The spambots who regularly read my blog know that I have a fascination with language, and have a background in linguistics. So, I’m always fascinated by language and how we use it. This post is a bit pointless, but amusing (perhaps only to me).

In my last post I mentioned I might file a bug on VRRP. Apparently, I still have access to do this, although I cannot remember how to assign it.

Anyways, most Cisco customers know that a bug at Cisco is called a “DDTS”. We’ve called bugs DDTS’s as long as I’ve worked on Cisco products. But what does it actually stand for?

DDTS stands for Distributed Defect Tracking System. DDTS is actually the name of the bug-tracking software that Cisco used, a long time ago, to file and track bugs. DDTS was replaced long ago by CDETS, Cisco Defect and Enhancement Tracking System. Even when I was in TAC in 2005, we used CDETS, and not DDTS, to file and track bugs.

Not only is the term DDTS obsolete, it doesn’t even make sense if you expand the acronym. “There is a DDTS in that version of IOS XE” actually means “There is a distributed defect tracking system in that version of IOS XE”. Not likely!

Language evolves and words often lose meaning as they are used. I remember the Greek word “thumos” which meant something like “warrior spirit” in the days of Homer. A positive thing, something you’d want to have, a certain virility or militancy. By the time of New Testament Greek, 700 or so years later, it just means “anger”.

So, at Cisco my exec will have an “off-site”. This used to mean you’d go to Hawaii. Then, a Hilton in another city. Then, the local Hilton. Then, another building on the same campus. Now, at Cisco, we have “off-sites” on the same floor of the same building we work in every day. Nothing off-site about that!

Maybe we should have an off-site about DDTS’s…