On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > On Apr 9, 2007, at 11:18 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> On Mon, 9 Apr 2007, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > >>> What I struggle with is that we have a situation where the >>> protocols are in place, the tools are in place, and the root of >>> the system is in place. It is in everybody's narrow individual >>> interest to do the right thing, yet so many people (many of whom >>> really should know better) simply do the wrong thing. > >> I agree that ISPs with flat rates would benefit by hosting their >> own ntp servers. But who is going to tell them ? Certainly not the >> big carriers that provide internet connectivity to those ISPs >> because the big carriers do not sell bandwidth to the ISPs on a >> flat rate basis. So like in many cases, incompetence should be >> encouraged by the big carriers ( the top of the pyramid ) because >> they sell more bandwidth this way. >> >> Of course, in the end, when we waste, its always the end consumer >> that ipays. When wasting, money is simply transferred from the >> consumer pocket to people on top of the pyramid, this is why those >> people are usually pretty rich ;-) >> >> Nothing is free, when a packet goes through the net, it costs money >> and somebody makes profit. > > Louis, > > This isn't the place to debate your apparent general view that most > waste and inefficiency can be explained by the profit motive. But > let's look at the specific case in hand. The situation (as both of > us describe it) would have the ISPs be able to reduce costs. (Whether > they pass those cost savings on to the customer to increase market > competitiveness or keep it as additional profit margins makes no > different for this case, either way the ISPs benefit from providing > NTP service to their customers). > > It may be true that the big carriers want ISPs to behave wastefully, > but that still wouldn't explain their behavior. First of all, my ISP > is a big carrier (Verizon). So nobody with any influence on my > connectivity has an interest in me (flat rate payer) wasting > resources. Second of all, a smaller ISP doesn't need to depend on > its provider to learn about or implement NTP service. Believe me, I > had no encouragement from Verizon to use NTP properly, but still I do > so. Your claim would only make sense if the big carriers really were > in a position to effectively withhold information about NTP from > their customers (the ISPs). > > So I am inclined to go with others' suggested answers to the puzzle. > That ISPs figure that the cost of addition connections upstream from > not providing NTP services for their customers is less than the cost > (maintenance, support) of providing NTP services. > > If that is the case, then it becomes harder to persuade the ISPs to > "do the right thing". But if it is just incompetence, then we have > an easier task, since persuading them to do the right thing coincides > with persuading them to do something that improves their profits. > > -j > > -- > Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/ > > _______________________________________________ > timekeepers mailing list > [email protected] > https://fortytwo.ch/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/timekeepers >
Agreed Jeffrey, I might have sounded like a "conspiracy theorist" ;-)) Believe me I am not. I have been around a while and I have faced situations where our client's interest conflicted with our interests regarding bandwidth ( we are selling bandwidth to customers AND developing applications for them) see the conflicting interest? I suggested this could be also the case at a higher level but I have absolutely no proof of that. Globally we are pretty much saying the same thing you and I anyway. Thanks for your long replies, interesting points.. P.S. I like to adapt general principle to specific cases. In the IT field, it is called "patterns" and it help in developing code faster ;-))) Louis _______________________________________________ timekeepers mailing list [email protected] https://fortytwo.ch/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/timekeepers
