I call shenanigans. Sure, you can make a calculation of the expected time that the token will return, but if a station drops the token and/or the active monitor station dies the calculation will be wrong. High utilization and reliability were great features of token ring back when Ethernet hubs and half duplex connections were common, but Ethernet switches and full duplex were the final nail in the coffin for token ring LAN.
In deployment situations where token ring is already prevalent, a cost/benefit analysis must be made as to whether it's worth maintaining the old network or moving to ethernet as token ring vendors dry up. Also, anyone considering deploying token ring in a completely new rollout should have their head examined.
Oh come on, Ethernet was cutting edge in 1989. Today it's a proven technology that the vast majority of companies have used to move away from Token Ring due to reduced maintenance costs. In my opinion, the original poster was smart to move on. S/he read between the lines and came to a conclusion that working there was probably going to be more trouble than it was worth.
Consider: if the company were "happy with their token rings", why bother "starting to look into ethernet" at all? One potential scenario is that a predecessor that OP would have replaced was struggling to maintain an aging network environment, was fed up with trying to convince management that the expenditure for a more up-to-date networking technology was worthwhile, and thus left.
When I was hired, I actually got more than I asked for.
Which just means that both the figure you stated and the figure you actually got were probably well below the figure that the company was willing to pay, had you negotiated correctly.
I've been there, done that with a previous employer. Since I was straight out of university, I valued my perceived worth to them at much lower than they did. I was punished accordingly by being put on the lowest payscale because my initial figure was WAY too low.
Needless to say, these days I'm much more careful with salary negotiations...
While I don't necessarily agree with the first point of the parent (software should be 100% free), the last point (when your development is determined by the whims of single entity you run a very significant chance of getting burned) is still valid without any additonal refusal to pay conditions. Just ask any VB developer currently hurting from Microsoft's decision to drop classic VB from their development strategy.
Suppose BitMover not only removed the gratis licenses from Free Software developers but took the further action of simply refusing to sell a license to anyone involved in Linux?
The risks are still there even if the intention is to pay for the software if the zero price edition is withdrawn. I can't speak for all developers and/or software company managers but IMO most would understand the risks involved in using non-free software, and usually just accept them and proceed anyway.
What If I'm an admin of missile silo control room computers trying to fend off a DOS attack caused by being linked on the front page of slashdot because our network was infected by a worm, which allowed 13 year olds to gain administrative access and deface the web site hosted on our windows server?
The minimum MTU has been increased in IPV6, which offsets the IP header size increase. The extra overhead will be negligible.
Think of it this way: To send a thousand octets of data it may take 2 packets using IPV4 but only 1 packet using IPV6. Two IPv4 packet headers equals 40 bytes. One IPV6 packet header equals 40 bytes.
Admittedly the overhead may increase when small packets are being sent, but the extra features of the V6 protocol more than compensate for this - there's more to IPV6 than increased address space (see RFC 2460).
Anyone who can't spare an extra 20 bytes per packet should probably upgrade their 9600bps modem from 1990 anyway...
Is this the best you can come up with to argue why IPV6 isn't ready?
Assuming it is: 1. Cisco Routers suck at IPV6.
That's kind of an implementation issue rather than a protocol issue wouldn't you agree? If word gets out that Cisco Routers aren't providing bang for buck then there are always alternatives as you have suggested. If performance really matters then IT managers can argue the point that the corporate policy is outdated and has to change...
2. There are too many addresses.
Too many addresses is certainly a better situation to be in than not enough addresses I'd argue. Pretty much everyone in this thread that has had to deal with NAT has put forward that it's a deal with the devil: it's a just barely sufficient hack to a tricky problem.
3. IPV6 addresses are too large.
Extreme amount of memory to hold routing tables? Sure, if addresses were picked at random with no regard for the overall layout of the Internet. There's nowhere in the protocol specification that says all 64 network bits have to be used at once when rolling out. Give every ISP it's own separate chunk of the IPV6 address space to which it can portion out to it's customers, and routing may actually become easier, not harder. With 64 bits used for routing I'm sure every ISP in the world could have way more individual IP addresses than it could possibly need, and there would still be plenty of network prefixes left over. We as a community now have a lot more experience in dealing with address allocation issues than we did in 1970...
