Categories
Networking

Accepting Less Than 99.999% Uptime

The Standard has a good writeup on how we accept less than stellar uptime for things that are becoming more and more valuable such as broadband.

Phone service is reliable because it’s mandated to be. There’s pretty strict rules regarding uptime. As a result it’s pretty good. The reason for this is that phones are used for emergencies (911). But what about VoIP?

It makes you wonder why broadband access isn’t being held to these standards. Of course the answer is “money”. But should it be changed? Should ISP’s need to ensure connectivity is as reliable as old POTS lines? I suspect for people to ditch POTS, it will need to be.

I wonder if FiOS is held to the same 99.999% uptime requirements when it’s run by the phone company, and used for VoIP. I doubt it, but I’m not sure.

I suspect reliability of broadband will become more of an issue as VoIP interest increases in the next 18-24 months and larger players like Verizon and Comcast start pushing it to even more homes.

Categories
Internet Networking

Phone 2.0: DNS Dialing Anyone?

I’m going to make a giant proposal to the web. Identifiers suck. Email, IM, Phone, etc. Most people have more than one of each. Lets fix that. Step by step.