North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Spanning tree melt down ?

  • From: Joe Abley
  • Date: Wed Nov 27 10:55:19 2002

On Wednesday, Nov 27, 2002, at 10:25 Canada/Eastern, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:

Hmm, well until the comment about STP it sounded like the guy did something
stupid on a program/database on a mainframe..

I cant see how STP could do this or require that level of DR. Perhaps its just
the scapegoat for the Doc's mistake which he didnt want to admit!
If it's anything like any other layer-2 IT network meltdown I've seen, it'll be some combination of:

+ no documentation on what the network looks like, apart from a large
yellow autocad diagram which was stapled to the wall in the basement
wiring closet in 1988

+ a scarcity of diagnostic tools, and no knowledge of how to use the
ones that do exist

+ complete ignorance of what traffic flows when the network is not
broken

+ a cable management standard that was first broken in 1988 and has
only been used since to pad out RFPs

+ consideration to network design which does not extend beyond the
reassuring knowledge that the sales guy who sold you the hardware
is a good guy, and will look after you

+ random unauthorised insertion of hubs and switches into the fabric
by users who got fed up of waiting eight months to get another
ethernet port installed in their lab

+ customers who have been trained by its vendors to believe that
certification is more important than experience

+ customers who believe in the cost benefit of a large distributed
layer-2 network over a large distributed (largely self-documenting)
layer-3 network.

Just another day at the office.


Joe