[63067] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Average case performance vs. Worst-case guarantee
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sthaug@nethelp.no)
Fri Sep 26 02:56:36 2003
To: hnarayan@cs.ucsd.edu
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
From: sthaug@nethelp.no
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 25 Sep 2003 15:22:48 -0700 (PDT)"
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 08:54:56 +0200
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
> When an ISP buys a router does it want a worst-case guarantee about the
> router's capabilities? Or will it buy a router which can give better
> performance in the average case (it may drop some packets if the traffic
> pattern changes suddenly)? Assuming both cost the same.
Worst case guarantee is necessary in many cases. Easy example:
A router that can handle an STM-1 of regular Internet traffic is worthless
to us if it dies in the face of an STM-1 with minimum sized attack traffic.
Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug@nethelp.no
