Supremely Misguided

The Tao tells us that frustration causes all of humanity’s problems and that frustration is “wanting things to be other than the way they are.”

When I started with ITS¹ five years ago I attended the ITS New Employee Orientation. As the various units explained what they did, the number that provided network services surprised me. Why would so many groups duplicate the services of the one that hired me? I realized that “network” means different things to different people.

To some it means mail. To some it means the Web. To some it means Angel. To some it means authentication. To some it means file systems. Some differentiate at the ISO layer, others within the application, still others by operating system. This can cause problems when that VIP says, “the network is slow today.”

To me, network means transport — moving IP packets from one place to another as quickly and as confidently as possible. No more. No less. To me, the definition of “Networking” in “Telecommunications and Networking Services” is unambiguous. Unfortunately, some of the people who expect us to provide services do not share that understanding and this can lead to frustration.

Some people have valid reasons for doing things on a network that I consider anti-transport. Those things are an abomination to people that do transport and asking us to provide them is a recipe for disaster. It is supremely misguided to think otherwise. Would you go into a restaurant run by an orthodox Hindu and expect a great steak? They might offer one because the market demands it, but the wise patron will stick to the vegetarian dishes.

People who need our services fall into two categories: those who want generic transport and those who have a specific application need. It turns out that the service we provide may be useful to people in the first category. Some people play the lottery and win. These people have good Karma. As for people in the second category, well…

My group specializes in transport. The three engineers on my team and I know diddly-squat about your application. Do you know why? There are around 150,000 of you. If we spent all of our time on applications, we would spend about two man-minutes per year on yours. Is that what you think your application deserves — two minutes of consideration per year? If not, then you should not be asking us to support it. Trust me, you want us spending our time on transport. You can have the best network application in the world and without transport it is worth bupkis.

If you have an application on your network that needs something, you have a problem. You may think that asking us to provide that something sounds like a good idea. Think again. Perhaps you need to rethink your application. If you convince yourself that you need it, you may need to hire or subcontract for the expertise that you need. I do not know. However, if you want to solve your problem, you have to start by recognizing the way things are. Otherwise, you will find frustration.

---

1. Actually I started in Network Engineering, which is part of the Network Planning and Integration group in Telecommunications and Networking Service, which is a unit of ITS. Network Engineering no longer exists. I am currently the manager of Network Development Engineering. Did you notice the emphasis on “network” in all of that? I thought you did. ↩

Share: Delicious | Facebook