Re: Metcalfes "imminent death of the internet" prediction

[Michael Dillon <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Dave Crocker wrote:

> At 7:50 AM -0700 7/25/96, Per Gregers Bilse wrote:
> >No, don't forget Dr. Metcalfe's definition of a collapse: "... when
> >more than 50,000 people are denied their Internet access for more
> >than an hour, let's call it an Internet collapse, ...".  By that
> >definition the Internet has died when 100k people get no response
> >from IBM's WWW servers.
> 
> 	That, of course, is the problem with overly simplistic definitions.
> In this case it feeds a verious serious failure to distinguish between
> "failures of the net" and "failures of the information providers".

> 	Good message.  Bad tone.

I certainly agree with Bob that it is a good idea to have a simple metric
for network collapses to more easily explain to the general public what is
happening and whether it is a major problem or a minor problem. However, I
disagree with his numbers and his terms.

I think that a major Internet disaster has to be defined so that it is of
a similar scale as a hurricane or the Mississippi river floods of a few
years ago. On that scale the Netcom outages were more like a regional
snowstorm that clogs the roads for a day. 

Michael Dillon                   -               ISP & Internet Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: [phone]
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: [e-mail]