educating the ineducable

From: Strata Rose Chalup (strata@virtual.net)
Date: Wed Mar 21 2001 - 13:55:25 PST


I love talking to people about technology who know nothing about it.
Like executive search firm guys who call me up to try to grill me about
a hire made by an old employer, then change tactics to trying to sell
me on a startup they have 3000 miles away.

"No, this is incredible-- you won't believe it. Instead of sending
a million copies of the message, you just multicast it! And it doesn't
get hung up like all the other traffic, because it DOESN'T USE TCP/IP!"

"Oh, so it uses a custom protocol? That'll be interesting to get ISP's
to route for you."

"No, no, it uses UDP."

"But UDP runs on top of IP. It's subject to the same laws of physics."

"But they're sending ONE COPY SIMULTANEOUSLY to all the millions of
subscribers!"

"Umm, are all these subscribers on the same ISP?"

"No, they're in ISP's all over the world! And we can eliminate all these
traffic bottlenecks!"

"Just how do you ROUTE these UDP packets to all these people via multicast,
especially since most ISPs aren't configured to multicast to all their
clients?"

"The ISP's will put in our turnkey box. We'll be making money for them!
It's a no-brainer! It doesn't cost them anything!"

ARGH....sometimes I think improving the breed should be done with directed
education, such as that produced by the application of a large, heavily
bound book forcibly to the occipital region. Repeat until student has no
more questions.

_SRC

-- 
========================================================================
Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ]                      strata "@" virtual.net
VirtualNet Consulting                            http://www.virtual.net/
 ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration **
=========================================================================



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