RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On funsec we have had a discussion on broadband providers and bandwidth limitations, pretty much what we rehearsed here. Michael brought up an interesting case from a decade ago, which speaks of some litigation issues we did not discuss. It is also interesting to hear his view as a client on "been there done that". Interesting reading. Gadi. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:55:17 -0400 From: Blanchard_Michael@emc.com To: ge@linuxbox.org Cc: funsec@linuxbox.org Subject: RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users Way back when, in the late 90's I was a named plaintiff on a class action lawsuit against Hughes DirectPC. They were doing exactly what was mentioned in the article. They had this thing called a "fair access policy", that would cut your speed in half if you downloaded too much, then in half again if you kept downloading, then in half again, until your speeds were much less than modem speeds. They would never tell you how much was too much, and never tell you when your speed was cut in half. I run Dumeter so I constantly watch my i-net speeds, then and now, so I knew when it was happening. If you called customer service, they'd say that everything was ok and they'd have zero knowledge of any speed throttling. They'd say, "well your dish must not be aligned properly". Even when I explain to them that I'm an Engineer and used a thousand dollar meter to establish the strongest signal possible, they'd still say that it must be a problem on my end. Customer service would have zero knowledge (or deny any knowledge) of any bandwidth throttling. DirectPC's claim was exactly what the article mentions Comcast is claiming, that .1% of the users make up the majority of usage. I think DPC said something like 1% of the users took up 30% of the bandwidth. Well, I was part of the Windows 95 and Windows 98 beta teams, and was downloading a CD a week from Microsoft. That was too much downloading, I wound up using just my 28.8k modem most of the time and that would download quicker. (At that time you used a modem to upload and the satellite dish only for download at advertised speeds of 400kps fast for that time). Even after the suit was settled, I don't think they ever fully acknowledged the amount that you had to download that was deemed "too much" and initiated the throttling. Heck I'd use the latest Netscape install to test my speed, and that initiated the throttling, it was only 75meg if I remember correctly! The only one that really got justice was the lawyers... DPC was ordered to "buy back" the equipment from us, at a loss to us, if we chose to sell it back to them. I think the lawyers got a couple hundred thousand bucks out of the deal for "legal fees". Mike B Michael P. Blanchard Antivirus / Security Engineer, CISSP, GCIH, CCSA-NGX, MCSE Office of Information Security & Risk Management EMC ² Corporation 4400 Computer Dr. Westboro, MA 01580 -----Original Message----- From: Gadi Evron [mailto:ge@linuxbox.org] Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 8:29 PM To: Blanchard, Michael (InfoSec) Cc: funsec@linuxbox.org Subject: RE: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 Blanchard_Michael@emc.com wrote:
wow, it's the Hughes DirectPC FAP all over again.....
That doesn't ring a bell? Gadi. -- "beepbeep it, i leave work, stop reading sec lists and im still hearing gadi" - HD Moore to Gadi Evron on IM, on Gadi's interview on npr, March 2007.
On 3/13/07, Gadi Evron <ge@linuxbox.org> wrote:
On funsec we have had a discussion on broadband providers and bandwidth limitations, pretty much what we rehearsed here.
Critical mass is approaching. There's only so long that North American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access speeds. Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable. -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Todd Vierling wrote:
Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable.
not that I'm arguing (really) but what wakeup call? where is the competition pushing to provide 'better' than the local telco/cable-op is providing? what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? -Chris
On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote:
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user?
BitTorrent. ;> And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote:
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user?
BitTorrent.
which uses all available bandwidth on the user link, and can/does play nicely with other user apps... It's not a reason for $TELCO to want to add more BW to your link though. I suppose what I was asking is: Is there a better/faster/cheaper alternative to your 2 incumbant solutions $TELCO || $CABLECO ? If there were then I bet $TELCO || $CABLECO would drop prices and speed up links... since there isn't I think we're all lucky we're not still using a 110baud coupler modem :)
;>
And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO.
again, these are user apps that depend on the higher BW available, they don't drive the business to change, really. It seems to me that currently the DVR/on-demand folks are basically walking the ledge hoping that as they bring new features the telco's/cableco's will play nice and add bandwidth to make these services 'work'... That might not last, there certainly is no real reason that $TELCO || $CABLECO would be driven to change, aside from 'goodness of their hearts' or 'hey maybe we want to increase BW so we can offer a spiffy DVR-ish thing to our customers and get more revenue on our flagging last-mile circuits?' -Chris
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 03:45:07PM +0000, Chris L. Morrow wrote:
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote:
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user?
BitTorrent.
which uses all available bandwidth on the user link, and can/does play nicely with other user apps... It's not a reason for $TELCO to want to add more BW to your link though.
I suppose what I was asking is: Is there a better/faster/cheaper alternative to your 2 incumbant solutions $TELCO || $CABLECO ?
If there were then I bet $TELCO || $CABLECO would drop prices and speed up links... since there isn't I think we're all lucky we're not still using a 110baud coupler modem :)
This is part of the "perfect storm" puzzle (basically, "access monopolies are weakened or cease to exist"). See http://www.1-4-5.net/~dmm/talks/apricot2007/perfect_storm for the most recent incarnation of this stuff. Long story short is that this (the whole situation with access networks) is perhaps the most controversial/weakest part of the story.
And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO.
again, these are user apps that depend on the higher BW available, they don't drive the business to change, really. It seems to me that currently the DVR/on-demand folks are basically walking the ledge hoping that as they bring new features the telco's/cableco's will play nice and add bandwidth to make these services 'work'... That might not last, there certainly is no real reason that $TELCO || $CABLECO would be driven to change, aside from 'goodness of their hearts' or 'hey maybe we want to increase BW so we can offer a spiffy DVR-ish thing to our customers and get more revenue on our flagging last-mile circuits?'
