[snip]
Warning. only the end of this is truly relevant to nanog, IMO. Clobber
the message now if you want to avoid a mini-rant about ascend.
I'm a right tool for the right job person myself, so I'm glad that
people have found ascends to work for them, but I have to interrupt the
love-in long enough to point out
- the grf is not all of ascend. maybe they finally got things
right?
- ascend CPE equipment is constantly shipped with incorrect
cables
- ascend CPE equipment has poor design on the human-interface
and the electrics. That is, people will, can and do plug the
wrong cable into the wrong port which in turn fries the unit.
They have a very smooth RMA process, which says something about
how often it has to be used.
- software-of-the-week releases that are rife with regression
faults
- nigh-abandonment of product with no warning: see software
version 5.x for the p400 series? see it coming anytime soon?
All that said, we have had good luck with scend on the higher-end gear,
MAXes et al, so maybe the GRF is done right. But that's a co$tly
"maybe".
Lastly, the bit that's really relevant, how to the GRF-users automate
things in their networks? I'll cast a hairy eyeball on claims that
"cisco-free" is a good thing until I see other products that give high
flexibility on route tuning and a method to programatically alter
configs. Asking for vendors to have a common programatic interface is a
bit much to ask, so I'll settle for sane, regexp-parsable files...
Disclaim, disclam; affiliation, not representation; etc etc.
Joe
--
Joe Provo, Network Architect 800.763.8111 x3006
Network Operations Center Fax 508.229.2375
UltraNet Communications, Inc. <jprovo(a)ultra.net>
