Market for diversity (was: Re: Cogent latency / congestion)

Tue Aug 21 16:55:04 UTC 2007

Speaking on Deep Background, the Press Secretary whispered:
> 
> 
> On Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> > Or there might suddenly be a reason/market for properly physically diverse
> > paths which provide partial 1:1 (ie, some services are guaranteed full backup
> > bandwidth, other services get degraded access) IP paths..
> 
> I don't think the target customer in this case is really in the market 
> for properly physically diverse paths which provide partial 1:1.  The
> target customer seems to be looking for no-frills, cheap Internet.
> 
> Customers in a market for properly physically diverse paths with partial 
> 1:1 probably are already buying Internet from other ISPs.

And still not getting it. A friend oversees various expensive USG
networks. They pay for physically diverse routing from multiple
sources. Yet every year, when they do an laborious audit down to
the "what fiber, in what bundle, in what trench" level; they find..

Guess What! Yep, someone has moved this circuit or that one to
where both pipes are intimate neighbors.

It's inevitable given buying throughput is rather like moving
something by ship. You never go to the ship [fiber] owner; you
go to a freight broker who deals with a consolidator who calls an
agent who knows who has chartered ships from A to B on DATE and....
[Look up the "GTS Katie" incident for a side effect of this.]

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