[LINK] 'true' cost of bandwidth?

[Adrian Chadd]

On Sat, May 02, 2009, Michael Still wrote:

> I don't think congestion is an issue with operating a network (although
> it would affect service levels). However, whether your peering was
> settlement free or not would certainly matter.


[nerd]
You've then never seen kit that started rebooting/hanging/etc when
all ports were full. Or, you've never seen kit which started dropping
your routing protocol packets when the ports were full (QoS on said port
or not - yay bugs); or where your traffic fills the backplane/bus
capacity for that line card before QoS gets run (ie, you tap a 100mbit
card out at 80mbit - the router QoS layer still thinks there's 20mbit,
but the bus is just saturated..)

Or you're like some people; you buy kit that meets your current + predicted
growth and the CPU on said kit tops out when you exceed that traffic level
(DoS, rabid bit torrenting, etc, etc.)
[/nerd]

So yes, congestion can be a strictly operational issue. :)

2c,



Adrian