Barry Shein wrote: A7: Yes, I am saying that Sprint policy is such that their personnel is not authorized to install even one route block without lengthy bureaucratic process taking several days. Q8: Why do you think this is so? A8a: Because there is an atmosphere of fear, essentially, at Sprint's NOC and their personnel have been completely unempowered from taking operational actions they know are required of them to operate within the greater internet. Essentially, they (Sprint policy- makers) apparently believe that any damage to the greater internet or any host or site is less important than their ability to run internal bureaucratic process at whatever pace and using whatever management style which suits them. Cook: I wish Sprint no ill, for I would not like to see the big five become the big four. Yet I agree with most all of what Barry says. they ARE a strange bunch. MCI, UUNET, and BBN certainly do not suffer from the same sense of ennui. Indeed people at these providers have real three dimensional personalities. Sprint does not and seems to govern by committee. I have had two official interviews on the phone with them in the last year. They placed three executives on the one call and *four* on the other. The list of sprint allumni is pretty awesome. SprintLink has never had a spokesperson like a john curran, vint cerf, or mike O'dell. At least not for any length of time. First bob collet, vadim, then sean. All gone now. Last summer I was told that Sean Doran had occasionally angered some people..... who went looking for someone to hand Sean his head. They never could find anyone who had the authority, he said. Yet Sean now is gone. The same Sean who DID anger many but who seems to me to be one the sanest, most level headed, most articulate and most knowlegable people in this business, this Sean bit the dust in the space of less than a day early last september. Fired with no warning.... in the space it seemed of minutes. [I knew about it in less than 2 hours after it happened.] There are in the internet official and unofficial titles..... often the unofficial are in many ways the MORE important. Sean had some VERY important UNofficial titles. Given the demand for talent like his for Sprint to terminate him without notice as happened is virtually **incomprehensible.** Yet Sprint did so. Why? it makes no sense. But it certainly can explain the reference to fear within the Sprint NOC that Barry made. What if, in placing the filter to make Barry happy, a hapless SprintLink engineer unwittingly angered someone with considerably more power than Barry and caused another blow to descend from management? Why chance it? I have been told that Sean, endeavoring to carry out a known Sprint policy, angered an outside and powerful person last September. I have no proof of this 'rumor'. But if anyone does have any verifiable information as to exactly what DID happen I'd certainly like to know. Because, if Sprint did capitulate to an outside power in the way described to me, such action deserves to be made very public. I have discussed the specifics of the allegation with the key people directly involved. They all denied the allegation. But they also offered no alternative story. From what they told me all parties appear to have signed an agreement not to talk about what actually happened. I want to make very clear however that nothing I have heard indicates to me any shred of unprofessional behavior on Sean's part. I have the highest respect for him and, were I the responsible decision maker for a major provider, I'd be moving to get him working for me ASAP. Like it or not Sean was SprintLink's voice on the net. In view of his sudden demise I am not surprised to find that Barry has found a malaise.
From what i can tell the Sprint decision makers are the telco people and at least one and probably two levels above the OPs people -- telco people to whom the Internet is still terra incognita. A pity because it is certainly contrary to Sprint's interest to be the de facto training ground for the employees of its competitors.
If nanog folk deem this off topic, i'll be glad to remove nanog from future responses. ************************************************************************ The COOK Report on Internet For subsc. pricing & more than 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA ten megabytes of free material (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) visit http://pobox.com/cook/ Internet: cook@cookreport.com For case study of MercerNet & TIIAP induced harm to local community http://pobox.com/cook/mercernet.html ************************************************************************