----- "Frank Bulk" <frnkblk@iname.com> wrote:

The ones who make the decisions know that SONET/SONET-like redundancy can be purchased, or architected. It's another example of where economic factors are encouraging those buyers not to make those purchase decisions. Not to say that all the future costs are properly accounted for, just that the people who purchase the capacity and "care" could choose to spend their dollars for redundant transport.

In fact, it would be best if a few more failures occurred so that those who didn't properly assess the impact of outages to their business can make those adjustments.

We are *well* past the point where we need to go back to making Internet backbone architecture design decisions on an engineering, rather than a financial basis. Public corporations clearly can be trusted only to do that which the business environment and laws demand: Maximize Shareholder Value. That is almost *never* the same as Maximizing the Public Good. Unless we fix the first, we must regulate to achieve the second. This is a recording<tm>. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Start a man a fire, and he'll be warm all night. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.