North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Eating My Collapse Column

  • From: Jerry Scharf
  • Date: Wed Apr 16 16:29:15 1997 
Bob,

I'm probably stating the obvious. The reason that I objected to your comment 
and object to your analysis is that we are dealing with an Internet. If the 
failure in one network rippled through the network and caused ever larger 
outages, then it would meet my criteria for an internet collapse. See the 
effects on loaded power grids for the analogy I'm after.

You are certainly right that the dollars lost by outages are large. I will 
promise you they will get larger because the dollar flow is getting larger 
quickly. Your metric will well come true without your logic being validated. 
Using AOL's outage and others to identify local and global systemic management 
problems is fair and valid. Predicting collapse based on it is not.

I stand by my opinion that the article was inflammatory.

Jerry


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