Its hard to say. There's a relatively new (well, last Feb) paper by David Levinson and Andrew Odlyzko entitled "Too expensive to meter: The influence of transaction costs in transportation and communication" [0] that tries to use economic theory and some historical perspective (in particular, on the funding and congestion models for roads) shed some light on this. Its worth reading as it gives some insight as to where all of this may be going, but as usual, its a cloudy crystal ball. --dmm [0] http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metering-expensive.pdf
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:45:07 -0000, "Chris L. Morrow" said:
If there were then I bet $TELCO || $CABLECO would drop prices and speed up links... since there isn't I think we're all lucky we're not still using a 110baud coupler modem :)
OK, what drove the improvement from the 110 baud backwater to today's US backwater? And what evidence is there that the same driver won't continue to push?
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 12:34:12PM -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:45:07 -0000, "Chris L. Morrow" said:
If there were then I bet $TELCO || $CABLECO would drop prices and speed up links... since there isn't I think we're all lucky we're not still using a 110baud coupler modem :)
OK, what drove the improvement from the 110 baud backwater to today's US backwater? And what evidence is there that the same driver won't continue to push?
The reason that we were able to get from 110b aud to V.92 without active cooperation from $TELCO was because $TELCO didn't have to do anything to make it happen. The extant copper pair was (mostly) good enough for technology to advance "at the ends" for quite a while. Similarly, since this was all done over the voice network, $TELCO didn't have to actively cooperate in moving the data along, beyond what they'd do for any other phone call. DSL[1] and DOCSIS require active cooperation from the carrier. Ergo, tech advancement in the carrier-assisted data transport arena is dependent on the carrier cooperating. .....Matthew [1] except for "alarm circuits" that somehow got repurposed for point-to-point DSL circuits (or T1s, for that matter), in which case you're back to tech advancement happening in the CPE, not the medium. -------------- Matthew F. Ringel Sr. Network Engineer Tufts University
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Matthew F. Ringel wrote:
DSL[1] and DOCSIS require active cooperation from the carrier. Ergo, tech advancement in the carrier-assisted data transport arena is dependent on the carrier cooperating.
Are infrastructure build-out costs any less of an issue for consumer broadband SPs who offer metered service? Is their revenue model more amenable to doing capacity-expansion buildouts, vs. all-you-can-eat (except when you eat too much, heh) revenue models? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 08:27:04AM -0700, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: [...]
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent.
The download speed is however limited by the upload speed of the peers, which acts as its own rate-limit given that the bandwidth on broadband connections is somewhat asymmetric.
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 03:52:57PM +0000, Peter Corlett wrote:
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 08:27:04AM -0700, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote: [...]
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user? BitTorrent.
The download speed is however limited by the upload speed of the peers, which acts as its own rate-limit given that the bandwidth on broadband connections is somewhat asymmetric.
"Ideally" that's how it's supposed to work, but isn't how it works as of present-day. Speaking solely about the BitTorrent protocol, upstream does not affect downstream speed. In fact, there's a BitTorrent client out there which specifically *does not* share any of the data being downloaded (thus acting as a pure leeching client): http://dcg.ethz.ch/projects/bitthief/ -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 09:13:01AM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: [...]
"Ideally" that's how it's supposed to work, but isn't how it works as of present-day. Speaking solely about the BitTorrent protocol, upstream does not affect downstream speed. In fact, there's a BitTorrent client out there which specifically *does not* share any of the data being downloaded (thus acting as a pure leeching client):
Yes, but if *everybody* did that, nobody would be uploading and thus there would be nothing being downloaded.
On 13-Mar-2007, at 11:27, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Chris L. Morrow wrote:
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user?
BitTorrent.
So long as most torrent clients are used to share content illicitly, that doesn't sound like much of a business driver for the DSL/CATV ISP. And so long as the average user doesn't have an alternative provider which gives better torrent sharing capabilities, there doesn't seem to be much of a risk of churn because of being torrent- unfriendly. Building high-capacity access to the home is sooner or later going to involve fibre, which is going to necessitate truck roll and digging. There's a high cost associated with that, which means there's a significant competitive disadvantage to anybody doing it in order to compete with DSL/CATV folks whose last mile costs are sunk and were paid for long ago. Residential customers are notoriously price- sensitive and low-yield. Pressure seems like it could come from either or both of two directions: there could be some new market shift which entices customers to pay substantially more for increased performance, and to do so in great numbers, to make it cost-effective for a green-fields entrant to deploy a new network, or the cost of digging up the streets could become much lower. Given that there's only so much TV one household can realistically download and watch per day, and since that amount of TV demonstrably fits within DSL- and cable-sized pipes already, I don't see the average neighbourhood throwing money around in order to get fibre to the home. On the contrary, here at least I see people switching providers in order to take advantage of bundles of phone/TV/cell which will save them $10 per month. Perhaps city planners have a role to play here. In cities where the streets are routinely dug up every spring as soon as the last snow disappears, for example, municipalities could choose to invest in equal-access conduit to reduce the cost for anybody who wants to blow fibre down them in the future. Such approaches are somewhat common in the business core, but perhaps not so much in residential areas. Joe
On Mar 13, 2007, at 9:11 AM, Joe Abley wrote:
So long as most torrent clients are used to share content illicitly, that doesn't sound like much of a business driver for the DSL/CATV ISP. And so long as the average user doesn't have an alternative provider which gives better torrent sharing capabilities, there doesn't seem to be much of a risk of churn because of being torrent-unfriendly
er, that's why I put a smiley below it. Like this: ;> In all seriousness, DVR-on-demand type services offered by the SPs themselves would be one driver. Right now, they're all overlay networks which the SPs don't view as being directly monetizable. If/ when they offer such services themselves, however, I, predict this will change. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Joe Abley Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:11 PM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) Building high-capacity access to the home is sooner or later going to involve fibre, which is going to necessitate truck roll and digging. There's a high cost associated with that, which means there's a significant competitive disadvantage to anybody doing it in order to compete with DSL/CATV folks whose last mile costs are sunk and were paid for long ago. Residential customers are notoriously price- sensitive and low-yield. [Mills, Charles] Probably sooner in this case. Verizon is already rolling out fiber to the home (FIOS) in the Pittsburgh area. Massive truck rolls...lots of glass being strung. Chuck Charles L. Mills Senior Network Engineer Access Data Corporation / Pittsburgh, PA 15238 cmills@accessdc.com / http://www.accessdc.com Hosting, Colocation, D-R and Managed Services
On 13-Mar-2007, at 12:34, Mills, Charles wrote:
Probably sooner in this case. Verizon is already rolling out fiber to the home (FIOS) in the Pittsburgh area. Massive truck rolls...lots of glass being strung.
