Ungodly packet loss rates

Tue Oct 22 23:14:21 UTC 1996

On Tue, 22 Oct 1996, Tony Li wrote:

[excellent technical summary deleted for bandwidth conservation]

> Given this _technical_ environment where literally no one _CAN_ succeed in
> delivering volume quality Internet connectivity, I'm not surprised that
> you've gotten evasive, defensive, and non-sensical replies.

In addition to this, even for very savy customer, it's very difficult to
measure a good network. Tools that are available are at best incomplete, and
comprehensive metrics to judge a good network are very hard to come by. So
while in normal situations, economic factors will weed out worthless
providers, in the current climate, this isn't happening because you can't
measure/prove why provider X provides better service then provider Y, even if
they could engineer it.

All an end user is left is a murky feeling that their provider might be
broken. Hopefully, along with technical advances, we'll get advances in
network measurement area (hopefully IPPM effort of IETF will bear bountiful
fruit) so will force providers to the "right thing" or face loss of business. 

-dorian