best effort has problems

Sat May 29 18:26:01 UTC 2004

> The PSTN doesn't offer guaranteed end-to-end transmission, and
> certainly statmuxes based on expected load.  Looks like similar
> capacity planning.
>

The PSTN does guarantee a certain service level, latency, call 
completion etc.

> Perhaps you refer to latency.  Most people don't care as long as
> HTTP and POP3 latency is "good enough" -- and server response
> time is often a substantial consideration.  SMTP really isn't
> picky about latency or jitter.

Latency & Jitter are very important when dealing with sound & video. Or 
anything realtime for that matter.  The Internet isn't just HTTP, NNTP, 
SMTP any more.

>
> Maybe you mean packet loss.  Most everyone here can recall the
> days of 30% packet loss across congested MAE FDDI fabric, but
> that went away what seems like eons ago.

I remember quite a bit of packet loss when the last series of worms hit