On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Joseph Malcolm wrote:
Seems to me that it might be useful to have some sort of document that explains just how cowboys operate their networks. What I have in mind is something like Emily Postnews. How about it Perry, are you up to the task?
Is this the way the encourage better cooperations among the community of the Internet, including users, small ISPs, and large ISPs?
Not at all. It's the way to educate network engineers about how the world expects them to use their newly gained technical skills. The problem isn't whether Sean Doran or Curtis Villamizer, et al. know how to restrain themselves, because they do know having had years of experience. IMHO the problem is to get up-and-coming network engineers (most of them even in the larger companies) to understand a new order of business. This is not unlike the difference between doing data processing at a small company (seat of the pants) and a LARGE company (plan, develop, deskcheck, alpha test, wait until Sunday to run live tests, implement when everybody on the team checks off on the works, etc...). Lots of people are picking up the core technical skills like dancing with BGP, but there is more to it than that. Most of these people have their hearts in the right place but they just don't understand the problem because it probably hasn't been explained to them in a way that they can understand. That's where "art" comes in and things like Dilbert, Emily Postnews and the suggested "cowboy" document can be useful. Michael Dillon - ISP & Internet Consulting Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com