Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

  1. Home
  2. Networking
  3. Why-you-need-demand-standards-now
  4. Page
  5. Why You Need To Demand Standards, Now: Page 2 of 2
Networking

Why You Need To Demand Standards, Now: Page 2 of 2

In technology, there is lots of talk about the need for standards for this or that technology. I am an unabashed proponent of standards. There are lots of very smart people who work on standards either as part of their job or on their own time. The standards get pushed through the working groups, are ratified by the standards bodies, and are published to the world. Then those people move on to other things while vendors scramble to implement the standards in their products and update their data
Mike Fratto
June 24, 2010

The same can be said of the Metro Ethernet Forum that brings together all the relevant stakeholders like carriers and vendors, taking the work from the IEEE and providing a uniform interpretation of the standards so that interoperability can take place. Without the work of the MEF, standardization would likely have taken place anyway, since the carriers tend to have dual-source equipment policies and would thus force interoperation, but the MEF moved things along and smoothed the process.

As vendors and IT march along to converged networking, we need to ensure that our next generation networks are going to be interoperable in meaningful ways. Primarily in the area of supporting the protocols and standards for Data Center Bridging (DCB). Granted, the standards are still moving through the task groups and working groups in the IEEE and IETF, so it may be too early to expect interoperable products, but process-like plug fests and other conformance testing needs to be at the forefront of everyone's mind. You, the IT buyer, need to be telling your vendors loud and clear that you want demonstrably interoperable products. In fact, interoperable products should be a requirement.

I have said this before. If you don't make the demands of your vendors, and if you don't make interoperable standards a requirement for your equipment purchases, then you can expect to see an environment around FCoE much like we see with Fibre Channel today: qualified equipment lists that limit you to approved products only. Violation of support contracts if you go off the reservation. And of course, long term lock-in.

Tags:

Commentary
Networking