I'll agree with Vadim's assesment. Metcalf can mock Merit and MFS
folks all he wants, but they're doing damn good work. I
especially liked this quote:
rm] Yes, I found pettiness and bureaucratic infighting among the
rm] groups I had hoped would be pulling the Internet together.
Death of the net, death of the net! The network operators
won't all agree, we're DOOMED!!!
rm] I stand corrected, but not reassured. Back at NANOG, I was
rm] surrounded by people whose lives are about "running code." I
rm] twiddled as these people, unaccustomed as they are to public
rm] speaking, stood up one by one in front of 350 people without
rm] having ever tried their slides on GWU's projection system. We all
rm] waited while Windows booted. If you have running code, it seems,
rm] you don't have to respect your audience by checking your slides
rm] at least once. Or by wearing a suit.
Sheesh. I dunno. Does respecting your audience mean "wearing a suit"
and having a flawless a/v presentation?
Or does it mean presenting encompassing intelligent information? I think
the latter, and I think Mr Ethernet failed in this respect in his most
recent article in InfoWeek.
-alan
......... Vadim Antonov is rumored to have said:
]
]
] >From: Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>
] >I don't know if you folks are following Metcalfe's columns...
]
] The guy is seriously out of touch with reality. He seems to be
] completely unable to comprehend the fact that packet loss is
] not a malfunction but rather the nature's way to say "you need
] more bandwidth". And the fact that it was exactly suits who
] got Internet to that point; engineers keet screaming about
] inadequate facilities for as long as i could remember.
]
] And if he thinks backbone engineers have time to prepare slides
] (or have secretaries to do that for them) i'd like to move to the
] world he's living in.
]
] --vadim
]
]