Why Is Less Than 99.9% Uptime Acceptable?

Ian Lamont writes "Telcos, ISPs, mobile phone companies and other communication service providers are known for their complex pricing plans and creative attempts to give less for more. But Larry Borsato asks why we as customers are willing to put up with anything less than 99.999% uptime? That's the gold standard, and one that we are used to thanks to regulated telephone service. When it comes to mobile phone service, cable TV, Internet access, service interruptions are the norm — and everyone seems willing to grin and bear it: 'We're so used cable and satellite television reception problems that we don't even notice them anymore. We know that many of our emails never reach their destination. Mobile phone companies compare who has the fewest dropped calls (after decades of mobile phones, why do we even still have dropped calls?) And the ubiquitous BlackBerry, which is a mission-critical device for millions, has experienced mass outages several times this month. All of these services are unregulated, which means there are no demands on reliability, other than what the marketplace demands.' So here's the question for you: Why does the marketplace demand so little when it comes to these services?"

Comments

because they've been conditioned

[yagu]

Why does the marketplace demand so little when it comes to these services?

The marketplace has been duped into believing that this is the best technology can provide. People don't have time to know, understand, or research history and find that technology really can be reliable.

I'll get modded troll, but I lay much of this at Microsoft's feet. I laughed them off when I first heard of them and their goal of taking over the industry. After all, I'd been working on systems that ran 24x7 with five-9 reliability for years, and DOS/Windows couldn't touch that.

One time I had an opportunity to visit Microsoft and have lunch with a friend there. I figured while there I'd take the opportunity. I asked them in hushed tones, "Just how do you configure Windows so that you don't have to reboot it all of the time?" They looked at me like I was crazy.

Technology can provide reliability. The general public is no longer even aware that it's possible.

Re:because they've been conditioned

[The Ancients]

The reasons why Microsoft were so successful (in a business sense) are manifold, but one is not that their products were great, but that they were good enough. They accurately measured what people would put up with at different price points, and serviced the market accordingly. I think ISPs, telcos, etc have done likewise.

Re:because they've been conditioned

[SailorSpork]

I think the term you're looking for is "managing expectations." Here's a little article about it from the IT side. It's something that Microsoft and teleco's have become so good at. If you keep expectations low and give them a little better, they'll be more than happy. If you give the same, but you promised the world, you get a bunch of unsatisfied customers.

Re:because they've been conditioned

[Vellmont]

One time I had an opportunity to visit Microsoft and have lunch with a friend there. I figured while there I'd take the opportunity. I asked them in hushed tones, "Just how do you configure Windows so that you don't have to reboot it all of the time?" They looked at me like I was crazy.

In a certain sense.. you were crazy, at least at Microsoft.

The origins of an OS really show through a lot of the time. Windows started out as a single user OS, so rebooting was OK because the only person you messed up was the guy sitting in front of the screen. It eventually evolved into a multi-user OS, but the "just reboot!" mentality persists to this day.

Linux/Unix on the other hand started out life as a multi-user OS. Rebooting was a big no-no, because you'd affect countless people logged in, and you'd get yelled at for ruining someones work.

It's funny the attitude that comes from the users of each OS. Windows administrators categorically will try rebooting the damn thing first to fix any problem (and it usually works). Linux administrators will only try this as a last resort (and it almost never works).

Anyway, at Microsoft the idea that you can somehow tweak windows just right so rebooting isn't necessary is crazy. They designed the damn thing so "just reboot!" will fix any problem. This of course is an unacceptable solution to a lot of people out their, but for a lot of people it's obviously reality.

Re:because they've been conditioned

[NevermindPhreak]

I believe you are correct. The market isn't "conditioned" into thinking that anything less than five 9s is acceptable. They just don't want to pay the cost associated with it. The price/reliability ratio right now is the one that will satisfy the most customers. 99.999% reliability is harder to sell than 99.9% reliability at half the cost.

I work for a cable company, by the way. I design a lot of the building-out of our system, so i know the actual costs associated with creating that kind of reliability. Whenever someone needs that kind of reliability, I actually recommend getting a second ISP as a low-speed backup solution. It is the only smart way to go to get complete reliability, as pretty much any company advertising 99.999% reliability in this area is outright lying to the customer. (I know this from experience. I have switched customers over to our ISP from a week-long (or longer) outage of every ISP here, and there are quite a few.) Besides, a good router will split bandwidth between the ISPs so you're not paying for something you're not using. (called "bonding")

I still get amazed when people yell at me for being offline for a few hours after maybe 3, 4, 5 years of uptime. They say that they are losing thousands of dollars per day they are offline. Yet, they don't want to pay for a $40 roll-over backup. THESE are the vast majority of customers who complain so much about 99.999% uptime.

On another note, I think anyone claiming 99.999% on POTS is anecdotal. Growing up, I had my power cut out at least twice a year, and the phone system was hardly 99.999%. Trees fall on lines, and people cut buried lines for all sorts of accidental reasons. Just like you insure anything worth enough value, just like you back up data in multiple locations, you need a fallback plan if your ISP goes out if it means that much to you.

