I'm referring to the _vendor's_ support costs - as in, you don't need as
many people in the TAC if people don't keep running into IOS bugs; you
don't need as large of a RMA pool if the hardware is more reliable, etc.
What percentage of TAC personnel's time is spent dealing with calls
that ultimately result in a BugID? NANOG isn't representative; mostly,
TAC exists to take calls from idiots who bought a box that they don't
know how to configure. Large network operators have a staff of people
to handle that, so when they call TAC, the box is probably broken. I
don't think that's the case with the majority of TAC cases, though.
-- Brett