL requires a minimum of 100 emails/month to maintain a whitelist entry. This is new to me, and would be worth nothing for others who may be adding or removing servers. The postmaster line informed me that it would be 3-5 business days for the whitelisting to be updated. AOL deliveries are critical to our business, so even a day of disruption is too long. I would be very greatful if someone could help expedite our request. Please contact me off-list. Omar Thameen omar(a)biglist.com 212-686-2140

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RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
by Dave Hilton 16 Sep '05

16 Sep '05

marshall, No, you are not. We live or die by them. Hilton

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RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
by Matt Bazan 16 Sep '05

16 Sep '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On > Behalf Of Sean Figgins > > Most of the vendors I know of like to wine and dine the VPs. > If a NDA gets violated, the vendor will not be forced to stop > dealing with the company, just get the employee that violated > the NDA to be fired. > Companies are getting very, very picky about this kind of > information getting out. And, if your company is publically > traded, I am sure that some consultant will claim this is a > violation of Sarbanes-Oxley. > I can see your points here. But, I think there still is value to the medium and small companies that are not bound by these types of agreements. > > > 6) Such a list is likely actually cause companies to have > to pay more. > > > > Not sure about the logic here... > > Logic goes like this: Company is seeing that it's prices are > getting out. > Company stopps giving the good discounts to anyone, as they > will have to give them to everyone otherwise... > Not sure I buy that line of reasoning. Hasn't happened in the myriad of other consumer product lines that have open pricing. In fact, just the opposite happens. Open pricing drives pricing down - not up. This is exactly the type of culture these hardware companies want. When you have closed pricing - in any industry - the buyer is always at the disadvantage. It's time to open this up. > If you are already doing business with a company, and just > want to have some incremental additional devices or services, > then you probably don't have to talk to a sales guy much to > get a quote from him. > > If you are shopping for the best price, and don't care about > support costs, or technical specs, then go shop at CDW, or > dell.com. Their prices are published. > Actually, not the case. CDW and Dell (and all the others) only publish their prices for the low end gear that they sell. Anything else requires a call to a rep and establishing a relationship. Matt

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RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
by Hannigan, Martin 16 Sep '05

16 Sep '05

> > If need be I'll off shore it. > > > > Matt > > > > > Fine, you can build it and off-shore it, but I suspect that > is a case > of "if you build it they will not come". Robbing points from each other at the deal desk has 0 value to all of us. It also has 0 operational value. Ultimately, the smaller guys would suffer as a result anyhow. The more points beaten down at the top, the more pressure to not discount at the higher margins. [end] -M< > > I think that people have made it fairly clear that this is a bad > idea, but I don't think that anyone is going to stop you building it. > I am guessing that you will 1) get inflated prices because the > people who are getting the really good discounts are going to be the > ones with the most to lose personally and 2) lots of happy shiny > letters from vendor's lawyers asking you for logs. Whether or > not you > have logs is largely irrelevant, you will still get the letters. I > don't know about you, but I have better things to do than a: > unnecessarily antagonize the same people that you presumable want to > get a good discount from and b: collect subpoenas. > > Warren. > -- > "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, > and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." -- Terry Pratchett > > > >

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RE: Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry
by Matt Bazan 16 Sep '05

16 Sep '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: Matt Ghali [mailto:matt@snark.net] > > And I am risking my career for you because...? > For life and liberty and...well, ok. I'm only requesting people to provide this info if they're comfortable doing so. If not, sit back and let's see what happens. Matt

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