Definition of a burstable circuit

Wed Aug 22 17:52:13 UTC 2001

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Stanley, Jon wrote:
> Without getting into a religious debate, I need some consensus for a
> problem that I am having regarding the definition of a burstable
> circuit.
>
> In my view of the world, a burstable circuit is defined as one where
> the customer can send us as much data as they would like (for example,
> an entire DS3's worth on a consistent basis), and we would bill them
> for usage above the contracted amount via some method (we use 90th
> percentile reporting)
>
> In someone else's view inside the company, the customer should be
> prohibited from sending above the contracted rate for any extended
> period of time by policing at the ATM layer.  Both views are viable,
> but I believe (nearly religously) that the former view is correct.
>
> Any input would be appreciated.

i think your definition is correct, ie customer can burst to some max.
billing based one some base, with free bursting, or billing for the 90th
percentile are common options.

i think what the other view is what i would call an "expandable" link,

in that the customer buys blocks of raw throughput, without any throttling
taking place (other than to limit them to their contracted amount.

this would be useful for a customer that doesn't want the excess billing
that a burstable connection could cause, or the potential of the bandwidth
not being there (if more than one customer shares the bursting bandwidth).

a customer could call up and say "hey, bump me up 5 megs" or "drop me down
5 megs" and the implementation could be done swiftly, as no physical changes
are required.

-- 
[ Jim Mercer        jim at reptiles.org         +1 416 410-5633 ]
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