September 2005 - Test - lists.nanog.org

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

16 Sep '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: Richard A Steenbergen [mailto:ras@e-gerbil.net] > > Obviously no one is wasting their time sueing you if your > company leaks the price of a low-end router to one or two of > your neighbors, it isn't worth the price of the lawyers, and > it isn't easy to prove. In cases of larger companies with an > employee who leaks the data, they simply apply political > pressure to have the employee fired. But if you were to start > publishing this data in any large scale, and especially if it > even impacted one of the cash-cow sales mentioned above, they > would come down on you like the hammer of the gods. :) > I'll state it again: this will be the beauty of a purely anonymous system. Think about it. How is anyone going to be able to prove: a) the quote was in fact from a particular company (sure, it may look darn similar - but prove? and if you're really worried, fudge some details a bit) - sure, if it's a $10 million quote that's one thing. But say a $150,000 quote? Those are garden variety, least where I'm from (bay area, California). b) who leaked it? it's completely anonymous. Think of all the 'senior government' officials that leak info all the time. Often times they're expressly forbidden from doing so and somehow the word still gets out. Very rarely is someone nailed for it. And that's hardly anonymous if push came to shove. 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. Matt

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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 > > Yes, it would be great, however it won't work. > Couple points. This is true typically in only the largest enterprise quotes. For the vast majority of medium and small business quotes NDAs are rarely used. And hey, if they are , that's why the process is anonymous ;-) Besides, in today's crap economy, is a vendor really going to come down on a client for violating an NDA and throw away $$$$? I personally don't have experience with this but I'm willing to bet that most NDAs are more bark than bite. > > I forsee the following proplems: > > 1) Vendors do not want their pricing available for all (including > competitors) to see > I know! That's the best part. Just what the airlines used to say back before the Internet - remember? My prediction is that once the info gets out there's no stopping it. > 2) Vendors would require that list prices be used > > 3) You would still need to go to the vendor to find out what > level of discount they are willing to give you, and then > negociate the best discount you want. > > 4) Different companies of similar size are able to negotiate > different levels of discounts, depending on the specifics of > their relationship with the vendor. You're likely to get a > better percent when you buy quantity 400 of "B" > router/switch/SAN than quantity 2. Sure, that will be in the quote. > > 5) Purchasing companies would be less likely to want to > divulge this information, as it could hurt their competitive > advantage. If they are getting a 75% discount, and their > closest competitor is only getting 50%, they have a lot > better advantage. > Well, that's why you don't get the VPs permission ;-). Anonymity!! > 6) Such a list is likely actually cause companies to have to pay more. > Not sure about the logic here... > That being said, I would personally LOVE to have the > information. I would not be able to participate because of > the NDA that we have signed, or risk loosing my job. > > -Sean > >

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

16 Sep '05

From: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On > Behalf Of Valdis.Kletnieks(a)vt.edu > > Oh, and you can have up to 7 of <these> attached, unless you > have a <those> attached, in which case you can have 5 <these> > and one <those> or 4 <these> and 2 <those>. You know the > configurator drill.. ;) > > Sure, go for it. :) Don't forget about "Well we're super sized network equipment vendor X so if you rip out all of your equipment from vendor Y, you can get discount + special discount." :-) David

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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

Gang, I just went through this matter in another venue (SAGe). My company's policy, and I know there are others equally stringent, is that I may divulge which products from which vendors I have looked at, and I may tell which one I picked. However, I may not divulge my processes for decision making, Ts & Cs, nor prices. It really makes for rather vacuous reading. Hilton

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call for agenda items for the open steering committee meeting
by Randy Bush 16 Sep '05

16 Sep '05

At NANOG/Los Angeles, on Sunday eve for about two hours between the tutorials and the opening reception, the NANOG Steering Committee will be holding an open meeting for those interested in discussing general NANOG concerns. The meeting will be broadcast, and a method for external input, e.g. jabber or whatever, will be provided. The agenda the SC has come up with so far is: - Steeering Committee progress/status report - Open microphone - Steve - Program Committee report - Open microphone - Betty - finances - Open microphone - Mailing List issues . ML policy and process . ML appeal process . SC process regarding ML committee, i.e. terms, selection, ... as this is not covered well in charter. . other open issues - Open microphone Oh, and did I mention open microphone? :-) If you have other items for the formal agenda, please tell us. If you have a flash presentation (five minutes max) you wish to make, please tell us and send a draft of the presentation. randy, for the SC

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