""Chuck"" wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > just did some looking around on CCO. checking the current state of the art > for IOS images for the 25xx routers we all know and love so dearly. > > it's looking like the images are getting so bloated that pretty soon they > will exceed the physical limits of the router flash and dram. > > this could be disastrous to all us lab rats ;->
I know this is going to sound so bad when I say this. But maybe that's the point - to cut down on the number of lab-rats. Yeah yeah, I know a bunch of you are going to read that and immediately jump all over me. You're going to say things like "People should be allowed to learn what they want" and "Information wants to be free" and that kind of thing. All I have to say is this. Learning how to be, say, a doctor is not free - it's unbelievably expensive. Not everybody who wants to be a doctor is allowed to be one. You can't just decide that you want to learn surgery and then just expect somebody to give you a bunch of cadavers so you can start cutting them up. You can't just walk into a hospital and demand that somebody start teaching you medicine. And this is true of just about any profession - law, investment-banking, pharmacy, engineering, pro-athlete, you name it. The fact is, all professions operate on the principle of exclusion. Yes, I know that sounds rough, but that's life. Not everybody who wants to be a doctor gets to be a doctor. Not everybody who wants to play pro-football actually gets to play pro football. And, yes, not everybody who wants to be a network guy (especially the senior network guy) actually gets to be the network guy. Somewhere along the line, exclusion has to take place for that profession to remain attractive. If it's medicine we're talking about, then the exclusion takes place in getting admitted to med school, and then the grueling years of medical training which has the effect of excluding people who aren't mentally tough enough to make it. If it's pro sports, it's the harsh selectivity odds of being good enough to play professionally. And everybody accepts this. For example, you don't see any huge outcry for med schools to use open-admissions policies, where anybody who applies is automatically accepted. So the point is this. If network engineering is to remain a viable profession, then exclusion has to take place somewhere. You can debate how this exclusion is to take place. Should it be done through the lab-exam (which is what it was, say, in 1995)? Should it be done through years of actual high-end practical networking experience (which is what it was before the CCIE program, and what it is returning to, now that the lab-rat phenomena has sprung into being)? Should it be some other way? But, somehow and somewhere, it has to be done. > > of course, the images would be MUCH smaller if Cisco were to remove the code > for things like Apollo, Vines, DEC, IPX, and IGRP...... :-> however, it is > probably not very easy to remove code, and why would they bother? > > so at what point do all of us students get screwed -when the required images > become so large that the 25xx is no longer viable? images capable of running > BGP, EIGRP, ISIS, RIP, and DLSw+ seem to require an enterprise version. some > of those images are pushing up over 16 megs now. see what I mean? See above. > > BTW - anyone checked the auction prices for 25xx equipment lately? Token > ring stuff is going for well below 200. Even the ethernet stuff - 2501's and > 2513's - seem to be going for less than 400. big change in the buyer's favor > in the last year or so. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=48291&t=48268 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