4. The IPV6 header is too large.
Oh, please. If you're worried about conserving a mere 20 bytes in each packet don't you think more would be saved by design superior compression schemes for when the data intensive applications like Voice, TV, Radio, etc become an integral part of the internet? Also, what's the difference today if a web page takes 40 seconds to load, or 41 seconds to load?
These aren't discussion points, the complaints are too trivial for that. I would hope that you put a bit more effort into research if I were the one reading your dissertation. IPV6 may not be perfect, so point out some REAL design problems if you're going to try.
Don't worry, having IPV4 addresses as a sub-block of IPV6 addresses, dual IPV4/IPV6 hosts, and IPV6 protocol encapsulation was such a good idea that the designers of the IPV6 protocol decided to use it.
They even made it simple! If my IPV4 address is 203.131.45.99 my IPV6 address will be 0:0:0:0:0:0:203.131.45.99 (there's even an abbreviated notation for a V6 address which would just be::203.131.45.99)
The likelyhood is that the migration to V6 isn't proceeding as fast as possible for political and financial reasons rather than technical ones.
Thanks for the link! If I had mod points I'd spend 'em here. I was just thinking that once I finish reading the comments I'll head on over to Safari and see if it's available...
We select people with programming language skills appropriate to the job description of maintaining a software product written in a particular programming language, in this case C++. If a candidate does not have experience and skill with C++ then they are unsuited to the job. It's certainly not the only thing we look for but it's a big pre-requisite.
C++ can be a complex language, for sure. But we aren't asking complex questions and we don't encourage complex constructs in production code because it still has to be maintained by the other developers who may not be familiar with the intricacies of the C++ language specification. However, I would think that anyone who has had 10 years experience in C++ software development, and not 10 years experience in resume padding would know what the keyword protected means.
As an example of the coding questions we ask, the first question on the quiz is:
What is the value of 'j' after this loop terminates? int j; for(j=0; j < 5; j+=2);
Half of the candidates get this question wrong. If they get this one wrong and others like it then we have to wonder how much damage can they could do by not understanding what's happening in the real code that they'd be dealing with on a day to day basis.
The best thing you can do for a career in IT is to truly love it and find it fascinating. This will keep your skills sharp as you experiment and play with cutting edge technologies on your own, and maybe on your job, and also provide the motivation needed to obtain a deeper understanding of the many details associated with programming, system administration, engineering, etc.
Amen to that! My work is currently interviewing for a programmer position with the prerequisites of a bit of analysis and design experience, knowledge of the Windows operating system and C++ coding skills. Pretty average commodity skills one would think.
Our interview process basically involves a series of questions about how past experience may relate to the job description, and a very basic C/C++ coding test on a few sheets of paper. We realise that in an interview situation it's not always possible to get 100% on the coding test so that's not what we're looking for. However the amount of candidates that *completely* fail the coding test (i.e. every question wrong) yet purport to have 10 years of experience with C and C++ programming is amazing. These aren't hard questions. In terms of C what does dereferencing mean? In terms of C++ what does public, protected, private mean? What is the value of a variable at the end of a tracing a textbook for loop?
Those who truly have a passion for their software development work should be able to fly through this little practical quiz and move on to impressing the interviewer in other aspects of their career development. If those that apply can't pass our simple test then perhaps they don't belong in any sort of C or C++ software development role at all.
The RIAA is known to have a liking for fun with numbers so lets examine the $60 million in damages they're claiming.
First, a few assumptions: 1 CD = 10 songs (on average) 1 CD = AU$25 (on average) therefore, a song costs $2.50 on average.
In order to claim $60 million in lost revenue, the file sharers must have either had 24 million songs on offer, or had 24 million transfers of the songs that they did have on offer.
1 song = 3MB (on average) 24 million songs = 72 million MB. It seems unlikely that a backyard operation would have 72 terabytes of storage dedicated to mp3 sharing...
