On (25/02/04 16:30), Steve Gibbard wrote:
With that in mind, how much in the way of reliability problems is it reasonable to expect our users to accept?
probably something more than we tell them it will be down, but less than we would (secretly) hope - most users tend to complain if it becomes uncomfortable to them and they think that calling might make it better.
If the Internet is a utility, or more generally infrastructure our society depends on, it seems there are a bunch of different systems to compare it to.
don't forget such useful things as (snail) mail and trash collection - we tend to accept more problems with mail (except around certain holidays)...but if we want more reliability or responsiveness, we pay extra (or choose a different carrier). trash is forgiving only to the point that it isn't making things uncomfortable, ie the stench isn't overwhelming the can of air-freshener ;) while it is true that we accept mobility over reliability on our cell phones, we are becoming less and less forgiving of this (hence the race to blanket the country with cell towers). we compare cell servive to landline service, and we accepted that it would take time to get better coverage, but now it must work all the time, everywhere...
There must be some threshold for what people are willing to accept in terms of residential power outages, that's somewhere above 2-3 hours per year.
two or three hours a year would be wonderful here (southern florida), but the grid is old and very succeptible to lightning (or cars) taking out a transformer/relay/etc - i agree though, there is a threshold, which in this case is 'configurable' in the sense that users can be conditioned to accept worse and worse service.
So, it appears that among general infrastructure we depend on, there are probably the following reliability thresholds:
mail - about twice as long (2-3 day first class taking 5-6), but dependent upon the importance as perceived by the customer trash - smell not overpowering, and bins not overflowing too badly, presence of rats or cockroaches will reduce the threshold though ;)
How Internet service fits into that of course depends on how you're accessing the Net.
based somewhat upon what the customer thinks the reliability should be, and what they are conditioned to accept - everyone here asks their friends/coworkers who has the best dsl/cable/email/cell/etc service and price. this is also the reason that many of us run our own mail/web/etc servers, so that we have a better idea of what to expect (if operator error is going to render my email useless, i want it to be my error...) this brings up another point, we like to be able to 'blame' the error on someone/thing...if i hose my server, well then i'm an idiot...if my dsl provider reloads their transit router, then they are the idiot...if the driver in front of me is going too slow in rush hour and a semi pulls in ahead...but i digress. in the race to put more 9's on the company website we have created the situation where there are (in some cases), unrealistic expectations. these expectations have not yet been tempered by time or reality, partly because we (network operators) have done a pretty good job of running this internet thing in an almost reliable manner. when something goes wrong, we do our best to prevent that from happening again (for at least the next month or two). as to the question of how reliable do the users expect it to be, i believe that it is a semi-individual thing: as a user, i expect (or should i say hope) it to be available when i need/want to use it, but as an operator, i can understand how/why it isn't (but i don't always like it ;) ) the internet is as important as the service we run over it...the more vital (or money-making), the higher the expectation - especially when it is a service that we already have my $0.02 /joshua -- Fixing Unix is easier than living with NT. Jonathan Gilpin