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!