
On Wed, 04 April 2001, Stephen Griffin wrote:
> So, if people picked better providers, they wouldn't need to multihome.
> You feel you need to multihome, because you keep picking DSL, which just
> isn't a good choce for "mission critical applications".

Name a provider which hasn't had a problem in the last 5 years, and
has been around for long enough to have a track record.

A lot of provider would rather offer a 100% guarantee than tell you what
their actual performance has been.  You can tell a lot about a provider
by how they handle problems.  Even if they only have one problem every
five years, what they do is what people will remember.

However, that's not the whole story.  Perception plays a large role
in this game.

When a blizzard hits a town, and every coffee shop is closed, only a
few people complain and generally there is no permanent damage to a
businesses' reputation.  Acts of God (or Mother Nature) are just that.
However, if every other coffee shop is open, but your shop is closed
because your coffee supplier didn't deliver on time, you have a bigger
business problem.

The problem for Internet businesses when they lose their Internet
connection is it doesn't affect everyone.  If 60 Hudson fell-over,
and most of the East Coast Internet connectivity was lost for a few
days, it would be bad.  But it wouldn't really change anyone's market
share because it would affect almost everyone.  But if Northpoint falls
over, you are just a dumb shmuck for choosing Northpoint because the
competitor down the street is still up because they chose DSLwhatever.

No one likse looking like a dumb shmuck, so you buy IBM or you multi-home,
or do whatever.  Then when it still fails, you can tell you boss you did everything humanly possible, and no one else could have done better.




