At 07:37 PM 5/15/96 +0900, David R. Conrad wrote:
In the Asia Pacific Rim region, nearly all the bandwidth goes from AP region countries to the US directly. This is true due to the tariffing situation, although it is now beginning to change (some intra-Asia networks have already been established).
I think many of us have been *very* vocal supporters of encouraging creationm of multiple AP NAPs to avoid this form of dementia. :-) When traffic transits back to the US West Coast to reach another AP location, this clearly contributes to the overall problem.
Putting mirrors in countries usually makes sense (particularly when a country has an Internet exchange or two), but putting them on a continental basis generally doesn't.
Agreed. Creating exchange points would also help immensely. - paul
Paul, You can be a vocal as you desire, but ultimately from this part of the globe the dominant factor in any ISP business is the cost of the International Private Lease. This lease cost is approximately 10 times the cost of domestic infrastructure. Now when you construct an IPL in a competitive environment where do you terminate it? Generally you are loking for an optimal mix of price and functionality. The observation for the AP region today is that the cheapest IPL half circuits for the AP region terminate in the US. Hence Randy's observation. The internal infrastructure within the AP region happens in a second pass, once the primary objective of major connectivity is achieved internal infrastructure can be cost effective if there is internal traffic flow to match. About the only thing that could hasten regional infrastructure is a drastic revision of the trading practices and expectation of return on investment by the undersea cable investors. Exchange points have little impact per se as they are, in economic terms, a minor aspect of the entire equation. Thanks, Geoff
At 07:37 PM 5/15/96 +0900, David R. Conrad wrote:
In the Asia Pacific Rim region, nearly all the bandwidth goes from AP region countries to the US directly. This is true due to the tariffing situation, although it is now beginning to change (some intra-Asia networks have already been established).
I think many of us have been *very* vocal supporters of encouraging creationm of multiple AP NAPs to avoid this form of dementia. :-)
When traffic transits back to the US West Coast to reach another AP location, this clearly contributes to the overall problem.
Putting mirrors in countries usually makes sense (particularly when a country has an Internet exchange or two), but putting them on a continental basis generally doesn't.
Agreed. Creating exchange points would also help immensely.
- paul
On Thu, 16 May 1996, Geoff Huston wrote:
Paul,
You can be a vocal as you desire, but ultimately from this part of the globe the dominant factor in any ISP business is the cost of the International Private Lease. This lease cost is approximately 10 times the cost of domestic infrastructure.
Now when you construct an IPL in a competitive environment where do you terminate it? Generally you are loking for an optimal mix of price and functionality. The observation for the AP region today is that the cheapest IPL half circuits for the AP region terminate in the US. Hence Randy's observation. The internal infrastructure within the AP region happens in a second pass, once the primary objective of major connectivity is achieved internal infrastructure can be cost effective if there is internal traffic flow to match.
About the only thing that could hasten regional infrastructure is a drastic revision of the trading practices and expectation of return on investment by the undersea cable investors. Exchange points have little impact per se as they are, in economic terms, a minor aspect of the entire equation.
Exactly. And all the regional governments should realize that the best way of shifting traffic from North America to their region is de-regulating the international telecommunications market, scrapping monopolies and increasing competition among carriers. That will result much more effective than policy-making and verbal "declarations of independence". Enzo
Hello, IMHO, in the context of the AP region, I guess we are overlooking the user perspective - locally available "Internet" content. Barring .au, .sg, .kr, .hk (?), .jp and .tw, I do not see any major effort around to provide locally, content that is available in the US be it the GNU archive, the WU archive or one-of-those Beatles song and lyrics archive - result - good amount of traffic to the US. (The AP region has only 4 archie servers !) When one sees such traffic trends, why would an ISP even think in terms of investing in a link to a place other than the US - the cost permitting ? I have been attempting to convince ERNET to invest in a link each to NL/GB and SG/JP since we have a significant amount of traffic to these places. I have even tried to present the idea that IN is strategically placed in the context of linking the Southern AP region to Europe/US which could mean good gatewaying business - NO GO ! Each time we have a meeting, there's a raging war on this point, but, bring out the top 25 hosts contacted and the related traffic percentages and the consensus is to add more bandwidth on the link to the US ! If on the one hand the tariffs and the telecom policies do not provide for a good intra-AP connectivity, there is this "content availability" that's adding to the "US-centricity" (not that most of the Internet tools aren't ... ;-) ). So ... could we do anything at all ? It may not be possible to persuade governments to change their policies as fast as we would like them to change. My gut feel is that the tariffs permitting, making content available locally will hold the key to bandwidth investments and the choice of the upstream ISP. --Gopi Garge Enzo Michelangeli sez:
On Thu, 16 May 1996, Geoff Huston wrote:
Paul,
You can be a vocal as you desire, but ultimately from this part of the globe the dominant factor in any ISP business is the cost of the International Private Lease. This lease cost is approximately 10 times the cost of domestic infrastructure.
