Is beep really what operators would want?

[Wes Hardaker <wjhns1@hardakers.net>]

Is beep sufficient for operators?  Specifically, there is a fair
amount of header calculation overhead that may make it a bit harder
for them to arbitrarily cut-n-paste into a telnet-like connection.  I
realize this definition (from draft-ops-operator-req-mgmt-02.txt) is
hopefully out of date:

   Regrettably, one operating system vendor still does not include an
   SSH client in their default distribution, so it is still also
   REQUIRED that device vendors implement telnet client and server. It
   is the hope of the operator community that this requirement
   eventually be deprecated.

The beep protocol forces a fair amount of initial communication upon
the connection.  This is a good thing from the management application
prospected, but bad from the cut-n-paste prospective.  Have the
operators read RFC3080?  It's full of examples and well written so it
should be easy to plow through quickly.  Specifically, I'm not sure
that anyone could use the protocol without some minimal set of tools
(I'm sure a perl module would be easy to write for helping with the
communication requirements, of one doesn't exist yet).

EG, the header of every beep message looks like this (an example line
from 3080):

       RPY 0 1 . 287 20

Where RPY is the message type (reply), 0 is the channel number, 1 is a
message number, . indicates no more data coming for this frame, 287 is
the sequence number and 20 is the payload size.  The pre-calculation
of all this means that I'd certainly want to use a tool to do the
transaction.  Yes, however, you could do it with "wc" and a
calculator.

The other thing is that you can't immediately start typing commands
into the channel (even assuming you can get the header right), as
initially you must do all the channel negotiation first.

However, on a similar note: usb key-chain memory frobs are now about
$50 for 128Mb, which is cheap enough to give one to every operator so
they can wander around to all those machines they don't have proper
tools in and plug in their handy-dandy keychain and get immediate
access to all the tools they need (ssh, a beep client, and probably
even a minimal netscape installation would fit on there).  Maybe the
simple-to-use-over-telnet type protocol requirement is obsolete?
-- 
"In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap,
 and much more difficult to find."  -- Terry Pratchett

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