Perhaps the ARIA (RIAA) are counting the number of songs downloaded from the site? We've already established that 1 song = 3MB (on average); and 24 million songs = 72 million MB
Now assuming the best possible situation where this guy could get ADSL broadband in his home at a fully uncapped upload rate of 8Mbps (1MBps), which is impressive in itself since in Australia the cost of bandwidth is phenomenal: 72 million MB = 72 million seconds
= nearly 2.3 years of sustained traffic at the maximum his network connection would allow. IF it were capable of the above speed.
Is this another case of ARIA/RIAA pulling numbers out of it's arse?
This paper ballot should both contain a human readable printout of what you (the voter) just voted for, as well as a mag-stripe encoding of the same.
What if the voting machine was tampered with to produce a paper ballot where the human readable side shows a different candidate than the machine readable side?
Sure, as I walk out of the booth I can check the human readable side to verify that whoever I voted for is printed there, and sure, if a hand count was ordered the human reading my ballot paper will know my intentions. But since I wouldn't have a trusted magnetic stripe reader handy, there's no way to verify that a magnetic striped ballot paper I have in my hand is really going to tally up properly on the vote counter the way that I voted.
You're almost there with a verifiable way of electronic voting - however the tallying machines MUST be able to verify and tally my vote EXACTLY the way that I as a voter verify it and EXACTLY the way that the vote would be verified in a hand count by a human. Duplication of information on the ballot paper in this manner just provides one more way that the electoral system can be subverted.
There are machines capable of reading a black mark in a certain location on a piece of card. I can't see why these weren't considered as away to provide a paper audit trail. Electronic transmission of preliminary election results to a tally room is all well and good for the TV coverage, but the binding election result MUST be arrived at using a open and verifiable means at every stage in the vote tallying and ballot paper distribution/storage process.
This paper ballot should both contain a human readable printout of what you (the voter) just voted for, as well as a mag-stripe encoding of the same.
What if the voting machine was tampered with to produce a paper ballot where the human readable side shows a different candidate than the machine readable side?
Sure, as I walk out of the booth I can check the human readable side to verify that whoever I voted for is printed there, and sure, if a hand count was ordered the human reading my ballot paper will know my intentions. But since I wouldn't have a trusted magnetic stripe reader handy, there's no way to verify that a magnetic striped ballot paper I have in my hand is really going to tally up properly on the vote counter the way that I voted.
You're almost there with a verifiable way of electronic voting - however the tallying machines MUST be able to verify and tally my vote EXACTLY the way that I as a voter verify it and EXACTLY the way that the vote would be verified in a hand count by a human. Duplication of information on the ballot paper in this manner just provides one more way that the electoral system can be subverted.
There are machines capable of reading a black mark in a certain location on a piece of card. I can't see why these weren't considered as away to provide a paper audit trail. Electronic transmission of preliminary election results to a tally room is all well and good for the TV coverage, but the binding election result MUST be arrived at using a open and verifiable means at every stage in the vote tallying and ballot paper distribution/storage process.
The fundamental problem with DRM and Copy Protection isn't who's going to get paid this week and by whom. The more important question is are our grandchildren and grandchildren's children going to be able to read/listen/examine/critique/archive our creative legacy?
That is the crime against humanity. Comparing the theft of our history with Hitler's mass murder in the early 20th century doesn't make DRM any less of a crime.
Besides, if there are 3 vulnerable systems on a network, and 1 infected system, the responsible thing to do is to protect the 3 remaining uninfected systems.
I'd think a higher priority would be to patch the vulnerable systems rather than play whack-a-mole with already infected systems.
I do agree with the broadband providers taking customers offline if they (knowingly or otherwise) encourage the propagation of worms. Something in the terms and conditions of sign up to make it official. Maybe not a rude cut-off, because it's hard to figure out what you need to fix if you can't read up about the problem on the 'net. Perhaps a warning e-mail a week in advance telling them where and how to fix things or action will be taken to protect the bandwidth of the network against worms. You can be sure that if customers have to go without service they'll figure out how to fix problems fast even if they are computer illiterate.
