Without getting into a religious debate, I need some consensus for a problem that I am having regarding the definition of a burstable circuit.
In my view of the world, a burstable circuit is defined as one where the customer can send us as much data as they would like (for example, an entire DS3's worth on a consistent basis), and we would bill them for usage above the contracted amount via some method (we use 90th percentile reporting)
In someone else's view inside the company, the customer should be prohibited from sending above the contracted rate for any extended period of time by policing at the ATM layer. Both views are viable, but I believe (nearly religously) that the former view is correct.
The holder of the latter view has the benefit of history on his side. Remember Frame Relay and terms like Bc (committed burst)? What you are talking about is a varient of volume based billing or metered service. The fact that you can 'burst' (for up to 5% of samples without being billed extra (actually just 'use' as you could do it all in one lump in one day of the month, which is hardly a burst), led some marketroids to call this a bursting service a long while ago, has (sadly) caught on, to the point where now there are two definitions in equal use, and a lot of confusion. The confusion is then added to by sales people who just say 'yes' to the question 'does the bursting work like [x]', for all values of x. Then the unhappy customer is annoyed when they either receive a bill for more than they expected, or find that after 3 seconds, their initially extremely zippy ftp session slows down to their committed rate. Cue support call from right. Exit sales person, pursued by a bear market. -- Alex Bligh Personal Capacity