September 1996 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Re: Agenda for next NANOG
by salo＠msc.edu 03 Sep '96

03 Sep '96

> Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 15:59:23 -0700 (PDT) > From: Michael Dillon <michael(a)memra.com> > To: nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: Re: Agenda for next NANOG > [...] > What would it take to set up a couple of Alphas, routers and zero-mile > T1's in a portable testing kit to go around from NAP to NAP and run tests? > [...] > Such > machines could run a full suite of tests including FTP'ing large files, > downloading complex web pages (i.e. multiple images) as well as the lower > level things like ping tests. > > This kind of test would provide useful numbers that customers can > understand as well as point out problem areas that a NAP operator might > need to investigate. And with co-operative NAP peers, the same test kit > could be used with T1's out to various locations that feed into the NAP so > as to run the same tests across the peer's routers and lines. > > Would this kind of testing reveal any useful information that could not be > gotten from examining router stats? Actually, it would be nice if this "portable test kit" were actually an optional board for a router. You could, for example, stick the "portable test kit" board in a router and then test at will. We also tried to explain to our ATM tester vendors that we wanted ttcp implemented in the ATM tester. Some understood, some didn't... -tjs

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RE: MFS WorldCom/WilTel/LDDS
by Jim Browning 03 Sep '96

03 Sep '96

>From: Sean Donelan[SMTP:SEAN@SDG.DRA.COM] >Sent: Monday, September 02, 1996 3:22 PM >A current problem Internet is line capacity only comes in a few different >sizes; small (DS0), medium (T1), large(T3), and extra-large (OC3c). >One reason ISDN is extremely popular is its just a bit bigger than >a DS0, and a lot less than a T1. Because the next step is so large, >customers tend to stay with their current size long after it stops >fitting their needs. It's possible to provision ATM circuits at pretty much any capacity a customer wants, from 1Mbps to 155Mbps, without having to swap-out hardware in order to bump up the speed. Of course this also makes new services available which would otherwise be impossible to manage (single event bandwidth increases, anyone?) >So-called "usage-based" pricing is just a klunky work around to the too >big a step between sizes problem. Customers want something just a bit >bigger than a T1, but don't want something 28 times bigger. Usage-based >pricing lets customers use something just a bit bigger even though the >provider uses a massive pipe to deliver it. This is frequently true, although there are specific situations where usage based pricing is attractive for its own sake, for instance as backup for a fixed price circuit. >I suspect when Cisco's 11.2 traffic-shaping hits the streets, you >will be able to buy more "fixed-rate" Internet connections at the >in-between line-speeds providers previously only offered on >usage-based pricing plans. Sure, some providers may resist initially. >But someone will break ranks, and the others will eventually follow. Those ranks have already broken, at least in territories we serve, and there was no need to wait for new software... ;-) -- Jim Browning <jfbb(a)atmnet.net> P.S. Will it help avoid the IP <==> ATM religious battle I may have just started if I lie and say I am unsubscribing for the next week or so?

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Re: MFS WorldCom/WilTel/LDDS
by Sean Donelan 02 Sep '96