Now when you construct an IPL in a competitive environment where do you terminate it? Generally you are loking for an optimal mix of price and functionality. The observation for the AP region today is that the cheapest IPL half circuits for the AP region terminate in the US. Hence Randy's observation. The internal infrastructure within the AP region happens in a second pass, once the primary objective of major connectivity is achieved internal infrastructure can be cost effective if there is internal traffic flow to match.
About the only thing that could hasten regional infrastructure is a drastic revision of the trading practices and expectation of return on investment by the undersea cable investors. Exchange points have little impact per se as they are, in economic terms, a minor aspect of the entire equation.
Exactly. And all the regional governments should realize that the best way of shifting traffic from North America to their region is de-regulating the international telecommunications market, scrapping monopolies and increasing competition among carriers. That will result much more effective than policy-making and verbal "declarations of independence".
Enzo
--
Hello, Gopi K Garge wrote:
IMHO, in the context of the AP region, I guess we are overlooking the user perspective - locally available "Internet" content. Barring .au, .sg, .kr, .hk (?), .jp and .tw, I do not see any major effort around to provide locally, content that is available in the US be it the GNU archive, the WU archive or one-of-those Beatles song and lyrics archive - result - good amount of traffic to the US.
With limited bandwidth, updating these archives would be slow, and, you wouldn't know yet if there are enough people accessing these to justify getting a mirror. Caching should help getting commonly requested information faster.
When one sees such traffic trends, why would an ISP even think in terms of investing in a link to a place other than the US - the cost permitting ?
In the long term, as the Internet becomes more common, regional content will become more important, IMHO. So develop the local content - and the local infrastructure - and regional intranets, and virtual private networks - will come in. -- miguel a.l. paraz <map@iphil.net> iphil communications, makati city, tech problems, to <support@iphil.net> philippines.
Hola, ] > IMHO, in the context of the AP region, I guess we are overlooking the ] > user perspective - locally available "Internet" content. Barring ] > .au, .sg, .kr, .hk (?), .jp and .tw, I do not see any major effort ] > around to provide locally, content that is available in the US ] > be it the GNU archive, the WU archive or one-of-those Beatles ] > song and lyrics archive - result - good amount of traffic to the ] > US. ] ] With limited bandwidth, updating these archives would be slow, ] and, you wouldn't know yet if there are enough people accessing ] these to justify getting a mirror. Bah. Transferring it once off-shore is a no-brainer. Of _course_ there will be enough traffic to justify the mirror. ] Caching should help getting commonly requested information faster. Agreed, hence the policies of Israel and [is it...] New Guinea. Don't allow traffic over port 80 or 20/21. Make the people use the cache server. ] > When one sees such traffic trends, why would an ISP even think in ] > terms of investing in a link to a place other than the US - the cost ] > permitting ? ] ] In the long term, as the Internet becomes more common, regional content ] will become more important, IMHO. So develop the local content - ] and the local infrastructure - and regional intranets, and virtual ] private networks - will come in. Sure, it will become _relatively_ more important than it is now, but the "Internet" will make geographic location less and less relevant, and as you allude to, when the bandwidth levels are increased, the issue of obtaining it locally or from the states, or from the Moon, shouldn't matter too much. Yes, I do believe the bw will increase, I don't believe the next resource (after IP space and IP routes) for us to run out of is bandwidth. Sure, there's a crunch now, but we'll all just raise our rates and buy bigger pipes. Or something. -alan
Hello, Alan Hannan wrote:
Yes, I do believe the bw will increase, I don't believe the next resource (after IP space and IP routes) for us to run out of is bandwidth. Sure, there's a crunch now, but we'll all just raise our rates and buy bigger pipes.
