On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 02:30:19PM -0800, Tom (UnitedLayer) wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 12:27:16PM -0800, Jim Devane wrote:
"Are these devices able to effectively address the need?"
Sugar pills effectively address the needs of a great many ailments when given to people who believe that they will work. And if the end result is an addressed need, who are we to say that it wasn't worth paying for. :)
That sounds like a yes answer. That being said, the Sugar Mountain RouteMaster5000 is probably the best unit out there. It has lots of blinking lights, and sets the "low latency" bits on most types of IP traffic that needs high prioritization over regular internet traffic. It can speed up your network traffic up to %1000, but the results may vary depending on your packet mix, and in that case, it doesn't change your traffic patterns at all.
I don't know if they're doing the same thing in Cali or not (they probably are, since all the radio stations are owned by the same 2 companies), but here in NoVA land there is currently a massive radio ad campaign for a Rocky Mountain Radar radar-jamming product called the Phazer, which claims to jam police radar (legally, because it doesn't actually put out any RF, it is entirely passive) "or they'll pay for your ticket". When faced with such a deal, I have heard many people say "how could they possibly back it up that kind of a promise if it didn't work, they would be losing money left and right paying for people's tickets". Then I recall the quote from the inventor, "I could ship an empty black box with a weight in the bottom and only get 22-24 percent back." If ever there was a market for voodoo science products, it was IP transit. It is a big-bucks industry, the consumer can almost never see what is really going on behind the scenes with their providers (thanks to loads of NDAs), for the most part they have no real idea what they're doing (but they like to think they do), and they have been mislead into thinking that all IP transit is the same -- simply a commodity. A fool and his money, and all that... Oh well, at least web hosting is still worse (ever notice that EVERY hoster has an OC192 backbone, even the ones with 2 machines and a 10Mbps hub?). :P -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)