ps - I just saw your other relies. It appears that we were both composing our replies to your post 35 at the same time and covered a lot of the same territory. [Mine took about an hour and a half, as I was also watching the Yankee game. Lets Go Mets.]
Oddly, the kind of peering you are suggesting among hosting providers is akin to the heritage of older style ISPers. Not exactly, due to the commercial aspect of ASPing, but that cultural flavor does exist among the original netheads, one that you probably wont find again in a strictly commercial arena. Life goes on.
The prospect of a mutual assistance program for times of disaster is not all that far fetched, however. Due to the dependence on telecommunications by the financial markets, NY City has had a mutual assistance program, or MAP, in place for about ten years. It encompasses all of the primary and secondary carriers of record, and it's administered by the NY City Dept. of Information Technologies and Telecommunications (DoITT).
This plan has been tested by several real disasters already, most notably during the World Trade Center bombing. Despite the predictable confusion that one would expect among competing carriers being administered by a city like NY, it actually proved to be quite effective and beneficial in the end. The compelling factors here, however, were those of publicly stated commitments, and good citizenry.
At the time of the bombing there were only about a dozen or so carriers participating. Now, I wouldn't even hazard to guess.
But the NY region of interest only encompassed some 50 square miles and there was a common cause of concern which transcended the usual concerns of competitors working with one another. The risk factor was assessed at One Trillion Dollars at the time. In fact, the NY City Chamber of Commerce brought it to a head by citing a report whose title resembled this fact. It was titled: The Trillion Dollar Gamble. Today, I'm sure that the number would be much higher.
But providing a D/R plan for NY City is not quite the same thing as covering the globe by multiple ASPs. Even if the current Mayor of NY City did get behind it. smile
Regards, Frank Coluccio
|
