InfoWorld Column on Netcom-Cisco Ampersand Collapse

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
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Dear NANOG,

You saw that Craig Huegen has caught me in ANOTHER error.

He's of course right (way below) that:

        The Network Works. No Excuses.

is Cisco's slogan, not Netcom's, as I incorrectly wrote in my current
InfoWorld column. Netcom doesn't seem to have a slogan. I stand corrected
AGAIN. A copy of my incorrect InfoWorld column is below FYI. Nothing
slips by NANOG (;->).

Not to get back at Mr. Huegen, but he should note that Cisco is not "cisco"
anymore. Gotcha!

By the way, Mr. Huegen, the well-known fact that the Internet offers no
service guarantees has not, as you've written, escaped me. This well-known
fact is one of those we are working to FIX.

Also, tell us, what was the "original purpose" of the Internet? Not that
it matters much.

Ever your fan and loyal opposition,

/Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld

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==>Not to get back at Mr. Huegen, but he should note that Cisco is not "cisco"
==>anymore. Gotcha!

Take a look at the logo sometime. In fact, at the time, it created quite
a stir within the company, and a lot of long-time employees still use
cisco...

==>By the way, Mr. Huegen, the well-known fact that the Internet offers no
==>service guarantees has not, as you've written, escaped me. This well-known
==>fact is one of those we are working to FIX.

My point, as I've reflected in private e-mail to you, is that you will
never get this without losing value in this network. The Internet is
based on sharing information. The minute you begin to charge for each and
every little piece of data someone requests from you, the value is lost.

When you have a large 'cloud' of providers, you can never guarantee
end-to-end connectivity unless one of two things happens:

1. One company buys it all (I don't see this happening), and then the
government gets hold of it and 'regulates' it.

or

2. You massively change the price structures and force providers to
demand money from other providers on a peer level. This is bad, because
a LOT of the current structure relies on bi-lateral route peering
agreements that are free. Each provider giving a bit to help other
providers out. You insert money into there, and a lot of providers won't
have incentives to establish agreements for better paths.

==>Also, tell us, what was the "original purpose" of the Internet? Not that
==>it matters much.

Now, now, Bob, it really does matter much here. You see, the 'original
purpose' of the internet was for research, and fostered a spirit of
cooperation between the entities involved. This spirit of cooperation is
what has kept this network alive.

Insert more money into the equation, and as we've seen since the
transition from NSF support, you begin to lose that cooperation in favor
of competition, or just plain isolation.

/cah

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You mean like X.25 ? :slight_smile:

Michael Dillon ISP & Internet Consulting
Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com

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By the way, Mr. Huegen, the well-known fact that the Internet offers no
service guarantees has not, as you've written, escaped me. This well-known
fact is one of those we are working to FIX.

"We"? See below.

                Borrowing a threshold used by our Federal Communications
                Commission in the reporting of telephone outages, when more =
than
                50,000 people are denied their Internet access for more
than an hour,
                let's call it an Internet collapse and give it a name.

You are moving the goalpost. Your new term, "Internet collapse", is
rather much out of line with accepted definitions of "collapse". But
never mind.

You say you want to "fix" the Internet. You borrow a threshold for
telephone outages, and apply this to the Internet. You want
"guarantees", as in the telephone industry. In other words, your
definition of a "fix" is FCC/telco style regulated service
provisioning -- instead of letting the market decide, you want a
committee to think on behalf of people.

You are too late for this. The idea is past its sell-by date.

But never mind the philosophy. Have you ever wondered what Internet
access costs per minute, whether local, long distance, or
international? Your average dial-up Internet user pays 10-40 dollars
per month these days. He would pay that in a few hours, using
the telephone model.

So go ahead and call for your "fix" to the Internet. If you succeed,
the customers -- your readers -- won't like what's coming. But
you're doing it all for them, right?

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By the way, Mr. Huegen, the well-known fact that the Internet offers no
service guarantees has not, as you've written, escaped me. This well-known
fact is one of those we are working to FIX.

Who is "we"? I ask since you sign this "...your fan and loyal opposition"

Has "we" explored the potential cost impact to the consumer of some
arbitrary level of service obligation? Or is the assumption that this
should all be accomplished, to any degree which one might fantasize
about while sitting at their keyboard, while maintaining the same
price?

Just as a reality-check, in the US being able to communicate over the
phone system to someone in Europe for around $30/hour off-peak is
considered a very good price, to the Pacific rim about twice that,
call it $50/hour. Personal internet service to anywhere in the world
is considered somewhat expensive at $1/hour.

Also, tell us, what was the "original purpose" of the Internet? Not that
it matters much.

To remain robust as a defense communications medium in the face of
nuclear attack. But that presumed of course that the defense
establishment was willing to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers'
money and build an infrastructure according to those specifications.
It's not some magical property of IP header packet formats. The
original purpose of Velcro was to hold space suits closed, but
purchasing a yard of Velcro at your local Woolworth's hardly gets you
a seat on the next space shuttle launch.

I say this with great regret, Mr Metcalfe, but the more I read from
you both on the net (such as here) and in your column the less I think
of you.

I hope you don't take that entirely wrong, but you're being
exceedingly silly and for some reason have chosen to cast your
formerly sterling reputation, as someone who understands things, to
the wind. Sad. It's certainly not a matter of "loyal opposition", that
would be an easy rationalization. We argue on the net constantly,
nothing unusual. It's that what you represent as criticisms and
observations strike me as, I dunno, the cheapest sort of shallow
demagoguery I guess. Why not just reduce your columns to "IT SHOULD
ALL BE HALF-PRICE AND TWICE AS GOOD!" and save yourself and your
readers a lot of time?