[asterisk-users] Teliax Quality of Service

[SIP]

Worthless comes in many forms, Doug. If you're talking specifically 
about the monetisation of hardware/effort, then it may indeed be 
worthless by the simple fact that the cost may outweigh the net gains in 
profits gained from the purchasing, configuration, and deployment.

Businesses are about making money first and foremost. If the amount of 
time and money put into a particular project outweighs the money you get 
in return, it's a bad business decision.

Now, there needs to be SOME level of redundancy to the point that you 
don't lose all your customers or create a massive negative PR situation 
in the case of a downtime, however, there's such a thing as acceptable 
losses in any situation, and any reasonable business person has factored 
those in.

This is the same reason you will never see 100% bug-free software. The 
amount of time and money spent tracking down and trying to fix every 
SINGLE bug relates to massive losses in business viability, hence the 
concept of 'good enough' software, one of the few ideas that has kept 
the US software market even remotely competitive over the last decade. 
There are always a certain number of bugs and problems that people will 
simply accept, and the job of the businessman is to determine when a 
product is 'good enough' for public release.  Microsoft Windows 95, for 
instance, was released with 5027 KNOWN bugs. These were bugs that were 
known to exist and they just didn't have time to track down and fix upon 
release. And what happened? People bought the product in MASSIVE amounts 
-- even with the problems. This started the rise of Microsoft as a major 
power in the computer market.

This again is the Pareto principle, and is incredibly effective when 
planning for business and technology rollouts.

So yes... while it may add value to the customer to create additional 
redundancy, that value may not be enough to make it a viable business 
decision. Nor does adding hardware necessarily equate to increased 
uptime or higher availability. In fact, adding hardware may actually 
DECREASE uptime, as the more components you add, the more complexity you 
create, which can lead to an increase in unforeseen problems.

Making everything 100% redundant only makes sense in a military or other 
similar application, and costs millions and millions of dollars for even 
a small system (as that sort of thing has to be hardwired, and is 
generally not designed for an interoperable system).

N.

Douglas Garstang wrote:
> Let's assume for a moment that it's impossible. That does not mean adding additional servers and additional networking equipment does not add value, or is a worthless endeavour.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com on behalf of Tim Panton
> Sent: Sun 8/5/2007 5:01 AM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Teliax Quality of Service
>  
>
> On 5 Aug 2007, at 06:54, Douglas Garstang wrote:
>
>   
>> I don't think creating a network without a single point of failure  
>> is unreasonable.
>>     
>
> It's impossible. I can't think of a single example where this  
> actually exists.
>
> Getting even close is hideously expensive.
>
> Tim, speaking for himself :-)
>
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