Re: Repository services and budget

[Vince Wolodkin <wolodkin@digitalink.com>]

Dave Crocker wrote:
> 
> Rick,
> 
>         What follows, of course, is a vigorous disagreement with your
> assessment, but just to make clea,r ahead of entering that fray, that you
> are taking a clear and concrete position and I, for one, appreciate that it
> permits legitimate and (one hopes) productive exploration of specifics.
> 
> At 7:58 PM -0800 1/13/97, Rick H. Wesson wrote:
> >Your estimate was for a cripled set of linux boxen, and provides little
> 
>         I don't recall specifying linux, though I know others did.  I
> allocated some money for o/s platform and some more for database software.
> It happens that I suspect a PC-based Unix system (bsdi, linux, solaris) is
> just fine, but that's not a position I'm taking religiously and believe
> that the budget would be fine for a workstation platform.  The debate, of
> course, has to do with the level of demand to be placed on the platform.
> On that, it would seem, there is a basic disagreement.
> 
> >well work 24 hours a day and 7 daze a week!
> 
>         We agree on this.  The assumption that my previous efforts excluded
> this requirement are not correct, though of course I do understand that one
> might continue to disagree that it is satisfied.
> 
> >Ongoing
> >===============================================
> >3 software developers  80K each/yr     240,000
> 
>         This assumes on-going software development and I don't believe that
> that is necessary.  The repository has some very, very basic functionality
> to provide; it is not intended as an evolving customer support/service
> engine.  THAT is the job of each registar's customer support folks to
> provide.
> 
> >3 T-1 Connections      12K each/yr      36,000
> 
>         This underscores a very basic point which adds considerably and, I
> believe, unnecessarily, to the expenses.  It is based on the "in-house"
> model for connectivity, rather than using co-location services.  In my
> opinion, the primary access to the repository should be with machines that
> are co-located at well-connected points.  The cost of such access is
> dramatically lower than your model and the service will tend to be better.
> 
>         (By the way, I believe you underestimated the costs of this
> connectivity model, since you need to provide both for the telecom wire to
> the provider AND for the provider charge.)
> 

I would love to know where you can co-locate for less than
$36,000/year.  The best deals we have ever gotten have been on the order
of $50,000/year PER BOX.  Of course we have also gotten personnel at
these sites to cover basic support issues like backups etc....

> >3 Rotateing 24/7
> >    NOC support ppl    35K each/yr     105,000
> 
>         If on-site staff is required for 24/7, the actual staffing is
> typically 4 or 4.5 people.
> 
>         But it isn't necessary. Basic operations require no
> moment-to-moment intervention, except for periodic system administration.
> Problems require intervention by experts.  The operators that one hires for
> 24x7 coverage do not typically have the skillset for such interventions.
> Hence, what IS required is one operator and a damn good monitoring and
> alert service to page an expert.  How much time, per year, is required for
> such an expert?  I'd guess one FTE, spread across 2-3 senior people.
> 
>         On the matter of reliability it's important to remember that this
> is a replicated system, so that outage of one of the machines affects
> capacity but does not necessarily require instantaneous repair.
> 

Have you ever actually run a computer center.  Despite what you think,
skilled operators are extremely important unless you have lots of high
priced people with pagers to back them up 24 hours a day.  You need
someone on site 24 X 7 who doesn't need to page an engineer every time
something goes moderately wrong.

> >Travel                                  80,000
> >Telephone                               35,000
> >Legal Team                             125,000
> 
>         While we all are aware of the many threatended lawsuits that have
> been cited on this list, I'm not at all clear why the REPOSITORY needs such
> a large legal budget.  Please explain.
> 

No, but CORE does, and this would be a startup cost for CORE.  They also
need lawyers to assist in development of a contract for the respository
contractor.

> >
> >Startup
> >==============================================
> >Routers                                         25,000
> 
>         Not if co-location is used.
> 

Again, please quote some prices for co-location deals you have done in
the past that weren't with volunteers.  After all, this will be a
commercial venture, so NAPs aren't likely to allow co-location for free.

> >COMPETITIVE services against NSI. Why should it not be done as robustly
> >as possable? Afterall these businesses are betting their livelyhood on the
> 
>         We don't disagree about the need for robustness.  This is a
> difference about means, not ends.
> 
> >It does puzzle me as to why the IAHC does not want to discuss the
> >functionality
> >of the CORE repository, as that functionality defines what and how services
> 
>         No idea what 'refusal' you are talking about.
> 
> >I would like to add that if the CORE repository is run at a fixed cost,
> 
>         No one said it would run at a fixed cost.  That was a conclusion
> some folk jumped to because I did a one-off budget, to try to get an
> estimate for its initial requirement.
> 
> >If all this is to be determined by the CORE I could only say that for the
> >first
> >time "on the wire" protocols will be defined by a small closed group and not
> >by a Working Group process. Is this wize?
> 
>         You are assuming that protocols will be invented by CORE.  I don't
> know why you assume this, but the assumption differs from my own.
> 
> d/
> 
> ----------------------------
> Dave Crocker, Director                                       +1 408 246 8253
> Internet Mail Consortium                                 (f) +1 408 249 6205
> 127 Segré Place                                             dcrocker@imc.org
> Santa Cruz, CA  95060 USA                                 http://www.imc.org
> 
> [IAHC member, expressing strictly (or loosely) personal opinions]

Vince Wolodkin