On Mon, 10 Nov 1997, Karl Denninger wrote:
Frankly, this could be a *good* thing for the industry. Among other things large organizations have a habit and history of being unable to perceive and act on market-based changes quickly enough to capitalize on them.
They tend to act like 900lb Gorillas instead, which is great if you're into slow, plodding things, and not so good if you aren't fast enough to get stepped on. But eventually, stepping on people draws the fire of people on the DOJ side of the fence.
I agree, I think this is a good thing for many NSPs. It is going to be a HUGE job to combine UUNET, ANS, and Internet MCI. They have huge hardware differences. ANS with the new BAY BCN hardware that they spent a large time developing, MCI with their large Stratacom network, and UUNet with their new Fore network. They all connect customers in a different way, it will take some time to bring all of that together. There will be major outages and problems associated with this merger. It will be a big change for other backbone providers to come in a take some of their customers base. It also will be easier to watch 1 big gorilla then 3 smaller ones. -Nathan