| Back when communication was still phoneline-connection oriented this was done all the time. You had a contractual quality target of 0.0n% of calls that either aborted or did not connect at all over the yearly average. You then over-provisioned your phone system to hit that target. That could mean adding two additional lines you never need just so new year's eve does not screw you over. There are mathematical models that describe the probability of a new call coming in at any given time. Add the system in terms of how many connections it can have active and how many it can queue, and you can calculate your required sizing for a given quality level. As a sidenode, this is also why ISDN flatrates were doomed, because the always-connected nature of them broke the models the system was based on. And why new phone companies renting capacity from established ones could offer cheaper connections, they simply rented at a much higher allowed connection error rate. Using similar, well, maybe even much easier math, you can calculate that your current system at your desired maximum utilization level allows for 432KiB/s downstream for every customer, but if the overall network is underutilized you can achieve up to the n MiB/s your connection is rated for. Then you add for example hierarchical traffic shaping where queues are allowed to borrow unused bandwidth from other queues. But it is a huge investment, no doubt. Also, guaranteed bandwidth is imho not that different from a service level target in Bit. You'll have to refund if you break the SLA, the same as if you break your promise. |