Slashdot Mirror
I call shenanigans. Sure, you can make a calculation of the expected time that the token will return, but if a station drops the token and/or the active monitor station dies the calculation will be wrong. High utilization and reliability were great features of token ring back when Ethernet hubs and half duplex connections were common, but Ethernet switches and full duplex were the final nail in the coffin for token ring LAN.
In deployment situations where token ring is already prevalent, a cost/benefit analysis must be made as to whether it's worth maintaining the old network or moving to ethernet as token ring vendors dry up. Also, anyone considering deploying token ring in a completely new rollout should have their head examined.
Oh come on, Ethernet was cutting edge in 1989. Today it's a proven technology that the vast majority of companies have used to move away from Token Ring due to reduced maintenance costs. In my opinion, the original poster was smart to move on. S/he read between the lines and came to a conclusion that working there was probably going to be more trouble than it was worth.
Consider: if the company were "happy with their token rings", why bother "starting to look into ethernet" at all? One potential scenario is that a predecessor that OP would have replaced was struggling to maintain an aging network environment, was fed up with trying to convince management that the expenditure for a more up-to-date networking technology was worthwhile, and thus left.
Which just means that both the figure you stated and the figure you actually got were probably well below the figure that the company was willing to pay, had you negotiated correctly.
I've been there, done that with a previous employer. Since I was straight out of university, I valued my perceived worth to them at much lower than they did. I was punished accordingly by being put on the lowest payscale because my initial figure was WAY too low.
Needless to say, these days I'm much more careful with salary negotiations...
Suppose BitMover not only removed the gratis licenses from Free Software developers but took the further action of simply refusing to sell a license to anyone involved in Linux?
The risks are still there even if the intention is to pay for the software if the zero price edition is withdrawn. I can't speak for all developers and/or software company managers but IMO most would understand the risks involved in using non-free software, and usually just accept them and proceed anyway.
change is inevitable
Except from a vending machine.
...from orbit?
It's the only way to be sure.
What If I'm an admin of missile silo control room computers trying to fend off a DOS attack caused by being linked on the front page of slashdot because our network was infected by a worm, which allowed 13 year olds to gain administrative access and deface the web site hosted on our windows server?
What button do I press then!?
The minimum MTU has been increased in IPV6, which offsets the IP header size increase. The extra overhead will be negligible.
Think of it this way: To send a thousand octets of data it may take 2 packets using IPV4 but only 1 packet using IPV6. Two IPv4 packet headers equals 40 bytes. One IPV6 packet header equals 40 bytes.
Admittedly the overhead may increase when small packets are being sent, but the extra features of the V6 protocol more than compensate for this - there's more to IPV6 than increased address space (see RFC 2460).
Anyone who can't spare an extra 20 bytes per packet should probably upgrade their 9600bps modem from 1990 anyway...
I saw the user name and thought it might be a troll, but I was bored and thought I'd reply anyway. :)
The fact that the original comment getting modded up to +4, 70% Interesting and 30% Insightful is what really amused me.
Assuming it is:
1. Cisco Routers suck at IPV6.
That's kind of an implementation issue rather than a protocol issue wouldn't you agree? If word gets out that Cisco Routers aren't providing bang for buck then there are always alternatives as you have suggested. If performance really matters then IT managers can argue the point that the corporate policy is outdated and has to change...
2. There are too many addresses.
Too many addresses is certainly a better situation to be in than not enough addresses I'd argue. Pretty much everyone in this thread that has had to deal with NAT has put forward that it's a deal with the devil: it's a just barely sufficient hack to a tricky problem.
3. IPV6 addresses are too large.
Extreme amount of memory to hold routing tables? Sure, if addresses were picked at random with no regard for the overall layout of the Internet. There's nowhere in the protocol specification that says all 64 network bits have to be used at once when rolling out. Give every ISP it's own separate chunk of the IPV6 address space to which it can portion out to it's customers, and routing may actually become easier, not harder. With 64 bits used for routing I'm sure every ISP in the world could have way more individual IP addresses than it could possibly need, and there would still be plenty of network prefixes left over. We as a community now have a lot more experience in dealing with address allocation issues than we did in 1970...
