RE: Time for a real Internet highway (?)

I wonder what the author would have said if major medical facilities would have had casualties because of the Level3/Cogentco debacle. Say a surgeon speaking via VoIP to another doctor about some brain surgery and the patient flatlines. What about a daytrader about to click on a nice sized trade... Oops.

I think that mission-critical Internet doesn't exist. I have no objection to creating it, but I do have an objection to replacing the best-effort Internet with a mission-critical one. There are legitimate reasons to want a best-effort service at the lowest possible cost. Because there isn't a mission-critical Internet yet, it is a serious mistake to put mission critical services such as the ones you speak of on the Internet. DS