Robin, I think there are 2 separate questions. I agree with Joel's first proposition. I'd simplify greatly Joel's second proposition.
The first proposition is the commonly used existing meaning for "incrementally deployable". This is purely technical and refers to the ability of upgraded and non-upgraded systems/routers/hosts to communicate among themselves. The second proposition is in fact hard to measure or quantify, but is really a question of whether there are sufficient economic incentives for a new approach to become widely deployed over time. This last ought to be kept separate from the technical question in the first proposition. So I'd suggest we refer to this as "having sufficient economic incentives to be widely deployed". Someone else can devise a clear (and different from 'incrementally deployable') short name, if desired. Note that the second questions answers will likely vary based upon the class of architecture chosen. To give a simple example, for an approach relying on router upgrades, any major router vendor might be in a position to greatly reduce the economic incentive to upgrade by simply not offering upgraded routers in a timely manner. Similarly, for an approach relying upon host upgrades, any major proprietary OS vendor might be in a position to have the same drag on the economics. (Open source system upgrades can be offered by 3rd parties; there is no major router vendor with open source, whilst Linux and BSD are both major host OSs and open source.) Ran -- to unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body. archive: <http://psg.com/lists/rrg/> & ftp://psg.com/pub/lists/rrg
