On Sun, 23 Apr 1995, Sean Doran wrote:
OTOH, we have been working with marketing on the customer handbook (http://www.sprintlink.net/ has various drafts), so I imagine that if we had a clever tech writer remarkably skilled at finding the right moment to talk to busy engineering folk, we could produce something.
Funnily enough, that's what Vadim and I have already asked management for, however that's with a view to documenting our internal procedures so that we can scale up our own engineering and operations, not to mention all the other documentation that we need doing internally.
So, to extend the point that Geoff made earlier -- any resource a busy operator has will get deployed into making that operator's part of the global Internet _work_, not into helping out other people. This is not due to a mean lack of altruism, but rather to the realities of life in a global network that doubles in size and traffic severy six-to-nine months or so.
Now, if you go talk to our marketing about the possibilities of increasing revenue via some of the in-house documentation we're planning, you might have a big operator actually produce a book along the lines you are thinking, or putting together a page for beginning Internet operators.
Try bouncing some ideas off our marketing types; I'd be happy to pass you on to one in private email.
Sean.
We have create just such a guidebook targeted at the startup provider - and I'd be glad to use it as the basis for just such a customer handbook if some of you (and your organizations) want to help. I freely admit that the level of discussion here (when it's not political <g>) is beyond my current experience (I am a unix kernel programmer) and is not what most smaller ISP's need details on. On the other hand, there are startups with bucks that will be dual-homed fairly quickly and need pointers (even if it's only hire someone). So what say - can I get any direct contributors beyond just reading by eyes red ?? BTW, Our white paper extracted from the book is already being use by marketing people at Bell Canada, SGI and others - so we know there is a need. Rich Roth On the Net, Box 59, Georgetown CT 06829 Voice: 203-544-8950 Fax: 203-544-8644 rich@on-the-net.com CIS: 76137,3727 Ask about our reports: "So you want to be a provider ?"