Subsidising a loss-leading access project with revenue from copper- based services sounds indeed like a plausible option for those few companies who own the copper. Joe
On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> wrote:
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user?
BitTorrent. ;>
Smiley highly appropriate there. The cultural diversity of the Internet-using population simply isn't capable of making BT a practical application for >99% of large, *legally* distributed data. Well, yet.
And on-demand DVR-type things
IMHO, this (no, not VoIP) is the killer app. Though I consider them still above the learning curve of most US consumers, the existence of the Slingbox and SageTV Placeshifter should indicate that we're getting close to the proverbial wall. -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
You are right. Video content tailored to every user is going to be the next killer app. Unfortunately, neither the telcos nor the cable companies quite get this. They are stuck to their "channels" and everything is priced in terms of channels. As far as Bittorrent goes, if you ever wanted to get content that is not available in the US, is there another choice?
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Todd Vierling Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:58 AM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)
On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> wrote:
what business drivers are there to put more bits on the wire to the end user?
BitTorrent. ;>
Smiley highly appropriate there. The cultural diversity of the Internet-using population simply isn't capable of making BT a practical application for >99% of large, *legally* distributed data. Well, yet.
And on-demand DVR-type things
IMHO, this (no, not VoIP) is the killer app. Though I consider them still above the learning curve of most US consumers, the existence of the Slingbox and SageTV Placeshifter should indicate that we're getting close to the proverbial wall.
-- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
On Mar 14, 2007, at 11:22 AM, Bora Akyol wrote:
Unfortunately, neither the telcos nor the cable companies quite get this. They are stuck to their "channels" and everything is priced in terms of channels.
To be fair, part of this onus is on the content developers themselves - after all, it's easier to produce something and then have a channel take care of distribution for you, rather than having to figure it out for yourself. And of course, the channels don't want their business going away, either. To top it all off, many SPs want to become the 'channel' for their customers. Just another example of how network effects tend to lead to disintermediation, which is of course extremely disruptive to traditional distribution models. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Greetings, Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title? Thanks in advance, Todd Christell SpringNet Network Manager 417.831.8688
NOC Technician? Support Technician? I have others that I was called when I worked in a NOC but it probably wouldn't be proper for here... -Mike On 3/14/07, Todd Christell <tchristell@springnet.net> wrote:
Greetings,
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
Thanks in advance,
Todd Christell SpringNet Network Manager 417.831.8688
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Todd Christell wrote:
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
Not sure why your HR dept would even care :) hmmm..... NOC Engineer? NOC Analyst? NOC (insert generic group name here)? jms
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
Not sure why your HR dept would even care :)
So they can look them up on a pay scale list and decide what they should be paid. Had this problem at one place I was at where the pay scale list thought a "System Administrator" or "Network Administrator" was somebody who looked after 20 Windows desktops in an office and not network/machines for a thousands of customers (as was the case) and thus paid about twice as much. I think the managers just argued with HR or reclassified everybody as a "Network Architect" to solve the problem. Calling people "Engineers" was a problem since half them didn't have degrees. -- Simon J. Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/ "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Simon Lyall wrote:
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
Not sure why your HR dept would even care :)
So they can look them up on a pay scale list and decide what they should be paid.
In pretty much every place I've worked, the pay scale was set by the hiring manager. HR's role was to handle the paperwork. As always, YMMV. Probably not to respond to the list on this one since we're already close to the on-topic/off-topic line. If you want to respond offline, by all means feel free. jms
On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 22:07 -0400, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Todd Christell wrote:
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
Not sure why your HR dept would even care :)
hmmm..... NOC Engineer? NOC Analyst? NOC (insert generic group name here)?
SOC/NOC/RNOC/ROCK/CROC/Crock? It certainly isn't specific. Of all the different customer environments I've visited, I don't ever recall 2 of them using the same syntax or signage. I would probably prefer something like Systems Engineer or Network Engineer myself, esp if the job involved trouble shooting and interacting with other professionals (besides, everyone's an engineer these days.....) Otherwise, if the job is just screen watching then I think NOC Specialist would be valid. You will have cable TV in the NOC for those (Base|Foot|Basket)ball^wWeather emergencies, right? ;-) -Jim P.
On Mar 14, 2007, at 7:07 PM, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
NOC (insert generic group name here)?
