Multihoming - Resilience or Independence

> > the basic issue is that multi-homing is *the demand*. And it's not the
ISP
> > who has to evaluate whether it's the right one but the *customer*. We
live
> > in a customer - driven world. Money makes the world go round, not
techies.
>
> Is that really what the customer want? Or do they actually want resilience
> and redundancy? And for that there are other ways...

I have been watching this thread for a while now, and I finally cannot help
but stick my oar in.

There are two very clearly defined camps here; one the 'technical' camp that
says 'we have many ways of making it work' or 'this is the only way it will
work' and the other camp is the 'commercial' saying either 'the customer
does not trust just one ISP' or 'I don't care how it works, but it must
work'.

Now, to add just another opinion to the thread, which is really not that
different to some other but may possibly offer something new;

In my line of work I have set-up 4 LIRs in the past two years for companies
that have had either had bad experiences with their ISPs (usually more than
one serially) or some have had to do all 'reasonable' things to ensure good,
reliable connectivity for either contractual or due-diligence reasons.

Regardless of how good an ISP is *now*, there will come a time when they are
sold, bought, merge or go bust that causes change. My personal bugbear was
INS. Great in the early days, but within days of Clueless&Witless buying
them, the whole thing started to come apart. This is not isolated, and they
are not the only ones at all.

Also, especially in Europe, ISPs tend to be reliant on 3rd party local-loop
carriers, even when we are talking about data-centre / co-location delivery
of services. In the UK, all ISPs exclude 3rd party links from SLAs. Right.
Good one.

Trying to solve the problem of people not trusting ISPs by changing the
technology to ensure that people *must* trust one ISP (IPv6 IMHO is just
such a technology) is not a very customer friendly attitude. It does not
work and will not work.

In every other line of business, it is quite normal to buy your product or
service from two suppliers, telecoms and Internet are the only real
exceptions. You could also discount other utilities, but there is an issue
of delivery there that precludes efficient and real competition, so no more
there please. As the Internet becomes a true necessity for business, supply
will more and more be selected like any other service, and the same
contingencies will be made.

So, IMHO, please stop trying to 'solve' the problem by pretending that you
or any other ISP is reliable, civil and economically viable and stop trying
to 'solve' the problem by mandating technology solutions that enforce this
goal. It will not work.

Peter