>I wonder how much it cost the PRC to get the committee to say this?
If you've had any experience with networking kit, manufactured or outsourced, then you'd know that it doesn't get used without passing qualification tests. The supplier will have done these tests because they know that the purchaser will also do them so its in everyone's interests to ensure that the kit is working and is compliant.
The "mysterious black box of weirdness" mindset is really a side effect of the mass use of not very well designed PC software. People's experience is shaped by this rather than the less obvious computers used in something like their cars so they naturally assume that telecommunications boxes would have similar quality failings to consumer PC rather than they being more like the engine management systems on their cars -- the goal with professional kit is to turn it on and ignore it for a decade or two.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
