Re: Three states for a binary bit

[RJ Atkinson <rja@inet.org>]

At 19:52 05/12/00, George Michaelson wrote:

>If the marginal cost of 'overengineering' dropped radically, 
>so we could get to 100x in front of current end-to-end requirements, would people stop dicking with protocols to make them more efficient?

        In my experience, this is possible today in many countries.  
One lights long-haul glass with WDM that connects routers, then 
builds MANs and data centres using GigE (soon to be 10GigE) over 
glass at up to ~70km between sites.  And it is a lot more affordable 
to over-engineer using Ethernet technology or something else simple,
than to build something more complex and watch operations folks fail.

        Other folks in the ISP business will say roughly the same
thing.  In many countries, there is a ton of unlight fibre in the
ground or in the process of being laid.  1/10 GigE is a very
cost-effective way to over-engineer.

        It doesn't seem to stop people messing with micro-optimisations
of protocols, however, to answer your other question.

Cheers,

Ran
rja@inet.org