NOC NOC? [Who's there?] ;> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Todd, Maybe Im missing something here but I am not a believe in new positions/salary just because you are going from a noc to a 24x7 noc. Now, if you dont already have a noc and want to create the department and also have it 24/7, I would simply leave have them as Network Analyst. This would really say what they do on a day to day bases... analyze the problem, provide that level 1 or 2 support. They should not be in a position to fix a network issue on a higher level.. such as ospf/bgp changes and such... (thats more of an engineering....) Unfortunately, you are going to get noc personals of different skill levels and as such its not really fair for them to be making the same $ or have the same title... (in a world where people actually cared about titles) so what you can do is start them off in the same position then implement a sr/jr role. -ps. starting salary for a noc analyst in canada is around 35K for someone with the qualifications but not a lot of real world experience... just my 2cents oh and in the world that people care about titles... lets say im an CEO, CFO , CTO and lets add some cisco stuff .. mmm ccie, ccnp, ccabcdefg =) cheers, Payam Todd Christell wrote:
Greetings,
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
Thanks in advance,
Todd Christell SpringNet Network Manager 417.831.8688
Todd Christell wrote:
Greetings,
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
Thanks in advance,
Todd Christell SpringNet Network Manager 417.831.8688
At a previous employer, L1 nocsters were network technicians, L2 people were network analysts. Then above them were system and network engineers, and above them system and network architects. Briam
Todd Christell wrote:
Greetings,
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
This is as best I recall a direct quote. "We don't care. You can call yourself Supreme Imperial Grand Poo-Bah if you want as long as our network stays up." -- Jay Hennigan - Supreme Imperial Grand Poo-Bah - CCIE #7880 Network Engineering - jay@impulse.net Impulse Internet Service - http://www.impulse.net/ Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV
Jay Hennigan wrote:
This is as best I recall a direct quote. "We don't care. You can call yourself Supreme Imperial Grand Poo-Bah if you want as long as our network stays up."
Nah, the proper term is "Network Czar" until you get into network security, then you become the "Network Nazi" or the "Firewall Fascist". For techs, I've heard "cable stretcher", but you don't breathe a word of it until the fiber splice is verified... Jeff
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Jeff Kell wrote:
Jay Hennigan wrote:
This is as best I recall a direct quote. "We don't care. You can call yourself Supreme Imperial Grand Poo-Bah if you want as long as our network stays up."
Nah, the proper term is "Network Czar" until you get into network security, then you become the "Network Nazi" or the "Firewall Fascist".
For techs, I've heard "cable stretcher", but you don't breathe a word of it until the fiber splice is verified...
Some of our NOC engineers in my previous position got pretty upset at how funny I found the term "reboot monkey" when I first discovered it (a friend visited from the states). One of the girls knocked me out pretty good. :) Gadi.
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist.
We're 24x7 and we get by just fine without an HR department. It has worked fine for 13 years, and will continue to work fine for as long as I'm involved in running this show. ;) So sack the HR morons and apply their salaries to the NOC staff, and call them whatever the hell you want. Cures two problems at once! That said, what is their beef with "NOC Specialist" anyway? --chuck
Hello Todd: -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Todd Christell Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 6:47 PM To: NANOG Subject: NOC Personel Question (Possibly OT) Greetings, Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title? Thanks in advance, Todd Christell SpringNet Network Manager 417.831.8688 --- I know it's blasé, but how about: - Technical Support Representative - Network Administrator - Senior Network Administrator Or, you could just call them all "booger eaters" and be done with it. Mike
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Michael K. Smith - Adhost wrote:
- Technical Support Representative - Network Administrator - Senior Network Administrator
Or, you could just call them all "booger eaters" and be done with it.
"Booger Eater (I/II/III/IV) just doesn't look good on a business card :) "Network Administrator" or some variant thereof could work, if the person/group in question has appropriately defined roles. For some reason, it always bothered me when reading job posings for "Network Administrator", only to find out it means they need you to babysit 20 Windows boxes :( jms
Justin M. Streiner wrote:
"Booger Eater (I/II/III/IV) just doesn't look good on a business card :)
Ah, how much I miss the days of my previous employer, who had a web page where you could order business cards. The order went straight to the printshop, and they'd mail them to the address listed on the card. A sales engineer in the <unnamed> office was "always" on projects and hard to find, so the comics in the office put the webpage to good use: cards were ordered for the new hire, and the receptionist was oh so confused for about three weeks trying to figure out who and where the new hire was. Finally, the comedians admitted that "Imneva Aroun" was geekspeek for the mostly-invisible sales engineer. ;) pt
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Michael K. Smith - Adhost wrote:
- Technical Support Representative - Network Administrator - Senior Network Administrator
Or, you could just call them all "booger eaters" and be done with it.
"Booger Eater (I/II/III/IV) just doesn't look good on a business card :)
"Network Administrator" or some variant thereof could work, if the person/group in question has appropriately defined roles. For some reason, it always bothered me when reading job posings for "Network Administrator", only to find out it means they need you to babysit 20 Windows boxes :(
Why not explain to HR why they are needed and let them set the title? Anyway, I have a friend who used managed to get "Not A Janitor" on his business card.
jms
^^ like the babylon 5 creator? Gadi.
Anyway, I have a friend who used managed to get "Not A Janitor" on his business card. "Rear Admiral" was my favorite business card title if only because that was also the caller ID on my phone (I managed the PBX at the time).
I've seen "Systems/Unix/DNS Ninja." At my current job I make breakfast on Thursday mornings for the team I work with- I'm trying to get business cards that say either "Head Chef" or "Chief Cook and Bottle Wash." Before this gets too wildly off-topic- perhaps the original poster can comment as to why NOC Specialist is a problem? We call our level 1 NOC people "Operators." We reserve Network Analyst for the level 2 people who also do some small amount of scripting and other more advanced troubleshooting. Network Analyst makes me think of Stock Analysts, though. The problem is that they aren't very good at telling me what kind of returns I can expect on my equipment and what the future holds for the network :) Has anyone thought to clearly define these titles somewhere so that everyone can standardize on them? -Don
On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 09:49:36AM -0400, Donald Stahl wrote: ...
Has anyone thought to clearly define these titles somewhere so that everyone can standardize on them?
