Re: PAIX

[fkittred () gwi net]

On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 10:08:22 -0500  David Diaz wrote:
> Anyone that calls me honey is in question.

Questioned and questioning, that's me ;-)

> It's standard, you cant have everything in life. You attempt to 
> achieve all three however it's all relative.  You can have a DSL line 
> now instead of a T1, it's fast and cheap but most arent as good as a 
> T1 and the SLAs arent there right?

"Standard" in this case means common knowledge?  Questioning common
knowledge can be advantageous.

There is no reason that a DSL line can't be more reliable than "most"
(as you put it) T1s. 

> Usually you either build your network to one of two designed: Avg 
> sustained traffic levels, or Peak traffic levels.

Accepted.  We go for peak traffic levels and then add a good buffer on
top of that just in case.

> Avg sustained means that during peak times you might have higher 
> latency, but that you have not over bought capacity... Peak Traffic 
> design means you looked at your max burst levels and bought enough 
> capacity etc to handle that load.  The rest of the time you have 
> excess capacity, but your QoS is always great.  You will have a 
> higher costs basis here.

Nope.  Depends how you design your network.

The cost basis of the network is dominated by capital equipment costs
(router capacity.)  A major factor is also labor.  'Fat pipes' are
relatively cheap.  I know our costs are lower and quality is higher
than our competitors and I believe the reason is that we go for a
simple network designed around cheap routers and fat pipes.  We made
the decision that it was better to design the network for peak
capacity (over buy) than deal with the consequences of trying to
squeeze out that last 20%.

We strive never run to a link at over 60%.  Paying for that extra
capacity is a lot cheaper than paying for ATM, MPLS,
"whatever-happy-BS-they-are-pedaling-this-month", support calls,
engineers for configurations, customer churn, etc.

> We all strive for all three, I used to almost try a TDM approach. 
> Where I would try and balance business day users, residential users, 
> and backup service users on the network.  They used 3 distinct time 
> frames during the day.  In this way the network was rarely idle, but 
> each type of users peak time was not in conflict with another.

> So if you would like to say you can sell me an OC48 at Aleron's (or 
> fill in the ISPs name) IP backbone quality, at Cogent's pricing of 
> less then $30meg... great...

Just a note: when having an argument, if you find yourself putting
words in an opponent's mouth, it is probably a sign of weakness of
your argument.

We are not in the IP backbone business.  However, I like to think that
our pricing for consumer broadband is similar disruptive.  There are
no bottlenecks on our network.  We are quite reliable.  If you want a
$29.95 per month DSL link with no bandwidth caps or similar
restrictions, and you can take delivery in our territory, I would be
happy to have you as a customer!

regards,
fletcher