How to game the system (was Re: What does 95th %tile mean?)

Fri Apr 20 16:33:01 UTC 2001


	There is a much simpler game that costs the ISP a lot more
money.  Fortunately, it's not a common business model.

	Let's say I am a TV network, and I want to simulcast a TV
show once a week to the Internet.  I might need 2-3 Gig of capacity
during the simulcast, but the rest of the time I need none.  So,
I buy 95% service, stream for 4 hours a month, which is thrown away
in any of the counting schemes put forth so far, and pay nothing.

	Lather, rinse, repeat with each TV show.  There's no incentive
to buy a bundle of service and stream all the shows (more approximating
continuous usage) from one place.

	Fortunately this application is small, but if you were a
web hoster you could do the same thing with multiple providers.  
With 20 providers, you could move your bandwidth with that provider
only 5% of the time, paying nothing for service with any of them.

-- 
Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org
Systems Engineer - Internetworking Engineer - CCIE 3440
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