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Re: Why do some ISP's have bandwidth quotas?
by odlyzko＠dtc.umn.edu 10 Oct '07

10 Oct '07

As a point of information, Australia is one of the few places where the government collects Internet traffic statistics (which are hopefully trustworthy). Pointer is at http://www.dtc.umn.edu/mints/govstats.html (which also has a pointer to Hong Kong reports). If one looks at the Australian Bureau of Statistics report for the quarter ended March 2007, we find that the roughly 3.8 M residential broadband subscribers in Australia were downloading an average of 2.5 GB/month, or about 10 Kbps on average (vs. about 20x that in Hong Kong). While Australian Internet traffic had been growing very vigorously over the last few years (as shown by the earlier reports from the same source), growth has slowed down substantially, quite likely in response to those quotas. Andrew Odlyzko P.S. The MINTS (Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies) project, http://www.dtc.umn.edu/mints provides pointers to a variety of sources of traffic statistics, as well as some analyses. Comments, and especially pointers to additional traffic reports, are eagerly solicited. > On Fri Oct 5, Mark Newton wrote: On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 01:12:35PM -0400, andrew2(a)one.net wrote: > As you say, 90GB is roughly .25Mbps on average. Of course, like you pointed > out, the users actual bandwidth patterns are most likely not a straight > line. 95%ile on that 90GB could be considerably higher. But let's take a > conservative estimate and say that user uses .5Mbps 95%ile. And lets say > this is a relatively large ISP paying $12/Mb. That user then costs that ISP > $6/month in bandwidth. (I know, that's somewhat faulty logic, but how else > is the ISP going to establish a cost basis?) If that user is only paying > say $19.99/month for their connection, that leaves only $13.99 a month to > pay for all the infrastructure to support that user, along with personnel, > etc all while still trying to turn a profit. In the Australian ISP's case (which is what started this) it's rather worse. The local telco monopoly bills between $30 and $50 per month for access to the copper tail. So there's essentially no such thing as a $19.99/month connection here (except for short-lived "flash-in-the-pan" loss-leaders, and we all know how they turn out) So to run the numbers: A customer who averages .25Mbit/sec on a tail acquired from the incumbent requires -- Port/line rental from the telco ~ $50 IP transit ~ $ 6 (your number) Transpacific backhaul ~ $50 (I'm not making this up) So we're over a hundred bucks already, and haven't yet factored in the overheads for infrastructure, personnel, profit, etc. And those numbers are before sales tax too, so add at least 10% to all of them before arriving at a retail price. Due to the presence of a quota, our customers don't tend to average .25 Mbit/sec over the course of a month (we prefer to send the ones that do to our competitors :-). If someone buys access to, say, 30 Gbytes of downloads per month, a few significant things happen: - The customer has a clear understanding of what they've paid for, which doesn't encompass "unlimited access to the Internet." That tends to moderate their usage; - Because they know they're buying something finite, they tend to pick a package that suits their expected usage, so customers who intend to use more end up paying more money; - The customer creates their own backpressure against hitting their quota: Once they've gone past it they're usually rate-limited to 64kbps, which is not a nice experience, so by and large they build in a "safety margin" and rarely use more than 75% of the quota. About 5% of our customers blow their quota in any given month; - The ones who do hit their quota and don't like 64kbps shaping get to pay us more money to have their quota expanded for the rest of the month, thereby financing the capacity upgrades that their cumulative load can/will require; - The entire Australian marketplace is conditioned to expect that kind of behaviour from ISPs, and doesn't consider it to be unusual. If you guys in North America tried to run like this, you'd be destroyed in the marketplace because you've created a customer base that expects to be able to download the entire Internet and burn it to DVD every month. :-) So you end up looking at options like DPI and QoS controls at your CMTS head-end to moderate usage, because you can't keep adding infinite amounts of bandwidth to support unconstrained end-users when they're only paying you $20 per month. (note that our truth-in-advertising regulator doesn't allow us to get away with saying "Unlimited" unless there really are no limits -- no quotas, no traffic shaping, no traffic management, no QoS controls. Unlimited means unlimited by the dictionary definition, not by some weasel definition that the industry has invented to suit its own purposes) - There is no net neutrality debate to speak of in .au because everyone is _already_ paying their way. Like I said a few messages ago, as much as your marketplace derides caps and quotas, I'm pretty sure that most of you would prefer to do business with my constraints than with yours. - mark -- Mark Newton Email: newton(a)internode.com.au (W) Network Engineer Email: newton(a)atdot.dotat.org (H) Internode Systems Pty Ltd Desk: +61-8-82282999 "Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton" Mobile: +61-416-202-223

