Re: NET99 sabotages IGC's routes

["Erik E. Fair" (Internet Architect) <fair () apple com>]

        Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:28:31 -0700 (MST)
        From: Ehud Gavron <GAVRON () ACES COM>

        >They resulted in DALnet (the third largest IRC network) being split 
        ...

        Yada yada yada.  Look, if you have a serious complaint, stick to it.
        Complaining about IRC is tantamount to saying "Hi, I'm without a clue
        as to what is important and what isn't."  Nobody is going to go to bat
        for you because your IRC net was split.  Try something more important
        like "Our customers couldn't reach the net."  I know it doesn't sound
        exciting, but it strikes home for _everyone_ (almost) on this list.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but these are semantically equivalent.
He was saying, "my customers couldn't reach the net."

IRC and other online chat systems may be amusing to you, but AOL makes
a substantial fraction of their millions by supporting that "mundane"
application on their system. I have no doubt that there are some ISP's
who take it equally seriously. It seems that IGC is one such.

Put another way, why should you care what the bits are? You're just
hired to route packets from A to B with some relatively high probability
of success. When you fail to do so, the customer will be upset,
regardless of how silly you think his application is. Do you really
want upset customers? Belittle their uses of the Internet, and I
promise you that they'll abandon your service for a more customer
oriented ISP quite rapidly.

        from the peanut gallery at a $12B "toy" computer company,

        Erik E. Fair    apple!fair      fair () apple com