do you have actual statistics to back that up?
It's not meant to be an exact number, but it's pretty close to being
correct, in my experience.
one of my axioms for dealing with the Internet is that people's
experiences (and assumptions) about what is typical vary widely - no
single person's assumptions holds true in general. the consequence for
protocol standards is that they need to work in the face of a variety of
assumptions/scenarios.
there are better (more reliable, more secure, more effective,
cheaper) ways of providing a set of functions at a user terminal
than to give everyone user-programmable machines and then have the
network insist that they all have a rigidly controlled
configuration...
Yes. And there are mistakes in IETF protocols that have been
deployed for decades, too. What are we supposed to tell the people
who have billions of dollars invested in their current systems? "You
got it wrong, we're not going to come up with a solution to your
problems." ?
no, we say "we're going to try to give you an evolution path that
doesn't break compatibility with the investment you've made in our
technology". however realize that the half-life of a computer system is
pretty short compared to the lifetime of a successful protocol standard.
there's more investment in the protocols than in the hardware, and the
protocols don't generally assume user-programmable machines on
everyone's desks. (a few of them predate those days)
Keith
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