[LINK] digital black screen and absolute data lines

[Glen Turner]

On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 08:06 +1000, Richard Chirgwin wrote:

> Why the scepticism, Jan? The data service will have been something 
> boring and non-Internet, like a DDS, Frame Relay or ATM connection - 
> well, I guess ATM may not be present in Mildura, but DDS and Frame Relay 
> will be. Both of these have something that Internet services don't get - 
> service level guarantees in the four-nines class or better.

Um, I work for an Internet network which has delivered 5 nines
for about three years now. Remote surgery happens across that
network often enough not to be noteworthy anymore. There's nothing
special about DDS, FR, etc versus IP -- what does make the difference
is the emphasis and expenditure on robustness. Traditionally
that emphasis has not been present in Internet engineering,
but that's certainly not the case in academic networks anymore.

Anyway, the basic problem with the point-to-point services is
that they are dedicated. So there comes a point where there isn't
enough people to share the cost for the speed that you want for
your application.

So there's a sweet spot in application bandwidth demands for a
dedicated link. That used to be about 2Mbps, it's now about
30Mbps. Anything outside of that sweet spot, you're looking
at using the Internet, simply because there is no other way
to afford the service.

> Not all data is Internet data (in fact, at least the last time I looked, 
> the private data services market was still slightly larger than the 
> broadband market. It's just not as interesting).

You've got to be careful there. The markup on private data services
is well over 50%, whereas the markup in Internet services is much,
much less. So you're not really measuring economic activity when
comparing the expenditure between the two markets.

Best wishes, Glen