There are SAGE System Administrator levels, well defined and accepted by most of those who have heard of them. Would they apply here? <http://www.sage.org/pubs/8_jobs/8_jobs.html> -- Joe Yao Analex Contractor
On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 09:49:36AM -0400, Donald Stahl wrote:
We call our level 1 NOC people "Operators." We reserve Network Analyst for the level 2 people who also do some small amount of scripting and other more advanced troubleshooting. Network Analyst makes me think of Stock Analysts, though. The problem is that they aren't very good at telling me what kind of returns I can expect on my equipment and what the future holds for the network :)
Has anyone thought to clearly define these titles somewhere so that everyone can standardize on them?
Because each NOC is different, depending upon what hiring practises are deployed by the company populating aforementioned NOC. Here's two NOCs for you (yes, both are real): 1) Expected to have above-average UNIX skills, above-average exposure to DNS (understanding SOAs, must have familiarity with dig, etc.), familiarity with HTTP (manual fetches/form queries, etc.), SSH and related aspects (tunnels, keys, etc.), decent networking troubleshooting skills (more than just exposure to ping, exposure to BGP is good, knowledge of the OSI layer is highly respected, etc.). Of course the standard crap also applies: extensive ticket work, answering phone calls + dealing with clients, escalation procedures, 24x7 operations (e.g. graveyard guys getting little sleep), etc.. NOC employees have root and enable on systems and networking devices, and are encouraged to use them to track -- and solve -- issues if they feel comfortable/know how (otherwise escalate/check with someone else). Hiring practises also require personable people (read: no ego, are willing to teach others), and do not hire people who tote themselves as superior or "too proud to work in a NOC". 2) Anyone with the least bit of any IT experience at all ("I know how to install Windows Server and plug in PCI cards, is that OK?") is hired. Don't know anything about UNIX? No problem, here's some documentation you can read that'll teach you. Don't know how TCP/IP works? That's fine, it's not part of the job, just escalate according to this procedure. If the individual has extensive experience(s), great, hire them. If they have very few skills but have more than none, hire them. NOC employees do not have root/enable; all issues are escalated. Management adheres to "Rules must be followed" "Do not try to be different" "We like robots" ideals. NOC #2 is what most people think of, and that's understandable, because there's a lot of NOCs which are completely chaotic and borderline useless (read: getting in the way of engineers solving problems more so than helping them solve the problem). My point is, people working in NOC #1 would be generally disappointed to have to put "NOC Analyst" on their business card when most of their time was spent doing SA or NA-related things. NOC #2 individuals probably won't care (the skilled ones might care, but might not make a big deal about it, because maybe they're just happy that they have a job at all.) So, my recommendation to the OP would be to pick titles appropriate to the individuals' skill set. The term "NOCster" or "NOCling" or other such terms are *not* terms of endearment -- they're borderline insulting, unless your NOC is like #2, which in that case you might as well just put down "Emotionless Robot", because that's eventually how people become in those environments. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
1) Expected to have above-average UNIX skills, above-average exposure to DNS (understanding SOAs, must have familiarity with dig, etc.), familiarity with HTTP (manual fetches/form queries, etc.), SSH and ... and do not hire people who tote themselves as superior or "too proud to work in a NOC". Then these people should have the title System Administrator (or something similar). Just because they work in a "NOC" doesn't mean they have to have NOC-anything in their title.
But for the type of NOC most people are describing- NOC-anything would be fine- it really doesn't matter. Some of those NOC people (The ones that want to learn) will move on to become SA's or NA's or whatever. Others will not, or do not want to, learn anything and will never move out of the NOC. -Don
i don't know about most nocs. but the few to which i have been close have had three or four levels of folk, from competent techs to darned good ip engineers. i know folk in the verio, ntt, iij, ... nocs that i would rather have backing me up than some of my fellow prima donna global internet pooh bah c* j* blah blahs on this list. of course, i have also dealt with nocs where the folk took no ownership, were poorly clued, ... i suspect the hr department in question would like to make one of these. while it may lose customers, it'll sure make the expense side of the income statement look good. and hr departments are not responsible for the income side of the equation. just as IT departments are not given any incentive to maximize productivity, just to reduce expense for IT. i just want to say a deep thanks to the noccers who have bailed my butt out so many times over the years. may you be shielded as much as possible from the too narrowly incented hr and it departments, and from prima donna engineers such as i. randy
On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 09:49:36AM -0400, Donald Stahl wrote:
Anyway, I have a friend who used managed to get "Not A Janitor" on his business card.
"Rear Admiral" was my favorite business card title if only because that was also the caller ID on my phone (I managed the PBX at the time).
My old work let you pick what was on your old business card... my two favorites were: "Good With his Hands" and "Organ Donor" My boss was the only sysadmin for years, and he has "The Guy Who Keeps the Servers Running" on his business card. w
Gadi Evron wrote:
Anyway, I have a friend who used managed to get "Not A Janitor" on his business card.
My all-time favorite business card was one from Autodesk from the chief financial officer, who appeared to be a real Niven fan: Speaker to Bankers
On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Stephen Satchell wrote:
Gadi Evron wrote:
Anyway, I have a friend who used managed to get "Not A Janitor" on his business card.
My all-time favorite business card was one from Autodesk from the chief financial officer, who appeared to be a real Niven fan:
Speaker to Bankers
Unless he was an Orson Scott Card fan and then this means something else entirely. :) I must admit, the is the most "family" thread I have seen on NANOG in a long time. Back on topic though, what do you find to be the three top time consuming issues with a NOC, and how does a NOC help you solve these issues? As an example on my burrowed joke from earlier on 'reboot moneky', the ability to call the NOC and ask someone to reboot a machine saves a ton of time and the NOC engineers learn a lot by helping along, as part of a process to becoming fully fledged "snobs" like the rest of us. It may be a joke to me, but as I mentioned, I got my behind kicked by a nice girl. Where would we be without our NOCs? Some things the NOC used to help us with quite lot, that were not directly related to their obvious job description: 1. Reboots (as specified earlier). 2. Getting files on and off machines (via email to the NOC?) 3. Installing machines. Meaning, tasks which either take a lot of time or make us go down three floors to do ourselves. Some innovations such as remote KVM (whether over IP or not) and later on USB controls over remote KVM really helped along when they showed up, and made that "broken phone" work much better as we could do things on our own again (this is of course assuming folks don't just "telnet" to machines which may be on completely different networks). So, aside to monitoring, assisting and high-end tech support (not necessarily to customers) what are the top things your NOC does for you, and what did these things used t be 3 years ago? Do you see any of these things as possible to automate or solve in a technological fashion? I figure if we all have different titles, we may use our NOCs for different purposes and see different needs, and I wonder where that middle ground between all of us is. Gadi. -- "beepbeep it, i leave work, stop reading sec lists and im still hearing gadi" - HD Moore to Gadi Evron on IM, on Gadi's interview on npr, March 2007.
