Not really. The IT guy buys Cisco from a sales rep, turns it on and it works, using Cisco SCCP or some other proprietary protocol (or protocol extension) to make it work. He gets a Cisco Certification to plug in other Cisco gear, using a CLI that only he or an anointed few really understands. The public standards are what is used to talk to the other vendor's stuff, until it is replaced with Cisco stuff with corresponding loss in functionality while still in place.
The RFP lists "supported standards", the response checks "yes", and "testing" is largely limited to believing the response on the RFP in 95% of all cases. Standards are largely a belief system between vendor and customer, and interopability is done on an ad-hoc basis during deployment due to the open and unvetted nature of implementations, not only between companies, but between product lines from the same vendor, and often different versions of the same product. On 9/5/07, H. Lally Singh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 9/5/07 11:20 AM, "Michael Slavitch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here's the difference: > > "My new router doesn't work with my PS3" --> screw off! > > "My new router doesn't follow a basic internet standard" --> We'll replace > that for you sir. > > People can test against standards implementations with much better accuracy > than trying a bunch of stuff on the market. A standard for NAT traversal > means that the NATs can start making sure *they* work with us, not just > visa-versa. > > -- > H. Lally Singh > Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science > Virginia Tech > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > p2p-hackers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers > -- Michael Slavitch Ottawa Ontario Canada _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