02 Sep '96

>I think you are confusing dialup and leased line capacity planning >models. They are inherently different. If I have a POP in City A They aren't inherently different. You run into the same problems at every level. 8 28.8Kbps dialup modems into a terminal server hanging off a 28.8Kbps line (as some ISPs have been known to do) has the same problem as 8 T3 customers off the same T3 provider line (as other ISPs have been known to do). >The trend is for flat rate dialup and usage based rates for leased >line. Those ISPs that ignore that trend will not last. The kicker In industries with competition, customers have shown a preference for fixed rates over variable rates. Avis, Hertz, etc tried several times to introduce milage charges on car rentals in the US. Some car rental company always breaks ranks, and "unlimited" milage car rentals return. A current problem Internet is line capacity only comes in a few different sizes; small (DS0), medium (T1), large(T3), and extra-large (OC3c). One reason ISDN is extremely popular is its just a bit bigger than a DS0, and a lot less than a T1. Because the next step is so large, customers tend to stay with their current size long after it stops fitting their needs. So-called "usage-based" pricing is just a klunky work around to the too big a step between sizes problem. Customers want something just a bit bigger than a T1, but don't want something 28 times bigger. Usage-based pricing lets customers use something just a bit bigger even though the provider uses a massive pipe to deliver it. I suspect when Cisco's 11.2 traffic-shaping hits the streets, you will be able to buy more "fixed-rate" Internet connections at the in-between line-speeds providers previously only offered on usage-based pricing plans. Sure, some providers may resist initially. But someone will break ranks, and the others will eventually follow. Customers like fixed rate prices. And as bank mortgage rates show, customers are often willing to pay more for a fixed-rate price than a variable-rate price. As long as there is competition, ISPs that ignore that trend, may end up like the car rental places that charge by the mile. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation

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Re: MFS WorldCom/WilTel/LDDS
by Vadim Antonov 02 Sep '96

02 Sep '96

Hank Nussbacher <hank(a)ibm.net.il> wrote: >>On Thu, 29 Aug 1996 01:47:38 -0700 Vadim Antonov wrote: >>Generally speaking, at least 70% of users already have metered >>access of that kind (in form of per-hour connect time charges), >>so in this sense Internet is metered already, and was like that >>for years. Obviously that's not "metering" Metcalfe et al >>are calling for. >I think you are confusing dialup and leased line capacity planning >models. They are inherently different. If I have a POP in City A >with a T1 to my backbone, I pretty much know how many dialups I can >support. If you do even minimal statistics on leased lines you'll know what customers use and how their utilization grows over time. When you have a provider which runs thousands of leased lines it becomes no more of guesswork than dialup. >Just look at the example of the NANOG poster who had to move ISPs >since his thruput was high enough to double his costs so he moved >to a flat rate ISP. Those flat rate ISPs will quickly load up with >these thruput heavy users and in the end either lose money every >year or go bankrupt. It is no different from local telco pricing in US where you can get metered access if you're low-volume, or flat-rate if you're willing to guarantee payment for some usage. As for "losing money" -- i've seen SprintLink's balance sheets. It's not going bankrupt any time soon. In fact, the lack of differentiation between classes of customers is what made Sprint one of the top players in the field -- most small ISPs liked the pricing. I guess your view is different because of difference between pricing of leased lines. If you have a hugely expensive international private line, you have to sell its capacity for prices which make customers unlikely to buy flat-rate. It's not like that in US. >The trend is for flat rate dialup and usage based rates for leased >line. Sorry, this does not correspond to what i've seen. People who buy a T-1 usually have enough traffic to fill it. Faster WWW access encourage faster browsing, that's it. >Those ISPs that ignore that trend will not last. The kicker >is Cable/VSAT. A consumer that is offered 2Mb-10mb to the home via >cable or DirecPc (bidirectional) for say $50 flat rate will >single-handedly be able to overrun the backbone line of the POP. This is back to the situation when "exterior" link is small as compared to "interior". In this situation usage-based pricing makes a lot of sense. Until first customers get slapped with $1k bills for gee-whiz automatic loading of some movies off the Web. The rule of backbone engineering is that you have to have some ratio (usually about 1:3) of backbone capacity to customer access capacity. If that ratio is 1:1000 (as in 10Mbps customer access to everybody in neighbourhood, with OC-3 backbone) it is bound to create problems, to say it mildly. That's why xDSL and cable Internet customer access remains largely a joke. >But when I specify usage based rates I am referring to a simple >meter like the gas company, not a complex meter like the phone >company. Then we're in agreement on that. However to introduce pricing sensitive to resource allocation in backbones, like Metcalfe advocates you will need telco-style end-to-end billing. It is not access capacity which is in shortage, it is backbone capacity. >As someone else stated, telco's are approaching 50% costs >for billing due to their overwhelming complexity between local, >long distance, international, time of day, length of call, services >used, etc. It's not complexity of computations, it is the fact of collection and archiving per-call data which makes that expensive. (BTW, if you charge per connection you'll have to keep records about that connection for at least half a year, as an evidence in case of payment disputes -- if you don't do that anybody will simply be able to say "i didn't make that call"). >Gas and most electric companies charge a flat rate per >usage, no matter what time of day you use it. Ah, again, they can accumulate resources to smooth out demand. (It's a bit harder with electricity, but there's such thing as accumulating power stations). >Their billing costs are far less than telcos. They don't have to generate itemized bills, and their entire usage records on you contain 48 bytes per year. >ISPs, in order to survive, had best not >follow the telco model of billing complexity, but instead follow the >utility company model of simple billing. KISS. All of them do, to my knowledge. It's Metcalfe et al who are calling for change in the direction of resource reservation and per-connection charging. --vadim

