[I may digress a bit.. apologies] I think there is a second order effect on revenue though. The more reliable/stable the gear is, the less expensive the support contract you may be inclined to get for it. Would you really get 4hr replacement if you can't think of the last time a particular series of box failed? If you really need 4 hr replacement [this gets mentioned very often] its cheaper to keep spares of your own, so then wouldn't next business day suffice? Although we keep spares for our low end switch blades and switches, they really aren't worth keeping on Smartnet because 1) the OS virtually never changes, and 2) they don't fail outside of warranty. Or at least, not in my experience. I think recognizing this, Cisco for example has given smaller switches lifetime warranties with lifetime OS upgrades. If routers worked [/could work] this way, no one with a good technical team in house would buy support contracts. [Think of the pharmaceutical industry] Its much more profitable to "treat" an illness than cure it. If as an entity, expensive gear is expensive to maintain, there is more money to be made. Mainframes were the same way until PCs and workstations continuously ate at their market share and the costs of problem solving. Today even though mainframes have gotten oodles cheaper to buy and run, if you really want a mainframe, you have to have a great reason. Deepak Jain AiNET -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Daniel Golding Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 11:51 AM To: Christian Kuhtz; S; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Followup British Telecom outage reason This used to be the cc train, then later the S train. However, the S train has never been as stable as cc, and it has become increasingly less stable over time, with too many new features rolling in. I'd be curious as to exactly which CEF bugs bit them. The introduction of greater MPLS functionality seems to have given CEF a nasty bit of destabilization. - Daniel Golding
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Christian Kuhtz Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2001 12:57 AM To: S; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Followup British Telecom outage reason
you are right. But in an era of focusing on the box, vendors are forgetting that solid software and knowledgable support are just as important.
Possibly slow down a bit on rolling all those new features and widgets into the software.... Make the software do what it should, reliably.. then put the new stuff in there.
ie.. bug scrub a train, per chassis. Make it solid.. then put the toyz in.
easier said than done when everybody wants every fancy new feature 110% solid and yesterday.