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Re: How Not to Multihome
by Scott Weeks 10 Oct '07

10 Oct '07

--- Keegan.Holley(a)sungard.com wrote: I have a client that wants us to advertise an IP block assigned by another ISP. I know that the best practice is to have them request an AS number from ARIN and peer with us, etc. However, I cannot find any information that states as law. Does anyone know of a document or RFC that states this? ---------------------------------------- There is no law. ;) Also, you can advertise the other provider's block given to your prospective customer as long as you work with that provider on how to do it. However, if it's less than a /24 it won't get very far as most upstreams block prefixes longer than a /24. scott

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Cogent peering issues with Sprint
by CARL.P.HIRSCH＠sargentlundy.com 10 Oct '07

10 Oct '07

Cogent is experiencing two problems right now. Their automated message reports that they have a backbone problem causing latency, but they also seem to be experiencing peering problems with Sprint. Output over Cogent: sarglund-cogent>traceroute www.duke-energy.com Translating "www.duke-energy.com"...domain server (66.28.0.45) [OK] Type escape sequence to abort. Tracing the route to www.duke-energy.com (192.234.122.137) 1 g0-2.na01.b000629-0.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.112.0.193) [AS 174] 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec 2 g1-0.core01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.6.73) [AS 174] 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec 3 t4-1.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.98) [AS 174] 4 msec 0 msec 0 msec 4 v3488.mpd01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.26) [AS 174] 0 msec 0 msec 0msec 5 g6-0-0-3492.core01.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.3.241) [AS 174] 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec 6 sprint.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.13.46) [AS 174] 0 msec 4 msec 0 msec 7 sl-bb20-chi-4-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.8.218) [AS 174] 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec 8 sl-bb21-chi-15-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.26.2) [AS 174] 4 msec 4 msec 0 msec 9 sl-bb25-chi-13-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.26.90) [AS 174] 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec 10 * * * 11 * * * 12 * * * 13 * * * 14 * * sarglund-cogent> vs. Output over Verizon: sarglund-gw>traceroute www.duke-energy.com Translating "www.duke-energy.com"...domain server (198.6.1.2) [OK] Type escape sequence to abort. Tracing the route to www.duke-energy.com (192.234.122.137) 1 500.Serial4-10.GW1.CHI2.ALTER.NET (157.130.165.213) [AS 701] 8 msec 0 msec 4msec 2 0.so-0-0-0.XT1.CHI2.ALTER.NET (152.63.64.130) [AS 701] 4 msec 0 msec 0 msec 3 0.so-7-0-0.XL1.CHI13.ALTER.NET (152.63.64.206) [AS 701] 4 msec 16 msec 4 msec 4 0.so-6-0-0.BR2.CHI13.ALTER.NET (152.63.73.25) [AS 701] 4 msec 0 msec 44 msec 5 sl-st21-chi-3-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.18.141) [AS 701] 32 msec 12 msec 12 msec 6 sl-crs2-chi-0-1-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.18.154) [AS 701] 8 msec 16 msec 20 msec 7 sl-bb25-chi-8-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.26.113) [AS 701] 12 msec 28 msec 12 msec 8 sl-bb26-rly-10-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.20.88) [AS 701] 116 msec 216 msec * 9 sl-bb21-dc-12-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.9.212) [AS 701] 24 msec 32 msec 36 msec 10 sl-gw21-dc-15-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.15.9) [AS 701] 32 msec 28 msec 24 msec 11 sl-dukenergy-57200-0.sprintlink.net (144.228.23.170) [AS 701] 40 msec 36 msec 40 msec sarglund-gw> enjoy, -carl