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Re: MFS WorldCom/WilTel/LDDS
by Rbohn＠ucsd.edu 01 Sep '96

01 Sep '96

I agree with the thrust of this message (that flat rates on leased lines will run into what economists call "adverse selection" problems, while for dial-up there are inherent limits that make flat rates bearable). However a minor quible/question: there is an additional problem with badly written applications, such that they can SEND more than 28.8kb/sec even though the receiver can't get it (the difference ends up getting thrown away at the ISP). Thus a single 28.8 user can consume much more than that on incoming capacity, if they watch a lot of badly written real time video for example. Since the user will see very poor quality in this scenario (most packets are not being received), it does not seem likely to last long. But EUNet reported this problem, for example. Does anyone know how MBONE handles this issue? (Does it attempt to send all packets to every recipient, whether or not they can get them?) Real Audio? Roger Bohn At 6:41 AM 9/1/96, Hank Nussbacher wrote: ... > But I do not have to worry that a lone user running >CuSeeMe (or even SmellU/SmellMe (see realaroma.com/realaroma.cgi) >:-)) since the worst they can do is max out at 28.8kb on the T1 >line. > >On the other hand, if I have a number of leased line customers >connected to that T1 POP, some are 64kb, some are 256kb and some are >T1, then my model alters since the T1 users can indeed max at the >full speed of the line and others can utilize 15% of the line as >compared to 1% for a dialup user. Yes, the statistical model shows >they will even out, some will use 1%, some 10% and others will use >80% but in the end it all evens out. But that lone wolf T1 client >can indeed saturate my line, especially if it is a garage ISP with >1000 users from the neighborhood offering flat $9.95 and having >a modem bank of 96 modems. Or a small startup with every user >doing RealAudio during the day. > >Just look at the example of the NANOG poster who had to move ISPs >since his thruput was high enough to double his costs so he moved >to a flat rate ISP. Those flat rate ISPs will quickly load up with >these thruput heavy users and in the end either lose money every >year or go bankrupt. > >The trend is for flat rate dialup and usage based rates for leased >line. Those ISPs that ignore that trend will not last. rest of message omitted

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Re: MFS WorldCom/WilTel/LDDS
by Hank Nussbacher 01 Sep '96

01 Sep '96

On Thu, 29 Aug 1996 15:04:05 -0700 Paul A Vixie wrote: >Since I use programmable routers, I plan to reprogram them such that when >an interface output queue is full or getting full, and it's time to do >Van's trick of "pick a number from 1 to N+1 and destroy that packet", the >chance of a UDP getting blasted will be higher than for a TCP. > >This is predicated on (1) TCP is mostly well behaved, except when it comes >form a Netscape browser opening too many (more than one) simultaneous TCP >connection to the same destination; (2) UDP apps I care about, like DNS, >will do reasonable things like fallback and timeout and retry; and (3) it >is OK to violate the layering if it makes your network stop melting. > >If you think this would be a useful feature, ask Cisco to make it part of SPD. > We have a user who has been doing this for around 3 months now. They have a setup as follows: T1-cisco-Unix-cisco-LAN. The Unix box works as a programmable router for the T1 traffic. When someone started running 5 concurrent ping -f sessions, saturating the T1 line with ping packets, the Unix box was instructed to take the ping traffic and move it to a buffer and freeze it there for 4 seconds and then let it move onward. This caused the pings to slow down. He has it now set with different buffer sizes and different freeze periods for different protocols i.e. telnet gets 0 time in the freezer whereas http can go up to 540kb/sec and anything over that the pkts start getting put in the buffer-freezer. Since they pay per GB to IBM for their Internet capacity they have used this box as a method to limit traffic during peak hours. Hank

