At 09:47 PM 6/8/97 PDT, Randy Bush wrote:
Folk are trying to keep core routers from falling over.
Probably like you, I've been in the Information Technology field for about 30 years this fall, but I've never seen fear nor protectionism used as a basis for policy in Information Technology before and it is certainly disconcerting to see it used this early in the life cycle of the Internet. Good press for creating a "scarcity" scenario, but bad practice IMHO. To repeat an earlier unanswered question, what and whose legacy hardware and software is causing the problem?
And, to answer one of the next questions expected by students of history, no, they are not obliged to buy more or other (unreliable) hardware for their backbones so that you (or whomever) can be in business.
I certainly agree with part of your statement, but don't feel the incumbents should be able to prevent new firms from competing through unfair practices. One would normally prefer to allow market forces to set the rewards for those who won't upgrade.
The one sure thing on the net is that the newbie influx is sufficient to keep the majority of mailing list traffic repeating itself.
Last year's answers to last year's problems are not necessarily the best answers to this year's problems given the current high rate of change. Larry Vaden, founder and CEO help-desk 903-813-4500 Internet Texoma, Inc. <http://www.texoma.net> direct 903-870-0365 bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland fax 903-868-8551 Member ISP/C, TISPA and USIPA pager 903-867-6571