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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Cisco and the tobacco industry
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tony Li wrote: > True, but you ARE suggesting that Cisco produce a binary patch, to a > possibly compressed image. Like I said, it isn't trivial. For example, the patching software (this would require memory) could uncompress the image, patch it and recompress the result. As a double check it can verify that the newly patched compressed image has the correct checksum (because the compression is completely deterministic, you can do this). But this is getting into details that I, having no access to source nor the way the binary is put together, am not competent to go into in any authoritative way. However I do believe this problem can be solved. It may indeed be technically easier to distribute a whole new image. However I suspect this is harder from a management, legal point of view. A patch tool, when made publically available, doesn't give away as much information as does a whole image. And you should make security fixes readily available, to the point that anyone on the planet might download and examine them. However my main point is that upgrading, at least for the provision of security patches needs to be much easier then it is today. Both for the professionally managed networks as well as the SOHO and residential market. -Jeff P.S. I am going out of my way to "plain text" sign these messages rather then sending PGP/MIME. PGP/MIME is the more modern technology. - -- ============================================================================= Jeffrey I. Schiller MIT Network Manager Information Services and Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue Room W92-190 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 617.253.0161 - Voice [email protected] ============================================================================ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFC7C6x8CBzV/QUlSsRAhQdAKCsIXA6OWSM5HXU50Bbq2DkiyWIwwCeLdhF BcCk2LBE6fzCgfT4qndUik8= =wK9y -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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