[67937] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: How relable does the Internet need to be? (Was: Re: Converged
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (W.D.McKinney)
Wed Feb 25 19:46:50 2004
From: "W.D.McKinney" <dee@akwireless.net>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 00:46:07 +0000
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steve Gibbard [mailto:scg@gibbard.org]
>Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:30 AM
>To: nanog@merit.edu
>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
