RE: [RRG] What does incremental deployment mean - 2 questions

[Randall Atkinson <rja@extremenetworks.com>]

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


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