Ascend Archive
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[WAS: Re: (ASCEND) Net Medic] what we want...
On Tue, 12 Aug 1997 10:28:26 +0200 (MET DST) Manfred Kwiatkowski said:
>
>Josh Bailey <joshb@xtra.co.nz> writes:
>>
>> But I'm not asking for ATMP, the Mickey Mouse Protocol, RADIUS Episode
>> IIII Part IV, all I want is a box my users can login to, and download
>> files without locking up.
>>
>> I'M NOT ASKING FOR ROCKET SCIENCE HERE.
>
>Worse, you are asking for the unspectacular. Solid, reliable
>engineers work that is expensive but has no immediate return of
>invest. This is much harder to market than numbers (e.g. 56k....)
>or novelties.
Partly, we've done it to ourselves. After all, what do the manufacturers
hear from their customers (us)? "When will you add feature XYZZY?" and
"Why aren't you supporting protocol PDQ? So-and-so over at Fly-by-night
Engineering says that theirs is shipping..."
A long time ago (10+ years), in a place not that far away, I was part of
a DEC VAR that did systems for process control & data acquistion. We
figured systems primarily three ways. If it _had_ to work with no
messing around, no finger pointing, etc. In went all DEC gear (sometimes,
we still got the mess...). If the customer needed to save money, needed
technology closer to cutting edge (not at it), or plain had to have some
feature DEC wasn't yet shipping, we went with CDC, Emulex, Diglog, etc.
gear. Then there was the third group. New stuff, new companies, odd stuff,
etc. With this group, we knew we would be writing drivers, debugging
production glitches, generally having fun, but not making much money :^<
There is a reason that companies like Cisco, Xyplex, etc. were/are the
choice when you don't want/have time to explore the envelope. (And just
like DEC, they've shown signs of "We're the leader, do it our way."
mentality in recent days...) I dare say that most of our favorite brands
in the ISP biz would far into my old 2nd or 3rd groupings.
John
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
John T. Farmer Proprietor, GoldSword Systems
jfarmer@goldsword.com Public Internet Access in East Tennessee
dial-in (423)470-9953 for info, e-mail to info@goldsword.com
Network Design, Internet Services & Servers, Consulting
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