Jonathan Heiliger <loco@mfst.com> writes

On Nov 27, 9:17am, Sean Doran wrote:

...

Jonathan> Everyone likes to portray Jonathan> the image of having a 99.98% uptime whenever Jonathan> possible, even though most folks realize Jonathan> that it just plain isn't possible

Well, more importantly, what on earth does a number like that mean?

Sorry, bad choice of words. Rather than uptime, availability would be the proper word. Availability tends to be the amount of time the network is "available" for the customer to receive their expected service (whether guaranteed in writing or not), and for the customers expectation of how the service will perform when it is considered "in-service" is met.

This is reasonable expectation, but unfortunately it's pretty difficult to measure what "the network" is. Do you mean your NSPs backbone? Its connections to other NSPs? Connections to a specific site? Global connectivity? How do you factor when you or a target site is singly connected? -scott