No reasons why Internet-based applications are a bad idea

Published October 19th, 2005 in Technology Tags: desktop applications, dsl, internet access, internet based applications, isp.

Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller has written an article in News Forge called Three reasons why Internet-based applications are a bad idea . His arguments are basically:

Peering agreement falls apart - recently a peering agreement between two providers broke down and a lot of people were left without Internet access
Cut one line, cut off DSL - a phone line was cut in Florida recently cutting off Internet access for many people
Mysterious outages abound - a co-worker of Robin’s lost Internet access for a couple of hours recently

Basically, what Robin is saying is that online applications require Internet access and Internet access is not always reliable, therefore online applications are probably not a good idea.

Rubbish! If your electricity is cut off, you can’t use your PC. Does that mean desktop applications are a bad idea? Of course not. I would argue that online applications are a great idea and if your Internet access is not reliable - that’s a completely seperate issue. If your Internet access is dodgy, change to an ISP which is dependable or have a backup Internet access service available!

Technorati Tags: desktop applications, dsl, internet access, internet based applications, isp

Bookmark at these sites:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

2 Responses to “No reasons why Internet-based applications are a bad idea”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 hostyle Oct 19th, 2005 at 12:02 pm

“Basically, what Robin is saying is that online applications require Internet access and Internet access is not always reliable, therefore online applications are probably not a good idea.”

Go ask BaseCamps customers opinion on this matter next time it goes down, bringing all of their project data with it

Roblimo’s first point is a rather silly one, but the latter two do bear merit. But as I’ve said before, and will no doubt say again, Jason Kottke has the perfect plan to cater for both: http://www.kottke.org/05/08/googleos-webos - and its not rocket science.
2 Tom Raftery Oct 19th, 2005 at 11:14 pm

Go ask BaseCamps customers opinion on this matter next time it goes down, bringing all of their project data with it

Aw, come on Hostyle, that’s just a backup issue!

Thanks for the link to the Kottke article - it makes for a fascinating read and, if implemented properly, could indeed augment web apps reliability and usefulness.