GE> Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:49:20 -0500 (CDT) GE> From: Gadi Evron [ tongue perhaps only slightly in cheek ] GE> Some things the NOC used to help us with quite lot, that were not GE> directly related to their obvious job description: GE> GE> 1. Reboots (as specified earlier). GE> 2. Getting files on and off machines (via email to the NOC?) GE> 3. Installing machines. 4. Frequent NANOG posting. GE> Meaning, tasks which either take a lot of time or make us go down three GE> floors to do ourselves. I believe one would classify the proposed #4 as the former. Eddy -- Everquick Internet - http://www.everquick.net/ A division of Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - http://www.brotsman.com/ Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 785 865 5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 316 794 8922 Wichita ________________________________________________________________________ DO NOT send mail to the following addresses: davidc@brics.com -*- jfconmaapaq@intc.net -*- sam@everquick.net Sending mail to spambait addresses is a great way to get blocked. Ditto for broken OOO autoresponders and foolish AV software backscatter.
"Booger Eater (I/II/III/IV) just doesn't look good on a business card :)
Our marketing guy was the IS Manager before I cam on board, and still helps cover for me when I'm on vacation or otherwise out of town. So in addition to his "real" business cards he has some that have Backup Information Technology Crisis Handler spelled out.. underneath the initials, of course. :^) -- Dave Pooser, ACSA Manager of Information Services Alford Media http://www.alfordmedia.com
On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 08:31:59AM -0500, Dave Pooser wrote: ...
Our marketing guy was the IS Manager before I cam on board, and still helps cover for me when I'm on vacation or otherwise out of town. So in addition to his "real" business cards he has some that have Backup Information Technology Crisis Handler spelled out.. underneath the initials, of course. :^) -- Dave Pooser, ACSA Manager of Information Services Alford Media http://www.alfordmedia.com
Making you the I.T.C.H., of course. -- Joe Yao Analex Contractor
Making you the I.T.C.H., of course.
Nah, we decided I'm the Primary Information Management Professional. -- Dave Pooser, ACSA Manager of Information Services Alford Media http://www.alfordmedia.com
HR only cares so they can legally title and pay these people. Name them something relative of course. At two of the big ISP's I have associated with they call their guys Network Operations Engineer Levels 1-3. -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Todd Christell Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 8:47 PM To: NANOG Subject: NOC Personel Question (Possibly OT) Greetings, Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title? Thanks in advance, Todd Christell SpringNet Network Manager 417.831.8688 ***** The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential, proprietary, and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers. GA623
On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 19:47 -0600, Todd Christell wrote:
Greetings,
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
If they manage end-devices, we title them System Support Technician (A-C) If they manage routers and firewalls, they are titled Network Systems Administrator, Network Systems Administrator Senior, and Lan/Wan Integrator. -- Daniel J McDonald, CCIE #2495, CISSP #78281, CNX Lan/Wan Integrator Austin Energy
On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 07:47:26PM -0600, Todd Christell wrote:
Greetings,
Sorry if this is OT but we are having a discussion with our HR department. We are in the process of getting a 24 X 7 NOC in place and HR has a problem with calling them NOC Specialist. What is the generally accepted title?
local title, "watch guy", or, "the guys on the watch". i'm sure there's an Offishul Titel, but nobody real ever uses it. (Yes, half of them are female, "guy" no longer seems to imply male. or wire.) -- Joe Yao Analex Contractor
And on-demand DVR-type things which I believe will grow in popularity. Of course, most of those are overlays which the SPs themselves don't offer; when they wish to do so, it'll become an issue, IMHO.
Which, by the way, is hitting main stream. Amazon Unbox. http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=16261631 Watch movies on demand on your Tivo in (almost) real time over your internet connection.
On 3/13/07, Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com> wrote:
Critical mass is approaching. There's only so long that North American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access speeds.
Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable.
768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock!
Alexander Harrowell wrote:
On 3/13/07, Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com> wrote:
Critical mass is approaching. There's only so long that North American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access speeds.
Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable.
768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock!
It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks.... and as for who is pushing the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our
1536kb/sec download customers.
What "parts of the world" have long since upgraded to those speeds - and how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome. I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like? -- Jeff Shultz
On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 08:37:34AM -0700, Jeff Shultz wrote:
Alexander Harrowell wrote:
On 3/13/07, Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com> wrote:
Both cable and DSL providers are about to have a very loud wake-up call, and from here, I see absolutely zero uptake of newer technology and infrastructure to offset the inevitable.
768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock!
I'd agree wit this.
It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks.... and as for who is pushing
And this. (sigh).
the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our
1536kb/sec download customers.
What "parts of the world" have long since upgraded to those speeds - and how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome.
We have a lot more physical distance to cover which basically requires fiber to get a reasonable distance from it. Even with fancy ($300-1k) LRE/dsl extenders, your limits are somewhere around 7km. Not exactly something you can expect some consumer to jump on the costs of. They expect the service to cost less than the computer they are going to attach.
I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like?
I think that with the current market environment the only choices will become some sort of municipal fiber builds (most people can accept the cost via their property taxes or other means that may even be tax deductable for them personally) or possible regulation of delivery of "internet" services in the same way that delivery of POTS services are necessary. Last time I talked to someone at my PUC, he was griping about the lack of POTS services in the state. Even with all the USF and other monies, tarrifed POTS services are not available. I think this says something. Me? I see a resurgance (as long as regulatory - CALEA & other costs) in the local SPs coming as opposed to the cable/dsl cartels. Most folks are thinking wireless these days, but I suspect that once they realize that the cost of putting fiber across their property is actually low enough, a number of these local isps will negotiate their own cabling paths. This may also have some problems as if they're "good enough" we may see the telcos and cable co's vying for access to their facilities to deliver tv/voice/data as well over it. Either way, the challenges in this space in the coming years at the high end (100G and faster) as well as how to deliver content at a reasonable speed to the end-user networks will make for a fun time in networking. - Jared -- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
Data point: a "considerable" number of mobile ops worldwide are pulling fibre to their Node-Bs or at least their RNCs. (No, wireline types - not Republican National Committees, Radio Network Controllers - you have one for every 10-15 Node-Bs, for a very rough idea) Sources say the triggering event is the enablement of HSDPA (and presumably Revision A for the CDMA world, although I haven't heard of a CDMA carrier fibreing up yet). Some deployments so far have been up to 2,000 cell sites with fibre backhaul.
Jeff Shultz wrote:
Alexander Harrowell wrote:
768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock!
If you don't like it, you can always return to dialup.
It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks.... and as for who is pushing the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our
1536kb/sec download customers.
Gamers don't really need much in bandwidth. They need the low ping times, so they *must* ensure that there is no saturation or routing overhead. Granted, there are some games that are bandwidth intensive, but everyone's busy playing WoW. Gamers are great for detecting those really hard to spot problems that only effect gaming and voip.
What "parts of the world" have long since upgraded to those speeds - and how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome.
Japan has, for one. Definitely a size difference. In US metropolitan areas we are seeing a lot more fiber to the home. The cost will never be justified in US rural areas. Just look at Oklahoma. Most connectivity in Oklahoma will actually be from Dallas or Kansas City.
I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like?
I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down. Jack Bates
Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated
There are several valid reasons, but with newer modulations more bandwidth upstream is more and more of a reality. Now if we could just turn off ISDN and POTS (and other random crazy PTT legacy) we'd have tons more! Copper has a long way to go bandwidth wise. Regards, Neil.
At 12:15 PM 3/13/2007, Neil J. McRae wrote:
Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated
There are several valid reasons, but with newer modulations more bandwidth upstream is more and more of a reality. Now if we could just turn off ISDN and POTS (and other random crazy PTT legacy) we'd have tons more! Copper has a long way to go bandwidth wise.
If we turn off POTS nationwide, then there's a lot of communities which would no longer have any telecommunications services. Telephone service was extended throughout the country because of a public policy to do so. It involved subsidies (call it cost-shifting, whatever) to ensure everyone had a chance to have telephone service. The same thing COULD be done again with broadband service. But there appears to be no political will. The result is dialup over crappy POTS lines for those who don't live in cities or relatively densely populated towns. I'll use by way of example most of Berkshire County in westernmost Massachusetts. Many of the towns have never had cable TV. There is no cell phone service. In some places, satellite TV is not even available (hills, forests). Of course the FCC has been pushing a fiction that broadband over powerline will be deployed in these rural areas, but it's funny, all the trials for BPL seem to have been done in places where the housing density is high, and there's already another broadband carrier. Wireless, too, has been proposed, but in areas that still don't have cell phones, are we really to expect wireless broadband carriers to spring up? As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl.
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:
As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl.
Various rural phone companies aside, the majority of this was accomplished in the U.S. via a regulated monopoly, and in many other countries via a government-owned regulated monopoly. Do you believe that's necessary and/or desirable in order to make broadband ubiquitous? How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:
As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl.
Various rural phone companies aside, the majority of this was accomplished in the U.S. via a regulated monopoly, and in many other countries via a government-owned regulated monopoly. Do you believe that's necessary and/or desirable in order to make broadband ubiquitous? How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation?
The thing that I would observe is that on the way to deploying ubiquitous phone services most emerging markets skipped the step where they wire everything up because they simply couldn't afford it. Competing cell carriers did a lot more to put communications services in the hands of rural and urban africans than the monopoly ptt's ever did.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice
Words that come from a machine have no soul.
-- Duong Van Ngo
At 01:33 PM 3/13/2007, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:
As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl.
Various rural phone companies aside, the majority of this was accomplished in the U.S. via a regulated monopoly, and in many other countries via a government-owned regulated monopoly.
And today we have unregulated monopolies in many communities, and unregulated duopolies in the rest. Are we better off without regulation? That's unclear.
Do you believe that's necessary and/or desirable in order to make broadband ubiquitous?
A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. Even the electrical utilities have this kind of thing going on... there's an energy conservation charge on my electric bill that is used to pool funds that are used for energy efficiency projects. The solar panels on my roof were partially paid for by a grant from such funds. There are alternatives to close control of monopolies using mechanisms of this sort. If it's in the best interests of the country to provide universal access, then such a mechanism will likely be the way.
How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation?
If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX provider? It all comes back to economics. If there's an interest in providing universal access, then somehow there will have to be financial incentives for less populated areas to be covered. Verizon, Comcast, ATT and the like have no hearts and thus will not cover rural areas out of the goodness of those non-existent hearts, unless there's a financial incentive to make it worthwhile.
