[c-nsp] availability

[Mark Tinka]

On Saturday 20 February 2010 11:16:17 pm Saku Ytti wrote:

> I sometimes wonder if high network quality even pays off,
>  at least our claimed SLA compensations are very low so
>  it would be hard to justify any CAPEX increase to
>  increase quality. Rather it would seem that network
>  quality can be decreased if it means we can be more
>  competitive or have higher margins.
> Spending money on brand, creating high perceived quality
>  might be wiser than actually trying to increase quality,
>  since actual quality is quite hard to measure.
> But of course it is much more fun and satisfying to
>  create the best network you can. Too bad majority of
>  customers claim they want quality, but seen to choose
>  cheapest option from market, perhaps even the worst
>  product is good enough.

I agree - routing and switching platforms have become both 
fairly advanced and generally reliable that some providers 
are able to offer dirt-cheap prices because they can land 
customers on so-called "Layer 3 switches" and do eBGP Multi-
Hop upstream. Many ports, high-speed IP forwarding, cheap-
cheap pricing, e.t.c. Other examples in this vein abound.

The point is, platforms today can aggregate multiple 
functions. Collapsing a core and edge into a single chassis 
and landing 10Gbps in it (effectively offering you economies 
of scale at capacity) means bandwidth will be too cheap, 
that customers will, instinctively, move toward having 
multiple cheap providers rather than fewer high-SLA ones.

We love to build the dream networks, but the fiscal 
realities of doing so today are just against us when some 
operators seem to get by on architectures that would have 
most of us cringing in our slumber.

Cheers,

Mark.
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