4. The IPV6 header is too large.
Oh, please. If you're worried about conserving a mere 20 bytes in each packet don't you think more would be saved by design superior compression schemes for when the data intensive applications like Voice, TV, Radio, etc become an integral part of the internet? Also, what's the difference today if a web page takes 40 seconds to load, or 41 seconds to load?
These aren't discussion points, the complaints are too trivial for that. I would hope that you put a bit more effort into research if I were the one reading your dissertation. IPV6 may not be perfect, so point out some REAL design problems if you're going to try.
"Five is RIGHT OUT!"
Don't worry, having IPV4 addresses as a sub-block of IPV6 addresses, dual IPV4/IPV6 hosts, and IPV6 protocol encapsulation was such a good idea that the designers of the IPV6 protocol decided to use it.
::203.131.45.99)
They even made it simple! If my IPV4 address is 203.131.45.99 my IPV6 address will be 0:0:0:0:0:0:203.131.45.99 (there's even an abbreviated notation for a V6 address which would just be
The likelyhood is that the migration to V6 isn't proceeding as fast as possible for political and financial reasons rather than technical ones.
Hahaha, very appropriately amusing.
Thanks for the link!
If I had mod points I'd spend 'em here. I was just thinking that once I finish reading the comments I'll head on over to Safari and see if it's available...
It's amusing to me that TV was the example used to explain the dependencies between critical infrastructure.
:-)
Since when has TV become important to the survival of the population?
We select people with programming language skills appropriate to the job description of maintaining a software product written in a particular programming language, in this case C++. If a candidate does not have experience and skill with C++ then they are unsuited to the job. It's certainly not the only thing we look for but it's a big pre-requisite.
C++ can be a complex language, for sure. But we aren't asking complex questions and we don't encourage complex constructs in production code because it still has to be maintained by the other developers who may not be familiar with the intricacies of the C++ language specification. However, I would think that anyone who has had 10 years experience in C++ software development, and not 10 years experience in resume padding would know what the keyword protected means.
As an example of the coding questions we ask, the first question on the quiz is:
What is the value of 'j' after this loop terminates?
int j;
for(j=0; j < 5; j+=2);
Half of the candidates get this question wrong. If they get this one wrong and others like it then we have to wonder how much damage can they could do by not understanding what's happening in the real code that they'd be dealing with on a day to day basis.
Amen to that! My work is currently interviewing for a programmer position with the prerequisites of a bit of analysis and design experience, knowledge of the Windows operating system and C++ coding skills. Pretty average commodity skills one would think.
Our interview process basically involves a series of questions about how past experience may relate to the job description, and a very basic C/C++ coding test on a few sheets of paper. We realise that in an interview situation it's not always possible to get 100% on the coding test so that's not what we're looking for. However the amount of candidates that *completely* fail the coding test (i.e. every question wrong) yet purport to have 10 years of experience with C and C++ programming is amazing. These aren't hard questions. In terms of C what does dereferencing mean? In terms of C++ what does public, protected, private mean? What is the value of a variable at the end of a tracing a textbook for loop?
Those who truly have a passion for their software development work should be able to fly through this little practical quiz and move on to impressing the interviewer in other aspects of their career development. If those that apply can't pass our simple test then perhaps they don't belong in any sort of C or C++ software development role at all.
Before I proceed, IAAA (I am an Australian)
The RIAA is known to have a liking for fun with numbers so lets examine the $60 million in damages they're claiming.
First, a few assumptions:
1 CD = 10 songs (on average)
1 CD = AU$25 (on average)
therefore, a song costs $2.50 on average.
In order to claim $60 million in lost revenue, the file sharers must have either had 24 million songs on offer, or had 24 million transfers of the songs that they did have on offer.
1 song = 3MB (on average)
24 million songs = 72 million MB.
It seems unlikely that a backyard operation would have 72 terabytes of storage dedicated to mp3 sharing...
Perhaps the ARIA (RIAA) are counting the number of songs downloaded from the site?
