On Thursday, December 01, 2011 02:56:37 AM Holmes,David A wrote:
What I have seen lately with telco's building and operating Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) based Ethernet networks is that relatively inexperienced telco staff are in charge of configuring and operating the networks, where telco operational staff are unaware of layer 2 Ethernet network nuances, nuances that in an Enterprise environment network engineers must know, or else.
We use RANCID here, quite heavily, to help guide provisioning engineers so they are better prepared for the future, and actually understand what it is they are configuring. Pre-provisioning training is all good and well, but hands-on experience always has the chance of "going the other way". While RANCID is after-the-fact, it's a great tool for refining what the folk on the ground know. It certainly has helped us a great deal, over the years. Mark.