Really intro level hosting question

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (dsr at tao.merseine.nu)]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2003 at 06:25:06AM -0500, Jack Coats wrote:
> Normally.  But then again, are we talking business or ethics and morality :)
> Little things like that never stopped WorldCom, Enron, or Auther Anderson.
> But, let me pull out of my driveway without a seatbelt on, I am sure a SWAT
> team would be there to terminate me.  For me, I have found life works out
> easier to play by the rules.
> 
> I have a friend that wanted to do just this.  But he took the high road.
> Now he has an ISP that is making money.  He pays cash for things as he needs
> them, and has taken advantage of dot bomb asset fire sales and purchacing
> on ebay.

There is even a practical reason.

The reason that consumer broadband is so cheap is because there is no
service to accompany it. Now, you might be able to get along without
traditional customer service -- holding your hand, debugging problems at
your end, und so weiter -- but try running a business without a service
level guarantee from your provider. "Three days downtime? Sure, we'll
pro-rate a refund for you. There's $6, have a nice day."

Now, if you can multihome to several unreliable providers, you can be
statistically safe from all of them failing at once... but the consumer
level services won't include the routing information that lets you do
this properly. You still need at least a minimal business-class service.

Hosting centers like to plug their availability, but remember what
happened to the Boston Globe a few weeks ago when Masspike munched some
fiber? Turns out there was no diversity there.

Hrm. There might be a business plan in starting a first-class hosting
center in the Boston area (space is relatively cheap now) without a
backbone infrastructure, just connectivity through three or four
providers.

-dsr-


-- 
Network engineer / pre-sales engineer available in the Boston area.
http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr