Worthless comes in many forms, Doug. If you're talking specifically about the monetisation of hardware/effort, then it may indeed be worthless by the simple fact that the cost may outweigh the net gains in profits gained from the purchasing, configuration, and deployment.
Businesses are about making money first and foremost. If the amount of time and money put into a particular project outweighs the money you get in return, it's a bad business decision. Now, there needs to be SOME level of redundancy to the point that you don't lose all your customers or create a massive negative PR situation in the case of a downtime, however, there's such a thing as acceptable losses in any situation, and any reasonable business person has factored those in. This is the same reason you will never see 100% bug-free software. The amount of time and money spent tracking down and trying to fix every SINGLE bug relates to massive losses in business viability, hence the concept of 'good enough' software, one of the few ideas that has kept the US software market even remotely competitive over the last decade. There are always a certain number of bugs and problems that people will simply accept, and the job of the businessman is to determine when a product is 'good enough' for public release. Microsoft Windows 95, for instance, was released with 5027 KNOWN bugs. These were bugs that were known to exist and they just didn't have time to track down and fix upon release. And what happened? People bought the product in MASSIVE amounts -- even with the problems. This started the rise of Microsoft as a major power in the computer market. This again is the Pareto principle, and is incredibly effective when planning for business and technology rollouts. So yes... while it may add value to the customer to create additional redundancy, that value may not be enough to make it a viable business decision. Nor does adding hardware necessarily equate to increased uptime or higher availability. In fact, adding hardware may actually DECREASE uptime, as the more components you add, the more complexity you create, which can lead to an increase in unforeseen problems. Making everything 100% redundant only makes sense in a military or other similar application, and costs millions and millions of dollars for even a small system (as that sort of thing has to be hardwired, and is generally not designed for an interoperable system). N. Douglas Garstang wrote: > Let's assume for a moment that it's impossible. That does not mean adding > additional servers and additional networking equipment does not add value, or > is a worthless endeavour. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Tim Panton > Sent: Sun 8/5/2007 5:01 AM > To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion > Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Teliax Quality of Service > > > On 5 Aug 2007, at 06:54, Douglas Garstang wrote: > > >> I don't think creating a network without a single point of failure >> is unreasonable. >> > > It's impossible. I can't think of a single example where this > actually exists. > > Getting even close is hideously expensive. > > Tim, speaking for himself :-) > > _______________________________________________ > --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- > > asterisk-users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- > > asterisk-users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
