Josh, I'm continuing this discussion to the list because I think it's important for us (and it sounds like Ascend too) to understand your definition of "carrier-class." Several people have also responded, so I think it's of interest to others too. Please define for me what you mean by carrier-class? I think we may be seeing a problem of scale here. That is to say, Lucent, Northern Telecomm, etc, certainly have sold a lot of phone switches, but the list of 5ESS owners is probably not that large. Probably measured in the thousands, if not less. They can hire 1 or 2 people to keep up with what code version each customer is running, their satisfaction with the switch, etc. Companies like Cisco and Ascend on the otherhand measure customers in the tens-of-thousands, or hundreds-of-thousands or millions. To add to that problem, there's the problem of the many configurations. Do you want us to keep track of problems on 7513's with IP software? How about DLSw? How about DLSw with a FDDI card? Or what if that FDDI card is actually a VIP PA? What if that VIP PA is hardware rev 2? How does that interact with microcode 2.1? Etc, etc. Before we release a maintenance release, we test the software and have it code reviewed by another programmer. What should we be doing differently that we can realistically do? What is it that a carrier-class vendor does for you that Cisco does not? I certainly understand that Cisco is not perfect, and I'd like to understand how you think we (or Ascend) can improve things to what you call carrier-class. If you can give me some feedback on that, I'll take it back to some of the guys at TAC to pass to the powers that be. Wade --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wade Williams "And the trees are all kept equal by Systems Engineer hatchet, axe, and saw." Cisco Systems, Inc. - N. Peart Brentwood, TN 615-221-2918 wwilliam@cisco.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ++ Ascend Users Mailing List ++ To unsubscribe: send unsubscribe to ascend-users-request@bungi.com To get FAQ'd: <<A HREF="http://www.nealis.net/ascend/faq">http://www.nealis.net/ascend/faq</A>> </PRE> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <STRONG>Follow-Ups</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A HREF="msg10585.html">(ASCEND) Re: What is carrier-class?</A></STRONG></LI> <UL> <LI><EM>From</EM>: Josh Bailey <joshb@xtra.co.nz></LI> </UL> </UL> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <HR> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg10581.html">Re: (ASCEND) Liv. Radius with 4048's</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg10578.html">Re: (ASCEND) A working OSPF?</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg10574.html">(ASCEND) NDN:ascend-users-digest V96 #881</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg10585.html">(ASCEND) Re: What is carrier-class?</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="maillist.html#10580"><STRONG>Main</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thrd235.html#10580"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> </BODY> </HTML>