Bandwidth increases in both within the US and in bandwidth-starved countries, but will the price ratio go down? Currently, the $$$ our ISP pays to get 128 Kbps connectivity is enough to get more than a dozen T1's in the US, and even a T3 perhaps. And people ask here why they can't get unlimited access for $20 monthly. On the other hand, labor costs are cheap --- among the biggest customers for E1 lines to the US are offshore programming houses. So how about a bandwidth for workforce swap? :) -- miguel a.l. paraz <map@iphil.net> iphil communications, makati city, tech problems, to <support@iphil.net> philippines.
Currently, the $$$ our ISP pays to get 128 Kbps connectivity is enough to get more than a dozen T1's in the US, and even a T3 perhaps. And people ask here why they can't get unlimited access for $20 monthly.
On the other hand, labor costs are cheap --- among the biggest customers for E1 lines to the US are offshore programming houses.
So how about a bandwidth for workforce swap? :)
-- miguel a.l. paraz <map@iphil.net> iphil communications, makati city, tech problems, to <support@iphil.net> philippines.
Been There, Done That. 15 years ago, the company I worked for dropped a 50meter earth station and the rights to four transponders for 25 years on a project that was donated to a non-us telco to reduce the costs of transporting and housing 300 engineeers a quarter to/from the US. It was a very cheap alternative. -- --bill
Miguel A.L. Paraz sez:
Hello,
Gopi K Garge wrote:
IMHO, in the context of the AP region, I guess we are overlooking the user perspective - locally available "Internet" content. Barring .au, .sg, .kr, .hk (?), .jp and .tw, I do not see any major effort around to provide locally, content that is available in the US be it the GNU archive, the WU archive or one-of-those Beatles song and lyrics archive - result - good amount of traffic to the US.
With limited bandwidth, updating these archives would be slow, and, you wouldn't know yet if there are enough people accessing these to justify getting a mirror.
Oh ... I have complete details on how many hits some of these servers get from my domain and who in my domain are originating requests. getting these details is a matter of some dedicated hardware and a one time programming effort - the rest is - thanks to ethernet technology.
Caching should help getting commonly requested information faster.
Sure ... but you'd notice that these are mechanisms to control your traffic across a low bandwidth link, but that's not the issue. The issue is where will the link that we have terminate.
When one sees such traffic trends, why would an ISP even think in terms of investing in a link to a place other than the US - the cost permitting ?
In the long term, as the Internet becomes more common, regional content will become more important, IMHO. So develop the local content - and the local infrastructure - and regional intranets, and virtual private networks - will come in.
When ?? I feel it is long overdue. If we are to "attract" intra AP region bandwidth investment - as in getting ISPs to interconnect within the region, there must be an effort to provide content. The ISPs may then have a case (not a strong one though) to interconnect locally. How do we do this ? I know that this is not a trivial question, but ...... --Gopi
On Thu, 16 May 1996, Gopi K Garge wrote:
business - NO GO ! Each time we have a meeting, there's a raging war on this point, but, bring out the top 25 hosts contacted and the related traffic percentages and the consensus is to add more bandwidth on the link to the US !
How do you determine the location of those top 25 hosts? If you are assuming that they are in the US because they are .com or .net, then you may be wrong. Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com
participants (8)
-
Alan Hannan -
bmanning＠isi.edu -
Enzo Michelangeli -
Geoff Huston -
gopi＠ece.iisc.ernet.in -
Michael Dillon -
Miguel A.L. Paraz -
Paul Ferguson