At 03:20 PM 1/6/2000 , Sean Donelan wrote:
I was thinking of more a Board of Health rating instead of a ranking. McDonalds and a five-star resturant both receive a Grade A. But there is still plenty of room for puffery and service competition. And perhaps breaking it up into classes, carrier-grade, data-grade, financial-grade, etc.
Since I believe that co-lo should be the long-term mode for most organization's web (and frequently mail) presence on the net, it would be quite helpful to develop some industry-standard labels, with formal definitions and requirements for adherence. (In other words, the co-lo facility has to use the labels correctly and their service must warrant the labels.) There's a basic choice between labels about features and labels about users. The former is like we see on some cable television channels, where they list the nature of things in a movie that might be of concern (strong language, adult content, nudity, violence...) The latter is like the system used for US broadcast television and the one used for US movies, doing an interpretive and prescriptive (parental) process, declaring who should (not) consume the movie (PG-13). For a nascent industry, I'd suggest first standardizing on the parameters, with a follow-on -- and highly simplistic -- effort to develop usage labels. The theory would be that the latter would need massive overhaul as the industry matures. On the other hand, the parameters ought to be easier to develop and more stable. d/ =-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com> Brandenburg Consulting <www.brandenburg.com> Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464 675 Spruce Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA