On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Sean Donelan wrote:
Although many of the principles are the same, there are differences between running a corporate network and a public network. You can have the same people doing both. In small ISPs its likely the same people will be doing both. A larger company will have seperate groups because they serve different masters and have different measures of success. A company may not want to pay for the same levels of reliablity and survivability for their corporate network as their public IP network.
The goals of the corporate network and the public IP network are often different, at best. The corporate network is inevitably focused around the needs of the business, including such irritations as file sharing, printing, calender services, video conferencing, and other notoriously secure (heh!) services. The public IP network is focused by and large on providing a limited number of services, and flinging packets around as fast as possible. The clue behind the public IP network is almost always focused on the network (often to the point of considering any systems involved to be second class citizens "Why should I care if there's a system down? It only matters if the network's down"[1]) The clue on the corporate network often doesn't care at all about the network (beyond "is it running") - but really cares that their services are deployed and accessible. I think that Sean's right about the goals being different - but it's more than just "reliability and survivability". The network and enterprise markets are notably different, with different goals and requirements. Most vendors seem to have a very clear grasp on that - and I suspect that it'll be another 5-10 years before we see any form of true convergance (if not longer). [1] This ignoring the fact that a down'd network monitoring system may cause all sorts of interesting side effects in viewing the network... ========================================================================== "A cat spends her life conflicted between a deep, passionate and profound desire for fish and an equally deep, passionate and profound desire to avoid getting wet. This is the defining metaphor of my life right now."