Re:because they've been conditioned

[tronbradia]

Actually our health system has completely ballooning costs relative to other countries and is really more of an example of the opposite phenomenon, where insurance must pay for all possible treatment or be sued. Our system without a doubt provides the most care of any system in the world, even though it's pretty obvious that returns diminish dramatically after about 10% of GDP (we are at 15% of GDP, 2nd runner up is Switzerland at 11 or 12%). Returns diminish because, essentially, more care doesn't actually make people healthier past a certain point. 99% if people just need a GP (cheap), immunizations (dirt cheap), antibiotics when they get an bacterial infection (dirt cheap), and surgeons to sew them up when they get in a car crash (expensive-ish but hopefully uncommon and only rarely protracted). The problem is whenever anybody gets anything terminal, there's the potential for basically infinite spending, and the more successful treatment is, the more money goes in because treatment is prolonged. In this case our system is not "barely good enough", it's more way too good, or at least, way too generous.

The cost

[Introspective]

Probably because of the cost. I do network design for a fairly large telco, and let me tell you the cost goes up exponentially with the number of "9"s that the business asks for.

Re:The cost

[who's got my nicknam]

Also, you need to bear in mind that POTS is incredibly simple technology compared to Internet/Cellular/Data services. I haven't had cable TV since the early '90s, but I don't ever remember it going out, either- that was long before we had digital cable/cable Internet in my market area. POTS never goes down because the equipment is extremely robust, even (especially) the older stuff. My local telco could continue to provide POTS for more than 4 days during power outages simply because of lower power requirements (after 4 days, they had to fire up their generators, and started dropping remote COs due to extreme cold).

We always want to compare service levels for newer tech with POTS and complain when they don't approach the same levels, but I'd expect that if we were to be still using the same equipment for ISP/Cellular service in a hundred years, it would be as stable and robust as the current (ok, previous generation) iteration of POTS. Problem is, we are constantly demanding better, faster, and cheaper: this has to be traded off for reliability, and for the most part people are happy with that tradeoff. Just like we're happy to buy crappy consumer goods from China at Wal*Mart because they're cheaper than domestic products. /rant

Here's an easy one.

[palegray.net]

Quoting the summary:

... after decades of mobile phones, why do we even still have dropped calls? It's a little thing called physics. When you're traveling while using your phone, you may transit into dead zones. We could solve this by cutting down all the trees and flattening the landscape, but that might make some people angry...

Re:Here's an easy one.

[palegray.net]

As a guy who does communications in the U.S. Navy, I can attest to this. If the United States military can't guarantee 99.999% uptime on communications in all conditions, what makes anyone think it's possible in the private sector?

Low price or high-quality?

[schnikies79]

You can have one or the other.

We're not talking about software, we're talking about hardware and man-hours. Those will never be free.

Really so common?

[Moridineas]

Are these kind of outages really so common? Mobiles phones I absolutely agree with. ON the other hand, I literally cannot remember the last time I lost cable or my internet. I've literally lost power more frequently than either of them (maybe 4 times in the past year) and lost water once. Emails not making it to their destination--again, does this really happen? In the decade plus I've been using internet email, I can't off the top of my head ever think of any "lost" email unless it was sent to a wrong address or something.

because 'misson critical' is a myth

[spasm]

Because 90% of stuff labeled 'mission critical' actually isn't. Think about it - for most of us, being able to receive or send cellphone calls or emails at any time seems super important, but the number of hours in any given month where it really *was* super important (the grant application was due in two hours; your mother was sick; your partner was about to go into labor; whatever) is generally pretty low - our real tolerance for occasional downtime is therefore quite high.

At what price?

[NEOtaku17]

"The marketplace has been duped into believing that this is the best technology can provide. People don't have time to know, understand, or research history and find that technology really can be reliable."

No. They believe it is the best the technology can provide at a given price. Why do people "put up" with cars that only give them X amount of protection in a car crash even though there is technology out there that would make them safer? Because they aren't willing to pay the marginal cost for the extra protection. Arguing about what is possible with technology is pointless. What matters is what a piece of technology can do at a given price.

Everything is a trade-off. The sooner Slashdot learns this the less we will have these stupid "Why don't consumers use the latest, greatest, most expensive technology? We need to force them somehow!" articles.

No way...

[duffbeer703]

This has everything to do with cost and nothing to do with Microsoft. Consider VoIP... people are deliberately choosing telephony services that are less reliable and lower quality than POTS, because VoIP is cheaper. If you want 99.999% uptime, that's fine -- but you're going to pay for it. High availability services require better equipment, redundant equipment that doesn't come cheap and more, higher quality staff to operate it. So it costs more.

I've been in the technology services business for a long time, and with few exceptions, 80%+ customers want their services are delivered as cheaply as possible. Most hospital systems don't even have a 99.999% availability requirement. The 20% the want varying levels of higher than normal availability usually have a government regulation, SLA or other mandate requiring that they do so.