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How Not to Multihome
by Keegan.Holley＠sungard.com 10 Oct '07

10 Oct '07

I have a client that wants us to advertise an IP block assigned by another ISP. I know that the best practice is to have them request an AS number from ARIN and peer with us, etc. However, I cannot find any information that states as law. Does anyone know of a document or RFC that states this? Thanks, Keegan

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Any Comcast Mail/Sysadmins?
by Raymond L. Corbin 10 Oct '07

10 Oct '07

Hey, I'm having a few deliverability issues to a few comcast mail gateways. Is there any comcast mail/sys admins here or anyone who can get me in contact with them off list? It would be greately appreciated. Thanks for the help! -Ray

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Re: Upstreams blocking /24s? (was Re: How Not to Multihome)
by Scott Weeks 09 Oct '07

09 Oct '07

--- drc(a)virtualized.org wrote: On Oct 8, 2007, at 2:48 PM, Scott Weeks wrote: > However, if it's less than a /24 it won't get very far as most > upstreams block prefixes longer than a /24. I'm curious: a couple of people have indicated they do not believe this to be the case. Anybody have any hard data on what filters are actually in use today? -------------------------------------------- I found two current policies. Other companies made it too hard to find... Sprint: # Customers may announce routes as small as /26 for ARIN IP address blocks obtained through Sprint. Customers may announce routes as small as /28 for RIPE and APNIC address blocks obtained through Sprint. # Peer block announcements and customer announcements for blocks obtained from other providers are limited to a /24 or smaller mask (/23, /22 etc.). AT&T: * not accept Customer route announcements smaller than a /24 network scott

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Why do some ISP's have bandwidth quotas?
by Hex Star 08 Oct '07

08 Oct '07

Why is it that the US has ISP's with either no quotas or obscenely high ones while countries like Australia have ISP's with ~12gb quotas? Is there some kind of added cost running a non US ISP?

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two questions - SWAG answers entertained
by bmanning＠vacation.karoshi.com 08 Oct '07

08 Oct '07

one: AS hop count for average e2e packet flow, eg. from origin to destination, how many ASN's will a packet traverse? two: number/location of IX that monitor/forbid transit across exchange fabric? --bill (doing grunt work for a study on Landauer Entropy)

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Why do some ISP's have bandwidth quotas?
by Vassili Tchersky 08 Oct '07

08 Oct '07

2007/10/4, David E. Smith <dave(a)mvn.net>: > I imagine the cost of backhauling traffic a few thousand miles in > underseas cables would add to the cost of running an ISP in, say, > Australia, especially since many sites the end-users will want to see > are still hosted in the US. In Europe, the only ISPs where i've seen bandwith quotas was some cables operators, while in Canada bandwith quotas seem to be still in place at many ISPs. I'm not an expert at all, but it seems that in Europe, even far from the US-hosted websites, the bandwith cost may be cheaper. -- Vassili Tchersky

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Laws governing FTTx ?
by Patrick Giagnocavo 08 Oct '07

08 Oct '07

I would be interested in hearing from those providing fiber to homes or businesses, and the laws surrounding that. Specifically, if the builder of a new home or homes allows fiber installation (that is, fiber installed before the home is built and which is wired into the basement wall beside the telco's network panel) by a non-ILEC/non-CLEC, is a permit other than the usual construction permit necessary? (Certainly an easement will need to be drawn up for the fiber as it crosses property lines; but I am more worried about the ILEC complaining or being able to erect legal barriers). Cordially Patrick Giagnocavo patrick(a)zill.net

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