[9364] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Cost vs benefit of internet services (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Thu Dec 30 20:47:29 1993
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 93 20:41:31 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
> From: Doug Humphrey <digex@ss1.digex.net>
Quoting Karl:
> >The "Share a line" gig you're talking about just ends up costing your
> >provider 4x the support load unless you're really running a NOC with the
> >staff and all that is entailed there.
>
> The support issue is the big one. If a bunch of people share a link,
> then when that link fails, if 3 of those people who are sharing it
> start calling the NOC and logging trouble tickets, etc. that is a load,
> and if something that the "sharing" mechanism is doing starts to screw
> the link up, that is another tech support load that should not be the
> vendors issue.
Sigh ... aside to Karl: if you could just learn not to bury good
arguments in long posts (or help ailing old folks like me see them by
posting them in bigger type :-), we could save ourselves a lot of
trouble.
The support argument is precisely what I was hoping somebody would come
back with as a counter to my postings about small providers. It is the
argument I wanted to use a post in which somebody used it as a
springboard for asking the list "What can we do about this?".
Oh well ... it's a little lame now, ... but what _can_ we do about it?
I don't want to give up the vision of hundreds or thousands of small
providers - it's the only way we're going to disperse IP - or at least
a command line - to every nook and cranny and kindergarten and mayor's
office and cow barn with any semblance of speed.
I'm not questioning the existence of the support problem; I'm asking
for ideas on how to overcome it.
Let me rephrase the question: there are thousands of bbs's out there
pursuing their own variant of networking. I'll posit the thesis that
a) if they can handle that, they can learn to handle IP, and b) in the
long run it's better to bring them into the fold as quickly as
possible. How can we manage this without posing an excessive support
burden?
There just has to be something wrong with a support model that says you
can't have any IP/access until you can have it gilt-edged.
--
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
