North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: How relable does the Internet need to be? (Was: Re: Converged Network Threat)
>-----Original Message----- >From: Steve Gibbard [mailto:[email protected]] >Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:30 AM >To: [email protected] >Subject: How relable does the Internet need to be? (Was: Re: Converged Network Threat) <snipped> >>So, it appears that among general infrastructure we depend on, there are >probably the following reliability thresholds: > >Employees not being able to get to work due to snow: two to three days per >year. >Berkeley storm sewers: overflow two to three days per year. >Residential Electricity: out two to three hours per year. >Cell phone service: Somewhat better than nine fives of reliability ;) >Landline phone service: I haven't noticed an outage on my home lines in a >few years. >Natural gas: I've never noticed an outage. > >How Internet service fits into that of course depends on how you're >accessing the Net. The T-Mobile GPRS card I got recently seems >significantly less reliable than my cell phone. My SBC DSL line is almost >to the reliability level of my landline phone or natural gas service, >except that the DSL router in my basement doesn't work when electric power >is out. I'm probably poorly qualified to talk about the end-user >experience on the networks I actually work on, even if I had permission >to. Like pretty much everybody else here, I'm always interested in doing >better on reliability. And, like many of my neighbors, I'd like to be >able to store stuff on my basement floor. In comparison to a lot of other >infrastructure we depend on, it seems to me the Internet is already doing >pretty well. > >-Steve > > With BPL on the horizon and the Electric Utils looking to de-regulate in some areas, it will be interesting to watch infrastructure adapt accordingly. I think the Internet is doing pretty well save some IOS code problems from time to time, and the typical root server hicups. Dee
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