Re: Journal of Internet Disasters

["Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer () mhsc com>]

At 10:20 AM 11/15/98 -0500, Deborah Ann Smith wrote:
> Sure, we have a responsibility to mitigate problems from up the pipe.
>
> But We as an industry and consumers need to start demanding - via writing
> to the congress people (They will read letters, not email- and they will 
> listen if enough people contact them), complaints to the FCC and other
> involved groups - high standards of quality from the InterNic and other
> organizations that the Internet depend on.  We are essentially captive to
> their screwups, NO MATTER HOW WELL we prepare.
>
> Even the FAA recognizes no matter how good a flight crew, if they get
> incorrect information from the Tower, any problems that occur are the
> Tower's fault!

Ahem, I suspect that you're not a pilot. The last time I went through
ground school, the pilot has ultimate responsibility for the lives and
welfare of all aboard. This includes the responsibility to tell the tower
to buzz-off when it's obvious that they're wrong. Even in controlled
air-space, where control is heavily biased towards the tower, the pilot has
*final* responsibility. If someone dies, the pilot had better have been
there first or have a good reason why they're still around, to explain why
they're still around. If you're wrong, you had better be dead wrong.

Actually, I find your analogy very apropos. To our customers, their
internal systems are most important, after that it is their inter-facility
connections, *then* they consider their connections to everyone else. Some
of us handle their internal and inter-facility connections, as well as
their external connections. When the InterNIC fargs-up who do they call?
Are they going to understand? The bottom-line is that they don't care.
Failure costs them $cash$.
It is our job to shield our customers from this as much as possible. Those
of us who do, will have satisfied customers, vs. those of us who rely on
excuses.



___________________________________________________ 
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) 
e-mail: <mailto:rmeyer () mhsc com>rmeyer () mhsc com
Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com
Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site: <http://www.mhsc.com/>www.mhsc.com/
___________________________________________ 
 Who is John Galt?
 "Atlas Shrugged" - Ayn Rand