North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Networking Pearl Harbor in the Making

  • From: Christian Kuhtz
  • Date: Mon Nov 07 11:05:32 2005



Seems everyone considering the options would be well advised to consider how availability/reliability is actually calculated and based on that exercise make a more educated decision as to whether this does yield improvements at a cost that can be absorbed.

Just because you have n different flavors doesn't mean availability goes up. And you might find some surprises in how costs develop. This isn't just about equipment, it's the operational impact as well.

Unfortunately, short of a verifiable economic cost being associated with such a doomsday scenario, what a business case can carry is what will be deployed. And regulation doesn't necessarily solve anything here either (as it isn't cost neutral).

You can always build more availability. But can you afford to pay for it. (IMHO, the DoD JSF effort is real world testament to what happens when the cost of an ideal becomes so high that a compromise must be reached to sustain the effort -- this very much has its analogy in networking as well).

Or those are my $.02 anyway,
Christian

On Nov 7, 2005, at 10:50 AM, Simon Waters wrote:

On Monday 07 Nov 2005 3:42 pm, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
It's an argument for vendor diversity.
No it is an argument for code base diversity (or better software engineering).

Vendor diversity doesn't necessarily give you this, and you can get this with
one vendor.

Vendor diversity might be a good idea, but for other reasons.