Did Internet Founders Actually Anticipate Paid,

William Herrin bill at herrin.us
Mon Sep 20 15:59:44 UTC 2010


On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Tony Varriale <tvarriale at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Of course the high level of oversub is an issue....
>
> We'll disagree then.  Oversub makes access affordable.

Sure, at 10:1. At 100:1, oversub makes the service perform like crap.
With QOS, it still performs like crap. The difference is that the
popular stuff is modestly less crappy while all the not-as-popular
stuff goes from crappy to non-functional.

In my career I've encountered many QOS implementations. Only one of
them did more good than harm: a college customer of mine had a T3's
worth of demand but was only willing to pay for a pair of T1s. In
other words, the *customer* intentionally chose to operate with a
badly saturated pipe. QOS targetted only at peer to peer brought the
rest of the uses back to a more or less tolerable level of
performance.

I note that I lost the customer the next year anyway. Tolerable !=
pleasant. They were unhappy with the service, even if it was their own
fault.


I might be more sympathetic to your viewpoint if "pick your oversub
level" was part of the signup process, but it isn't. You hide that
decision where your customers can't even find out what decision you
made.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004




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