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Strategies & Market Trends : Piffer OT - And Other Assorted Nuts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cheeky Kid who wrote (56827)	10/18/2000 2:15:15 AM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 63513

One of the main things that I have found as a problem with the reliability of data networks is cultural, not equipment related. Data networks were just not considered as important as voice networks. Therefore, a culture has evolved where routers are sitting on shelves, servers are in open rooms, multiple people, or everyone has the passwords to the equipment, upgrades are done on an ad hoc basis with no seamless way to back out of the upgrade if problems are introduced, no redundancy built into the system and this is a breeding ground for system downtime. On the other hand, the telephone network is highly managed, in secure rooms and completely redundant. I believe that the culture at the cable service providers is even worse than in the normal data network world. And until the culture of reliability is adopted, we will have separate voice and data networks. And I do think that it is coming, but I think that the cable companies are further away from this than your normal last mile provider. For an example of the unreliable culture, look at SI and how they do system upgrades that are not properly tested and they do them in the middle of the week. If the telecom manager was in charge of planning the upgrades last June/July, I guarantee that they would have done some offline testing and they would have cut over in off peak hours on the weekend.