[c-nsp] Catalyst vs. Nexus

[Nick Hilliard]

On 11/09/2009 11:36, Phil Mayers wrote:
> IOS sometimes feels like the very best that the 1980s has to offer... I
> mean, come on - I was actually IMPRESSED when 12.2(33)SX gave me "show
> run part router bgp ASNUM". Is that really the best we can do in 2009?

I remember my cisco account manager in 1998 telling me that mainline IOS12 
would be fully modular.  W00h00!

Cisco is a very large company and it appears to have a lot of empires. 
Multiple empires beget balkanisation and lead to the sort of software train 
splits that we see.  I can imagine that it must be very difficult to keep 
any sort of control on source code, when you have all sorts of groups with 
all sorts of different product lines, different requirements and different 
time-scales.

Problem is, forking your code is like scrambling your egg.  Very easy to 
do, and it can even taste nice.  Unscrambling is not so easy, though.

The problem brings to mind something that Vijay Gill from Google said* 
recently about software development, albeit in a slightly different 
context:  "you require an insane amount of force of will".  If it's even 
possible to maintain some form of control over the IOS code base (and 
realistically, I don't know if it is, given the diversity of the product 
set), insane force of will would be required.

Nick
* 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/27/google_mocks_microsoft_online_infrastructure/