Ron, unfortunately, yours is not an uncommon experience.
Likewise, the performance ratings that AHhaha has assigned to Home are not at all uncommon - or even unique to Home. And surprisingly, the ability of an ISP to "perform" is not necessarily related to its size or standing (Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.) or financial stature. Maybe some can recall the horrendous issues surrounding ATT's worldnet email and directory services a while back. Sometimes those who have very large footprints find it more difficult to optimize their services due to a much larger (and oft times not so obvious) set of scaling issues. Which sometimes means that a smaller, regional ISP can often support more reliable services such as mail, directory services (dns), not to mention basic connectivity.
There are now over 7,600 ISPs of all types and sizes in the USA, btw. Last week I read that the number, according to one Internet internal governance body, whose official name escapes me now, has increased during the past year from where it had been previously, at approximately 6,500. So much for consolidation and shakeouts.
What's happened in the (mostly large) ISP service assurance area is actually very interesting to observe from a networkologist's perspective. It's a reflection of some systemic issues that have evolved in the Internet services domain, when viewing the effects of "best effort" vis a vis what it takes to get product to market in a manner where it scales reliably.
Historically, and prior to the Internet's current role as a mainstay vehicle for end users, it took eons for the Bells to get their stuff to market because of an endless number of laboratory trials and live field pilots between the proof of concept (POC) stage and the time that the products and services were actually released to rate payers.
Granted, in many cases they overdid it, and there were more issues at stake than total quality management. But by and large, they did a good job of not getting stuff in front of the customer before it's time. This is an understatement from a number of other perspectives, I'm sure, but it holds equally true from a product quality standpoint, as well, no matter how cynical we are of the ILECs at times.
Truth be told, many so-called ISPs and ecommerce providers have spent more capital (monetary and human) on their "content" and banner ad delivery systems than they have on network integrity. A kind of rushed vertical integration, if you will, where their focus on networking is left to a couple of over-worked resident genii who don't have enough resources at their disposal to make things work right. This is essentially because their managers are, in many cases, air heads who assume that the net-heads at the colo site will ensure that the infrastructure is going to take care of itself.
Where the ILECs have not followed suit with such a test and acceptance protocol, not ironically, is where they have themselves introduced Internet-releated products, such as their DSLs, and have likewise delivered less-than-optimal levels of service. But getting back to Home and the other ISPs...
... here in the "Net realm, however, we see now that a different set of product development protocols has been adopted. "Best effort" seems to have given service providers license to use their "live" end user service platforms as a kind of de facto laboratory utility, from which to launch services out the door, which are barely beyond POC. In so doing, sometimes POC turns into POS.
A naive view of this would suggest that perhaps they are trying extra hard to meet demand. But I suspect that there is something more fundamental that has been the cause for dismal performance. It stems from this license I just mentioned concerning best effort. Best effort, in many cases, isn't best enough, and in those cases the only way accountability is assigned is when the shit hits the fan. It oughtn'e be that way anyomre, because the 'Net's criticality now transcends the casual, curiosity-seeking platform for consumers that it once represented.
In fairness, the rush to get product out the door and expanding the reach of their footprints, in the absence of modeling tools that scale to the levels that the 'Net has now demonstrated it has the potential to reach, has left many service providers who did not have the foresight to invest the time and money in adequate platform development, with little options at this point but to give it their best effort.
FAC |
