[c-nsp] Prepare for router Wednesday

[Ian MacKinnon]

Hi All,
Pete Templin wrote:
> Jason Gurtz wrote:
>
>>> 	I think it's a challenge coming with any system that is
>>> perfect.  The issue here is balance.  This strikes a balance in
>>> favor of expecting a level of uptime from your ISPs.  If they
>>> were rebooting once a month you might not be very happy.
>> As another person noted, severe issues will be dealt with on demand so
>> it's not as bad as it could be.  Yet, who decides if an issue is severe?
>> Why should Cisco be determining the maintenance window to this IMO rather
>> lengthy degree.  Granted, we're not talking about windows patching, but
>> still...
>
> Think of this at a higher level: you "have" to patch, so now you get to
> plan your maintenance windows.

not getting at you here Pete, but why do you "have" to patch?
Cisco release software all the time that fixes bugs (and introduces new 
features), should you always be on the latest release everywhere?

Are they now talking about purely bug fixes?
This is not a windows box, where you automatically apply every update.
If there is a bug fix for IPX and I am not running IPX (extreme example 
these days), I am not going to upgrade for the sake of it.

When you have dozens of platforms (1700, x800, 7600/6500, 7200, 7300, 
2900, 3560, 3550......) each on several releases depending on age and 
feature requirements, unless a new release fixes something you are 
actually experiencing are you going to always upgrade thousand of boxes 
for issues you don't have, with associated testing, deployment and rollback?



 >Previously, the patches "just came".
> And on the severe issues, you wouldn't have gotten notice anyway unless
> it got so wild that the exploit itself got press.
Yup, and I still need to read the release notes to see if what has 
changed impacts me.


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