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Re: MFS WorldCom/WilTel/LDDS
by Hank Nussbacher 01 Sep '96

01 Sep '96

On Thu, 29 Aug 1996 01:47:38 -0700 Vadim Antonov wrote: >Generally speaking, at least 70% of users already have metered >access of that kind (in form of per-hour connect time charges), >so in this sense Internet is metered already, and was like that >for years. Obviously that's not "metering" Metcalfe et al >are calling for. > >(BTW, i know providers who do attempt to charge differently >for local and international traffic by counting packets, >but they have developed quite a lot of software and have the >financial and legal framework to support it. The fact that >they don't have anything faster than E-1 helps a lot, too.) I think you are confusing dialup and leased line capacity planning models. They are inherently different. If I have a POP in City A with a T1 to my backbone, I pretty much know how many dialups I can support. I do not say that 53 28.8kb dialup users will saturate my T1 since statistical models show that will not happen. Every ISP has their own stats which may range from 200-1000 simultaneous users depending on their pricing structure and how serious they are about being an ISP. But I do not have to worry that a lone user running CuSeeMe (or even SmellU/SmellMe (see realaroma.com/realaroma.cgi) :-)) since the worst they can do is max out at 28.8kb on the T1 line. On the other hand, if I have a number of leased line customers connected to that T1 POP, some are 64kb, some are 256kb and some are T1, then my model alters since the T1 users can indeed max at the full speed of the line and others can utilize 15% of the line as compared to 1% for a dialup user. Yes, the statistical model shows they will even out, some will use 1%, some 10% and others will use 80% but in the end it all evens out. But that lone wolf T1 client can indeed saturate my line, especially if it is a garage ISP with 1000 users from the neighborhood offering flat $9.95 and having a modem bank of 96 modems. Or a small startup with every user doing RealAudio during the day. Just look at the example of the NANOG poster who had to move ISPs since his thruput was high enough to double his costs so he moved to a flat rate ISP. Those flat rate ISPs will quickly load up with these thruput heavy users and in the end either lose money every year or go bankrupt. The trend is for flat rate dialup and usage based rates for leased line. Those ISPs that ignore that trend will not last. The kicker is Cable/VSAT. A consumer that is offered 2Mb-10mb to the home via cable or DirecPc (bidirectional) for say $50 flat rate will single-handedly be able to overrun the backbone line of the POP. Those ISPs that intend to charge flat rates for high speed home usage are "hoping" that the usage pattern will be like dialup users rather than leased line users. Not! It won't be long before that garage ISP with 96 28.8kb modems and a T1 line moves it to his bedroom and figures out how to connect that modem bank to his 2Mb/sec cable TV Internet system. And all you need is one like that in every neighborhood of a thousand. But when I specify usage based rates I am referring to a simple meter like the gas company, not a complex meter like the phone company. As someone else stated, telco's are approaching 50% costs for billing due to their overwhelming complexity between local, long distance, international, time of day, length of call, services used, etc. Gas and most electric companies charge a flat rate per usage, no matter what time of day you use it. Their billing costs are far less than telcos. ISPs, in order to survive, had best not follow the telco model of billing complexity, but instead follow the utility company model of simple billing. KISS. > >--vadim > Hank

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