> Actually, I know who did this and they're on the list > last I knew, so there is a chance for your feedback to be read.
Hey that's great. :) > 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... Also agreed, it's a tough balance. However, I'm a big believer in properly implemented maintenance windows. This means *actually communicating* to the customer well ahead of time and then periodic reminders about these service outage events. Having a regularly scheduled window (also w/ reminders all over) also is a big help. There are always corner cases, but people can be manipulated into being happily flexible. My experience has been this: I call a day ahead of time and let foo business dept know that I will be taking equipment off line for 10 minutes. The manager is pissed but generally relents. On the next day, the manager stalls and I have to stay later to do the work. My experience is also this: I call a week ahead of time with the same 10 minute outage. I follow up a couple of days before the event with a reminder, "are you still all set?" Manager happily accommodates and everything generally works out with little fuss (barring technical difficulties). Not only that, they become happy that the I.T. staff is proactive and looking out for *their* best interest. The greater the outage, the further out the communication...this obviously also varies with what equipment and impact, etc... Different markets are different, but I would hope ISPs would consider taking a similarly proactive approach to patching. I know none of mine do :( I especially hope their vendor will not dictate their approach for them. ~JasonG -- _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
