I've already had, others far more qualified tthat me, come to my defense, since you so kindly eply to my private email in a public forum. I didn't make the "death of the internet" comment, check your attributions. As top the top 100 cheief engineers, assuming for a moment that 100 number is something more than a number I pulled out of thin air., With your comments to Nanog you are probably addressing half.
Dear Jerry Whomever, (and NANOG)
Thanks for my first few clues (below) on how the Internet is actually really run.
Note, I have never predicted "the death of the Internet," only catastrophic collapse(s) during 1996, which is "a good calibration" of the rest of your objections (below).
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, the problem is not that the Internet's chief 100 engineers, whoever they are, fail to report their problems to me, it's that they (you?) fail to report them to anybody, including to each other, which is half our problem.
They do report them to each other. Your assertion is without basis in fact.
Now, NANOG -- not affiliated with anybody, you say, not even the Internet Society. OK, I stand corrected. So, if not ISOC, who are IEPG and NANOG? Do IEPG and NANOG have anything to do with one another? By the way, is IETF not ISOC too? See www.isoc.org.
For info on nanog, check http://www.merit.edu. I don't have time to give you a detail history of how ISOC and IETF, IANA, US DOD, ARPA, NSFNET, NSF etc all interrelate, but there are a number of good papers on it.
Settlements, "wrong on the face?" Or are you just too busy busy busy defensive to argue?
Well, I am quite busy, but as far as I know, there are exactly 2 people on the planet earth, that are studing economics of Internet service. I'd be more than hjappy to send you a pre-release of my paper on economics of route filtering. Yakov would be happy to send you some of his stuff too.
So, you say, increasing Internet diameters (hops) are only of concern to whiners like me? There are no whiners LIKE me. I am THE whiner. And hops ARE a first class problem, Jerry, or are you clueless about how store-and-forward packet switching actually really works?
I know how CIsco routers do IP. I know I've seen the failure modes and patholgies, up close and personal. I've seen the real limits that are causing the problems you are seeing today. And its not Hop count. Only thing I've ever break due to hop count, is software/hardware that doesn't conform to modern RFCs. And then only in a small minority of cases, with long leaf paths off MCIs network. (MCI's network has more hops than some, and a number of MCI customers are regional networks themselves, which increases the complexity.)
Jerry, if you represent the engineers running the Internet, now I'm really worried.
If you represent the PHDs designing the hardware I had to run my parts of the Internet on, I'd be worried. I'd be happy of the "profesional" press could get basic facts right and publicly post corrections when they are caught red handed. The folks of Nanog do have accountablilty to our customers, unlike these so called journalists that post accusations, without making the slighest effort to check the basic facts.
Thank you for sharing, stay tuned,
/Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld
Received: by ccmail from lserver.infoworld.com
From jerry@fc.net X-Envelope-From: jerry@fc.net Received: from largo.remailer.net by lserver.infoworld.com with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #12) id m0u4BbH-000wsjC; Tue, 2 Apr 96 11:18 PST Received: from durango.remailer.net (durango.remailer.net [204.94.187.35]) by largo.remailer.net (8.6.8/8.6.6) with SMTP id KAA23296 for <bob_metcalfe@infoworld.com>; Tue, 2 Apr 1996 10:40:40 -0800 Message-ID: <316175BF.1E79@fc.net> Date: Tue, 02 Apr 1996 10:45:19 -0800 From: jerry <jerry@fc.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: bob_metcalfe@infoworld.com Subject: RE: NANOG X-URL: http://www.infoworld.com/pageone/opinions/metcalfe.htm Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
You might want to note, that NANOG is not any kind of offical function of ISOC, or any other organization. Merit kindly helps provide resources to create a technical forum where issues are raised, and Network Operators learn about problems and fix them.
Just because the chief engineers of the Internet don't report their problems to you, doesn't give you an excuse to go off.
I don't think you even have a clue as to WHO, WHAT, or HOW the Internet is run. Your suggestion that traffic based settlements will do much of anything, other that create jobs for bean counters is just plan wrong of the face of it.
Oh, and about Nanog, perhaps the reason it doesn't meet more often, is because the top 100 engineers running the net are busy working, so people like you can whine about outages, "increasing diameters", etc.
From todays NANOG List:
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996 20:08:03 -0500 (EST) To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Metcalfe's clue density... Sender: owner-nanog@merit.edu Precedence: bulk
the fact that he attributes the IEPG as an ISOC organization is a good calibration on everything else.
just remember:
"Imminent death of net predicted" ::= end of discussion
soooo sorry. thanks for playing. good night.
-mo
______________________________________________ ______________________________________________
Dr. Robert M. ("Bob") Metcalfe Executive Correspondent, InfoWorld and VP Technology, International Data Group
Internet Messages: bob_metcalfe@infoworld.com Voice Messages: 617-534-1215
Conference Chairman for ACM97: The Next 50 Years of Computing San Jose Convention Center March 1-5, 1997 ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________
-- Jeremy Porter, Freeside Communications, Inc. jerry@fc.net PO BOX 80315 Austin, Tx 78708 | 1-800-968-8750 | 512-339-6094 http://www.fc.net