On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:11:04 BST, Matthew Walster said:
Seriously, this is getting silly. I'm not even going to respond any more - if you genuinely think users care about network management, you're wrong. They treat it as a black box, and that isn't going to change for a long, long, long time.
The point you're missing is that users may not care about network management *directly* - but they may care very much about the *features* that the network-ready appliance they bought at Best Buy provides them using multiple subnets under the hood. If the box says "provides separate 'Guest' wireless access", that can be a selling point even if the user doesn't know it happens because the unit uses separate subnets for the "home" and "guest" addresses. End users are already used to a world where they plug in some hardware, run a program off the CD, have it ask a few questions about how you want to use the device, click the 'Do It!' button, and it all works. If networking is any different experience *for the end user*, we've as an industry screwed up big time.