----- Original Message ----- > From: "Valdis Kletnieks" <valdis.kletni...@vt.edu>
> > Why the hostility, Valdis? > > As I said several times - it's not hard to be 98% or 99% sure you can make > all your commitments. However, since predicting the future is an inexact > science, > it's really hard to provide a *100% guarantee* that you'll have enough > contended capacity to make all the performance targets even if every > single occasional customer shows up at once. As Jay pointed out in his > follow-up note, his backup strategy is "scramble around and hope another > provider can > come through in time", which is OK if you *know* that's your strategy > and are OK on it. However, blindly going along with "my usual provider > guaranteed 100% availability" is a bad idea. I don't think Kelly is on his first rodeo, and I know I'm not. "scramble around" is a bit pejorative as descriptions for my booking strategy go, but everyone has a cranky day every so often, not least me. :-) And note that I *also* pointed out that carrier statmuxing on the transport is a valid strategy for capacity elasticity, in that particular environment. > Remember, we're coming out of a solar minimum. ;) Are we in fact coming out of it yet? I heard it was getting deeper, and that we were looking at a Dalton, if not another Maunder. Cheers, -- jra
