[67948] in North American Network Operators' Group
Expectations or It can't happen to me (was Re: How Reliable)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Donelan)
Thu Feb 26 08:07:38 2004
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 08:06:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>
To: Bora Akyol <bora@cisco.com>
Cc: 'Steve Gibbard' <scg@gibbard.org>, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <006c01c3fc03$3d3e7270$060a0a0a@amer.cisco.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Bora Akyol wrote:
> It needs to be as reliable as the services that depend on it.
>
> E.g. if bank A is using the Internet exclusively without
> leased line back up to run its ATMs, or to interface with
> its customers, then it needs to be VERY reliable.
That's not very reliable. On a "normal" day, 95% of the cash machines are
working nationwide. Telephones, E911, hospitals, nuclear power plants
have a variety of "normal" failures all the time.
Humans are traditionally very bad at understanding risk.
> As more and more critical services/infrastructure moves
> to the IP/MPLS, the expectations in terms of reliability
> go up every year. The real questions are:
>
> * How much are the customer's willing to pay for it?
> * What kind of reporting/management infrastructure we have
> to enforce/monitor the reliability commitment in the SLA?
Unfortunately, both of those are marketing issues and have very
little to do with actual reliability.
One very well-known ISP had a "premium" Internet service that only cost
30% more than its standard Internet service with a 100% SLA. What
you received was the same service with an insurance policy. If the
service met the SLA you paid 30% more, if it didn't you only paid the
standard price.
Does buying travel insurance change the risk of the plane crashing?
