N+? redundancy

Sat Apr 16 18:00:47 UTC 2005

Michael.Dillon at radianz.com writes:
>In my opinion, the following rule of thumb is reasonable.
>
>1 path is enough for a site/enterprise that shuts 
>down its services evenings and weekends.
>
>2 paths is enough for a site/enterprise that provides
>a 24 hour, 7 day per week service.
>
>3 paths is enough for a population center with under
>a million inhabitants.
>
>5 paths is enough for a population center with over
>a million inhabitants.
>
>And a very few population centers such as New York,
>London, Tokyo, and Cheyenne Mountain should probably
>have more than 5 paths.

Given that anything larger than a single enterprise has no central
coordinating body, how is it useful to say how many paths is "enough"
for a city of any size? Service providers will build as many paths as
make commercial sense, whatever that may be, and if customers have
opinions and are willing to back it up with money, they should express
those opinions to their providers.