I assume the last sentence of the second paragraph should read "no plans to upgrade them".

-- regular (zzz@z.z), April 29, 1999

Answers

Oops. Sorry about the formatting. Link works, though.

-- regular (zzz@z.z), April 29, 1999.

Just wondering...

Does your local 911 system have dependencies on the pre-1997 equipment mentioned in the above reference?

~C~

-- Critt Jarvis (middleground@critt.com), April 29, 1999.

Don't have to wonder about this one...

How much of the current free access internet depends on the previously referred to pre-1997 components?

Ain't nothing free..

~C~

-- Critt Jarvis (middleground@critt.com), April 29, 1999.

I wonder if Weiss has any part of Infoliant? "Either tell us what we want to hear, or we'll say bad things about you ..."

Someone here please tell me how a NIC card or net hub could have a Y2K bug?

Better yet, tell me how to test for such. Do you wave a calendar at the card? Play "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is" (at lease-breaking volumes) at the hub?

Yah, this is a GREAT reason to subscribe to that Infoliant newsletter.

Pardon the sarcasm, but sometimes this gets to be a little too much.

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 29, 1999.

Well, looks like a couple of companies like their products: In The News

04-14-1999 - Dataquest HP Teams With Infoliant to Provide Y2K Database for AssetView Customers 02-01-1999 - Enterprise Systems Journal IBM Global Services Licenses Y2K Database

You might check with some of your colleagues and see if anyone is using the Infoliant DB...

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), April 29, 1999.

HOW TO MAKE A ROUTER COMPLIANT.

The company sends you a new boot disk. Insert boot disk. Turn router off. Turn back on. Wait a couple minutes.

Alternative method - company sends you a software patch. Telnet into router using administrative password. Upload patch. Forget it.

For most purposes, it really doesn't matter.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), April 29, 1999.

Sure. It helps sell new stuff. (Duh.)

What I really want though, is an answer to my question: how can a NIC card or network hub be non-compliant?

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 29, 1999.

Agree re NICs and hubs, but how about these:

Numerous Cisco product scores are listed alongside the phrase "Vendor Will Not Test", including AGS and AGS* routers, 3000 series routers, specific releases of the Catalyst 5500 LAN switch, CiscoWorks management software, and Kalpana EtherSwitches.

Do products like these care about the "calendar"? Your comments welcomed.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), April 29, 1999.

By the way, Paul, my previous reply was to Mac. So is this one.

Mac, the title of this thread is, "Networking giants leave users in Y2k lurch." This is yet still another example of Doomlets who don't understand the technology making a mountain range out of an anthill.

Thanks for agreeing about NIC cards and hubs -- even though Infoliant mentions these (reducing their credibility by 75% from the git-go, if you'll think about it).

But yeah, I suppose some switcher/routers could be non-compliant (albeit you should remember that no one here can give me a single, consistent definition of just what "compliant" means; all I care is whether the thing will work in January of next year).

See Paul's reply, then consider this: is it not possible -- just possible -- that the vendors have decided that there's NO NEED to test some of this stuff, because they designed it, and KNOW (the operative word is "know") that it CANNOT possibly have a Y2K problem?

(That is, in fact, the case with 3Com. They posted a nice little note about this on their Web site, and we discussed it over in the Biffy forum not too long ago.)

So ... I'm not being sarcastic (well, maybe a LITTLE bit [g]): if you were to ask me, did you specifically TEST each of these things for compliance, I'd answer, "huh?" On many of them, there's no way to enter or change the "date;" there's no way to force it to do date-sensitive processing.

How in the heck do you test them? Wave calendars at them?

This doesn't mean that there aren't a few date-sensitive switchers out there. Each user has to determine for him/herself, relying on the best information available from the vendor(s).

3Com says, "it ain't nuthin' but a thang." I happen to agree with them.

-- Stephen M. Poole, cET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 29, 1999.

Hi Paul, CET,

As I understand the article, there will be no vendor produced boot disks or code for these routers, switches, etc.

So there will be no way for an end user (or network installer) to 'simply insert a new boot disk' when there is no new boot disk.

A vendor deciding to not test a certain product could mean the vendor is confident the product is compliant -- or it could mean the vendor doesn't have time (or wish to spend the money) to test it.

Very simply, the products that are in operation at a customer site AND are not marked compliant by a vendor must be tested by the customer! If the test shows non-compliance, then the customer must spend the money to replace the unit.

This article alerts customers (and network installation companies) to some of the major product lines that they have to test for themselves (somehow).

-- Dean -- from (almost) Duh Moines (dtmiller@nevia.net), April 29, 1999.

OK, Dean.

Tell me: how do you test something when there's no way to enter a date?

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 29, 1999.

Stephen,

Just because a date can't be entered into a device by hand doesn't mean it doesn't use (or could be affected by) dates. A 'dumb' device might do calculations based on date stamps found in a packet, a data stream or some input file. Other devices can only get their clocks set by talking to another computer.

I don't know if it's still true today, but roughly 8 years ago I was doing work for a LARGE fast food chain and all of their registers had their clocks set by a central server that 'pretended' it was an IBM mainframe. I doubt any of those registers are Y2K compliant.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), April 29, 1999.

TECH32,

Then there's a way to set the date, isn't there? You do it with the naugha-artificial "IBM server." Right?

I strongly suspect that the legal departments for these companies are behind the refusal to issue clearer statements about "compliance." These lawyers know only too well that if they say, "the Model 3XJ99-1/2 has no Y2K problems" that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, will claim next year that they had one.

"(*Sniff, whimper!*) We were knocked out of business by these horrible lyin' peeeples! They convinced us we didn't need to upgrade our 3XJ99's to the newer -3/4 version, and we got keeeled as a result! (*whine, whimper*)."

At that point, if it goes to court, all they have to do is make a clueless jury believe them -- and the company loses. It's safer not to say at all.

(This is why I support limits on Y2K litigation, by the way ... it will actually cause companies to be far more forthcoming about Y2K readiness.)

I also think it's time to revisit Mr. Theroux's Web site. To date, no one -- repeat, no one -- has taken him up on his challenge. :)

-- Stephen M. Poole, cET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 30, 1999.

Oops ... forgot the end marker on the link. Here goes:

Hope that worked ...

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), April 30, 1999.