We've already established that
1 song = 3MB (on average); and
24 million songs = 72 million MB
Now assuming the best possible situation where this guy could get ADSL broadband in his home at a fully uncapped upload rate of 8Mbps (1MBps), which is impressive in itself since in Australia the cost of bandwidth is phenomenal:
72 million MB = 72 million seconds
= nearly 2.3 years of sustained traffic at the maximum his network connection would allow. IF it were capable of the above speed.
Is this another case of ARIA/RIAA pulling numbers out of it's arse?
What if the voting machine was tampered with to produce a paper ballot where the human readable side shows a different candidate than the machine readable side?
Sure, as I walk out of the booth I can check the human readable side to verify that whoever I voted for is printed there, and sure, if a hand count was ordered the human reading my ballot paper will know my intentions. But since I wouldn't have a trusted magnetic stripe reader handy, there's no way to verify that a magnetic striped ballot paper I have in my hand is really going to tally up properly on the vote counter the way that I voted.
You're almost there with a verifiable way of electronic voting - however the tallying machines MUST be able to verify and tally my vote EXACTLY the way that I as a voter verify it and EXACTLY the way that the vote would be verified in a hand count by a human. Duplication of information on the ballot paper in this manner just provides one more way that the electoral system can be subverted.
There are machines capable of reading a black mark in a certain location on a piece of card. I can't see why these weren't considered as away to provide a paper audit trail. Electronic transmission of preliminary election results to a tally room is all well and good for the TV coverage, but the binding election result MUST be arrived at using a open and verifiable means at every stage in the vote tallying and ballot paper distribution/storage process.
This paper ballot should both contain a human readable printout of what you (the voter) just voted for, as well as a mag-stripe encoding of the same. What if the voting machine was tampered with to produce a paper ballot where the human readable side shows a different candidate than the machine readable side? Sure, as I walk out of the booth I can check the human readable side to verify that whoever I voted for is printed there, and sure, if a hand count was ordered the human reading my ballot paper will know my intentions. But since I wouldn't have a trusted magnetic stripe reader handy, there's no way to verify that a magnetic striped ballot paper I have in my hand is really going to tally up properly on the vote counter the way that I voted. You're almost there with a verifiable way of electronic voting - however the tallying machines MUST be able to verify and tally my vote EXACTLY the way that I as a voter verify it and EXACTLY the way that the vote would be verified in a hand count by a human. Duplication of information on the ballot paper in this manner just provides one more way that the electoral system can be subverted. There are machines capable of reading a black mark in a certain location on a piece of card. I can't see why these weren't considered as away to provide a paper audit trail. Electronic transmission of preliminary election results to a tally room is all well and good for the TV coverage, but the binding election result MUST be arrived at using a open and verifiable means at every stage in the vote tallying and ballot paper distribution/storage process.
In fact, it is!
http://images.netmojo.ca/randomimgs/Dilbert_one_of _the_best_ever
...Each lump of ice and rock is roughly the size of Philadelphia...
Yeah but how much would they weigh at sea level in metric elephants?
Well done, finally someone who gets it.
The fundamental problem with DRM and Copy Protection isn't who's going to get paid this week and by whom. The more important question is are our grandchildren and grandchildren's children going to be able to read/listen/examine/critique/archive our creative legacy?
That is the crime against humanity. Comparing the theft of our history with Hitler's mass murder in the early 20th century doesn't make DRM any less of a crime.
Besides, if there are 3 vulnerable systems on a network, and 1 infected system, the responsible thing to do is to protect the 3 remaining uninfected systems.
I'd think a higher priority would be to patch the vulnerable systems rather than play whack-a-mole with already infected systems.
I do agree with the broadband providers taking customers offline if they (knowingly or otherwise) encourage the propagation of worms. Something in the terms and conditions of sign up to make it official. Maybe not a rude cut-off, because it's hard to figure out what you need to fix if you can't read up about the problem on the 'net. Perhaps a warning e-mail a week in advance telling them where and how to fix things or action will be taken to protect the bandwidth of the network against worms. You can be sure that if customers have to go without service they'll figure out how to fix problems fast even if they are computer illiterate.
A little education never hurt anyone.
...if Sklyarov as a foreign traveller still enjoys the same 1st amendment rights as US citizens while speaking in the US?