[jpdoctor]

... which translates to 3ms of downtime in 10 years with their current data, which makes no sense.

I'm guessing it's closer to the way that telecom guys work: 1 bit error in 10^12 bits is common for fiber comm.

[superchink]

Their explanation is here: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#protecting

Looks like they're differentiating between durability ("99.999999999%") and availability ("99.99%").

So it's not uptime that has 11 9s…my mistake. Should have checked the documentation.

[superchink]

Also relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4179027/99-99-durability-...