Subject: RE: network controls are necessary

From: "Tony Li" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 10:26:20 -0800

|   Tony Hain wrote:
|   > This looks like a big problem to the network admin, 
|   because they are
|   > used to dealing with a few boxes, but for a host admin, 
|   this is exactly
|   > what they do. What needs to happen here is for them to 
|   work together
|   > (*gasp*).
|   
|   This is the end to end argument run amok.  If this truely is an 
|   assumption then Joel is right, and this is a recipe for 
|   failure.  You 
|   were right to gasp because more often than not in large 
|   companies this 
|   is *not* the case.

In fact, in my humble experience, it is normally the case that they
are mortal enemies, competing for budget.

Tony

---

From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 15:31:53 -0800

Tony Li wrote:
> In fact, in my humble experience, it is normally the case 
> that they are mortal enemies, competing for budget.

This does not mean it is our responsibility to foster the petty
bickering. The goal appears to be to pick sides, with heavy
representation from those who are most closely related to the network
side. I am not advocating that the hosts do it all, in fact I don't
think either side can go it alone, much as they would often like to. 

Our job is to define a mechanism that allows a disparate range of
policies to be implemented without serious detriment to the routing
system. Locking down so that the routing system is in complete control
makes defining a technology simpler, but that doesn't mean the result
will actually address the policy requirements. Dismissing a set of
policies is a fine thing to do when building a network, but not when
defining the standard technology that those individual networks will
use. 

Tony