outages, quality monitoring, trouble tickets, etc

Wed Nov 29 02:42:41 UTC 1995

> I don't know. One of the most frequent problem I see is power outages at 
> the sites. I don't think any ISP can be responsible for things like that.

Let's assume that you measure "availability" as being to ping the 
customer site router from some site off your network.  Some ISPs install a 
UPS on the router at the customer site, some don't.  That decision effects 
price and reliability and "availability" (especially when the customer
has a UPS on his own equipment).

Or let's look at lightning strikes.  Some ISP's say "that's an act of
God, we can't be responsible".  Others put in surge supressors, have
hot swap backups, etc. and they keep running.

Some ISPs say "that's the fault of my upstream provider, we can't 
be responsible".  Others tell their upstream provider to do a better 
job or they switch providers.

Much of it sounds like a cop out to me.  Ultimately, (with enough money) 
there are few reliability factors in this business that are truly out of 
anyone's control.  It's just very convenient to say that there are.