OK, here's the truth about NT.
There. I said it. Please note that I've been using NT for a long time and like it. I am at that crux where using NT and UNIX are about the same. I used to be a huge SunOS bigot. Then I became very NetBSD/FreeBSD oriented. Then I discovered SVR4 and Solaris. Most recently I turned to Linux (a lot, and I like it a lot). But the truth is that if I had to trust my job to an OS I'd pick Sun Solaris 2.5.1 and run it on a Sparcstation. Sad but true.
I like NT but it is anything but crisp. It seems to eat memory for breakfast lunch and dinner. CPU also. It also has these weird effects where apps will just hang now and then. Who knows why.
And the DOS baggage. Can we please loose the DOS baggage? No more "C:" PLEASE. Can't we all just use UNC file names and live in peace? And while were at it, can we use forward slashes everywhere? Thanks. I'll be using an editor with 8-space-tab-stops thank you very much.
Has anyone out there tried to write a Java program which injected data back into the HTTP stream? I understand the Javascript can do it. It seems that making Javascript and Java speak is at best difficult and at worst really clumsy. Why did Netscape have to call it JavaScript anyway? It has nothing to do with Java at all. It they intended it to be an integration tool for Java one wonders what their criteria for success was.
Ever set up a SOHO ISDN router? Whoo boy. Fasten your seat belts. I have done it with several products and I must say the vendors have sure gone out of there way to make it impossible.
Here's a great diagnostic:
(516,1520650) c021: Automaton Layer Started
For the un-hip, "c021" is PPP LCP, or link control protocol. It's documented in an RFC, which I'm sure most people have on-line. Not. How about "Call connected. Starting PPP". Gosh, wouldn't that be a nice message.
The box in question does not even tell you when the PPP negotiation fails. No, that would be far to easy. I think you should have to dive into the trace buffers to bring any product up.
Have I ranted about my cable modem recently? It's a really odd world when I have more bandwidth and better connectivity at home then at work. Well, I do. I love my cable modem. Everyone should have a T1 at home. I can watch the MBONE sessions, I can down load files. I can even work from home. It's great. Continental Cablevision (a.k.a. MediaOne) has done a fine job so far. The first 3 months have been great. We'll see what happens as they ramp up, but so far it's a huge win for $50/month. (but now I want a T3 :-)
I remember the "PicturePhone"... I was going to buy one as soon as they where available. Something went wrong, however, and along with those thousands of Popular Science covers it never made it to market.
I've been using the MBONE for a few years now. It's a cool experiment which is not quite ready for prime time. I think it will be at some point, perhaps soon. There's still some technology issues and many routing and policy issues to be solved but meanwhile the applications keep progressing.
The first application as audio. Next came video. I recently watched Vint Cerf give a talk from Japan as I sat in my office in Boston. It was great - I could understand everything and even view his graphs. I enjoyed the talk and almost forgot the technology which brought it to me (this is a good sign).
Now that sound cards and video capture cards are cheap (a reasonable video capture card is now $99) I would think that video conferencing over the Internet is going to increase. I ran into "cu-seeme" the other day. It seems popular in many circles (including, unfortunately people who like to sell sex). Mitch Kapor once said that it was pornography which made the VCR take off. No doubt chat+video conferencing will make the MBONE grow. Personally I'm happy not to have to board an air plane.
It's interesting to me that people who know better often confuse basic routing (which I'll call next-hop-reachability) with policy. Most of todays routing systems are only concerned with next-hop-reachability. They don't address policy at all. To me policy looks like "you go in the slow lane because you're not paying as much as the guy who goes in the fast lane".
Most of the routing policy discussions I've seen recently seem to have gotten side tracked on some form of tag-switching. The tag-switching seems like a way to prop up slow Ethernet switches and dumb ATM switches instead of addressing the real policy issue.
I think ISP's will (or do) want to charge different rates for different levels of service. This means policy should determine what path the packets take, not reachability. I don't think the policy has to be very complex, but it has to tie together the policy mechanism at a router port (like bandwidth limiting and fair-share) with the end-to-end path (like you take the oc-3 and the other guy gets the oc-12).