Re: Metcalfes "imminent death of the internet" prediction

Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com> Fri, 26 July 1996 06:46 UTC

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Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 23:02:39 -0700
To: Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>
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From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Subject: Re: Metcalfes "imminent death of the internet" prediction
Cc: big-internet@munnari.oz.au
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At 5:23 PM -0700 7/25/96, Michael Dillon wrote:
>I certainly agree with Bob that it is a good idea to have a simple metric

>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.

	Simple metrics are fine.  As long as they are reasonable.

	One which does not distinguish between the situation at a shopping
mall on the last shopping day before Christmas, versus a 200-car pile-up on
the local Interstate, is completely missing the distinction between
infrastructure and end-systems.

	Most people can tell the difference between a fast busy and a slow
one and they know who to blame for each.

	We need the same distinction if we are going to do anything useful
with metrics.

d/

--------------------
Dave Crocker                                            +1 408 246 8253
Brandenburg Consulting                             fax: +1 408 249 6205
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