[LibreQoS] Fwd: [ih] The linux router project and wifi routers

[LibreQoS] Fwd: [ih] The linux router project and wifi routers

[Dave Taht]

cisco days were fun...

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Internet-history
<internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
Date: Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 8:24 AM
Subject: Re: [ih] The linux router project and wifi routers
To: Guy Almes <galmes@tamu.edu>
Cc: <dcrocker@bbiw.net>, Internet-history
<internet-history@elists.isoc.org>, Dave Crocker <dhc@dcrocker.net>


in furtherance of Guy's relating that "... It was neat being able to call
cisco to report a
bug, getting a sngle-digit-employee-number person to answer the call and
have a new version of the software without the bug by close of business
that day..."

it was related to yours truly -- by a "a sngle-digit-employee-number
person" -- when we were driving by Len & Sandy's house one day in Menlo
Park that the "secret" to cisco's expeditious customer support was (1) that
the entire engineering staff was on the customer support email address and
thus would see customer "issues" as they were reported and would thereby
directly attend to their "fixage" as they came in and (2) that the 24/7 800
# phone line -- after hours -- rang a phone at Len's bedside...
geoff

On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 8:07 AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
internet-history@elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Dave,
>    The word I heard went into some detail on the discounts, but I recall
> wondering why no mention was made of equity.  I hope your memory is
> correct and that Stanford did get some equity.
>    So, in itself, the "Stanford thought about suing them but didn't"
> story is not very interesting.
>    The more interesting thing would be why they were upset at cisco.
> Particularly given Tom's account stating that cisco had received a
> license during 1986.
>
>    By the way, I still recall my initial visit to cisco in March 1987.
> At the time, all of cisco was in a suite of offices and lab space on the
> second floor of a nondescript building in Menlo Park.  Len Bosack met me
> and stressed (a) the advanced nature of their routers vis a vis the
> competition and (b) his ambition for cisco.  Even though the office
> suite was loosely furnished, his Board Room included a map of the world.
>
>    We ended up placing a huge (seven routers) order with cisco and I
> never regretted it.  It was neat being able to call cisco to report a
> bug, getting a sngle-digit-employee-number person to answer the call and
> have a new version of the software without the bug by close of business
> that day.  Needless to say, that didn't last for more than a year or so.
>
>    But I also recall friends at Stanford being very critical of the
> cisco-Stanford relationship during this period, so it's definitely
> Internet history of interest.
>
>         -- Guy
>
> On 11/3/22 9:05 AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> > On 11/3/2022 5:52 AM, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> >>   During spring 1987, however, when I was shopping for routers for an
> >> NSFnet regional network, I was made aware of quite a bit of
> >> uncertainty about whether Stanford was going to sue cisco over some
> >> Intellectual Property issues.  Evidently there was a settlement that
> >> gave Stanford a discount on buying cisco routers.
> >
> > Adding to the rumors...
> >
> > At the time, I heard all of the above, with the closure being that the
> > settlement was Stanford's getting some cisco shares.
> >
> > d/
> >
> > --
> > Dave Crocker
> > Brandenburg InternetWorking
> > bbiw.net
> >
> > --
> > Internet-history mailing list
> > Internet-history@elists.isoc.org
>
>

--
Geoff.Goodfellow@iconia.com
living as The Truth is True
--
Internet-history mailing list
Internet-history@elists.isoc.org
https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history


-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

Re: [LibreQoS] [ih] The linux router project and wifi routers

[Dave Taht]

forwarding an IT measurement tale from the beginning...

... certainly IT folk dig measurement tools of all sorts. I can't help
but wonder what his at rutgers looked like (in the 1980s) compared to
what we're doing in libreqos.io - dave, you got any screenshots of the
old UB - tool?

On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 7:35 PM Dave Crocker via Internet-history
<internet-history@elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> On 11/3/2022 6:13 PM, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> >   Bosack deserves credit for understanding how big a business the
> > router business would soon be and the urgency to get it going.
>
> A counterpoint.  This time, direct experience, rather than rumor:
>
> While at Ungermann-Bass, around the years being discussed, I managed the
> effort to put TCP/IP onto the U-B intelligent PC card and include
> applications on the PC to use it.  Our second customer was Rutgers.
> Some months later, our salesperson called me and said that Rutgers was
> interested in buying a router from us.  I noted that we didn't have one,
> didn't have one in the pipeline, and that the salesperson already knew this.
>
> She acknowledged all that, and further said that the Rutgers IT guy also
> knew all this.  But, she said, he liked us.  I noted that, really, he
> liked /her/.
>
> But an opportunity is an opportunity, so I asked how long he would
> wait.  (For the router, not for her.)  She called back later and said 6
> months.
>
> We had a guy just coming off a project who had said to me, on my second
> day at U-B, that he really wanted to built a router.  So I corralled
> Stan and asked him how long he would need to build one. We did a
> whiteboard analysis -- well, really, he did it and I just grunted
> occasionally and sometimes asked a question, mostly to keep him going.
> He estimated 5 months and I noted that was perfect, leaving us a month
> for testing.
>
> I went to our marketing guy and he blew me off, saying that there was no
> market and only a few were needed for the backbone.  I then went to my
> boss, John Davidson (*), who said that we never like saying no.  So he
> authorized the project.
>
> Stan Maniply was the best coder I'd seen and hit the mark.  And we
> delivered.
>
> But U-B marketing never knew how to do anything but market to a small
> number of large customers.  (The company had a dumb Ethernet card that
> was faster and cheaper than 3-Com's, but again, had no idea how to
> market it.)
>
> The same limitation applied to an Internet symbolic packet trace product
> I built, based on an existing U-B XNS trace tool.  At the Rutgers PC
> product delivery, I brought it with us so the IT guy could see the
> packet traffic.  He was casually satisfied with our basic delivered
> product but was got /very/ excited about the trace tool.  Lightbulb...
> This made clear that IT people doing networks would be interested in
> something that gave them insight into what the heck was going on... down
> there.  But, again, U-B marketing didn't know what to do with it.  And
> by the way, neither did Wollongong marketing, when we built a fresh tool
> there. Also, I thought it was a product opportunity, not a full business
> opportunity.  This changed when Harry Saal's company reached a million a
> month.
>
> So, yeah, rather anti-climatically and obviously, this underscores that
> understanding an opportunity matters.  Possibly more than building a
> competent product.
>
> d/
>
> (*) Quite a number of people were guilty for having pointed, goaded
> and/or facilitated me down the professional path I've wandered.  John
> Davidson was an unwitting accomplice.  From his Aloha network graduate
> student venue in Hawaii, he wrote a note about delayed echoing over
> satellites, suggesting adoption of a scheme that Tenex used, allowing
> apps to offload to the operating system; this got documented as RFC 357.
> I was doing user support and had noticed echoing delays were frequent,
> more generally.  So I suggested to my office mate, Jon Postel, that this
> would make an interesting Telnet option and I'd like to write it, but
> only if Jon helped.  RFC 560, RCTE.  Option 5, as I recall.  My first
> networking technical effort.
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history@elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history



-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

Re: [LibreQoS] [ih] The linux router project and wifi routers

[Dave Crocker]

On 12/4/2022 4:06 AM, Dave Taht wrote:
> dave, you got any screenshots of the
> old UB - tool?

sorry. no.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker@mastodon.social