Current wireless technologies have no problem with the rural aspect, just the hills and foliage. Get on a tall enough tower in a remote enough area, you can have quite a range on your wireless coverage. I'm not sure of the cost of a cell tower setup, but the cost outfitting a tower for WISP use on 3 bands is under $10k. --Mike -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Daniel Senie Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 1:19 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) At 01:33 PM 3/13/2007, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:10 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:
As with the deployment of telephone service a century ago, the ubiquitious availability of broadband service will require government involvement in the form of fees on some and subsidies for others (might be a good use for the funds Massachusetts is trying to extract from Verizon for property tax on telephone poles, I suppose). Otherwise, we'll see the broadband providers continue to cherry pick the communities to service, and leave others in the digital dustbowl.
Various rural phone companies aside, the majority of this was accomplished in the U.S. via a regulated monopoly, and in many other countries via a government-owned regulated monopoly.
And today we have unregulated monopolies in many communities, and unregulated duopolies in the rest. Are we better off without regulation? That's unclear.
Do you believe that's necessary and/or desirable in order to make broadband ubiquitous?
A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas. Even the electrical utilities have this kind of thing going on... there's an energy conservation charge on my electric bill that is used to pool funds that are used for energy efficiency projects. The solar panels on my roof were partially paid for by a grant from such funds. There are alternatives to close control of monopolies using mechanisms of this sort. If it's in the best interests of the country to provide universal access, then such a mechanism will likely be the way.
How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation?
If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX provider? It all comes back to economics. If there's an interest in providing universal access, then somehow there will have to be financial incentives for less populated areas to be covered. Verizon, Comcast, ATT and the like have no hearts and thus will not cover rural areas out of the goodness of those non-existent hearts, unless there's a financial incentive to make it worthwhile.
On 3/14/07, Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:
Current wireless technologies have no problem with the rural aspect, just the hills and foliage. Get on a tall enough tower in a remote enough area, you can have quite a range on your wireless coverage. I'm not sure of the cost of a cell tower setup, but the cost outfitting a tower for WISP use on 3 bands is under $10k.
--Mike
Currently, the cost of a typical cellular Node-B is around 10k in sterling. Plus you have various infrastructure elements that don't exist in 802.world, RNCs, BSCs, and softswitches. And they cost serious money. Whereas the 802 technologies are natively IP and Ethernet, and the "business layer" stuff is basically the AAA and Diameter kit you already have.
On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:
A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas.
This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas.
This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect.
I dunno. My rural ILEC which is up to its armpits in USF money, sells me a T1 for $190/mo plus tax. (Plus what their captive ISP charges for Internet). They also provide consumer DSL to most of their customers for about $30/mo, give or take this month's package promotion. If I was paying the true cost, well, I wouldn't. R's, John
On 13 Mar 2007, at 20:31, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:
A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas.
This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect.
That isn't *quite* the opinion that AT&T have ... ... http://gigaom.com/2007/02/07/atts-free-call-bill-2-million/ Although that is people using the rural kickback as a loophole to provide free telephony to people outside the area.. still shows that regulation always comes with an unexpected effect when times, technology and ideas advance. Cheers -a
Don't confuse USF with ICC. It's USF that you're contributing to directly on your telephone bill and ICC through your long distance payments (which relates to the at&t case). Frank -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Davidson Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 8:38 PM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On 13 Mar 2007, at 20:31, Roland Dobbins wrote:
On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:19 AM, Daniel Senie wrote:
A universal service charge could be applied to all bills, with the funds going to subsidize rural areas.
This is already done in the U.S., to no discernible effect.
That isn't *quite* the opinion that AT&T have ... ... http://gigaom.com/2007/02/07/atts-free-call-bill-2-million/ Although that is people using the rural kickback as a loophole to provide free telephony to people outside the area.. still shows that regulation always comes with an unexpected effect when times, technology and ideas advance. Cheers -a
On 3/13/07, Daniel Senie <dts@senie.com> wrote:
How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation?
If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX provider?
WiMAX should work very well for hilly and forested terrain - it splits the signal across any multipath that may be around, so the more the merrier (within reason).
How do longer-range wireless technologies like WiMAX potentially impact the equation?
If cell phone companies have not covered an area, what makes you think WiMAX is a magic solution? How well does WiMAX work to cover hilly, forested, rural terrain? Who will pay to put up enough towers to provide coverage? Will municipalities unhappy about the look of towers consider this a reasonable alternative to running services along telephone poles that already exist? If the cell carriers haven't found it economic to provide coverage, why would the WiMAX
WiMAX is minimally different than most current wireless broadband equipment. Its main selling point is higher scale, thus lower cost. Its improved RF capabilities result in maybe 10 db. --Mike -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Alexander Harrowell Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 4:39 AM To: Daniel Senie Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On 3/13/07, Daniel Senie <dts@senie.com> wrote: provider?
WiMAX should work very well for hilly and forested terrain - it splits the signal across any multipath that may be around, so the more the merrier (within reason).
Jack Bates wrote:
Jeff Shultz wrote:
Alexander Harrowell wrote:
768 ain't broadband. Buy Cisco, Alcatel, and Akamai stock!
If you don't like it, you can always return to dialup.
It certainly is - just ask the CALEA folks.... and as for who is pushing the bandwidth curve, for the most part it seems to be gamers in search of the ever shrinking ping time. I suspect they make up most of our >1536kb/sec download customers.
Gamers don't really need much in bandwidth. They need the low ping times, so they *must* ensure that there is no saturation or routing overhead. Granted, there are some games that are bandwidth intensive, but everyone's busy playing WoW. Gamers are great for detecting those really hard to spot problems that only effect gaming and voip.
You do need a high symbol rate because otherwise the cost of putting the next packet on the wire is itself an intolerable delay. you can only put a 1500 byte packet on 256Kb/s dsl every 47ms or so. at 1.5Mb/s it's every 8ms at 22Mb/s it's one every .5ms... People pay proportionality more to get semi-deterministic low-latency. unfortunately there aren't a low of products offered specifically cater to that market. You get your choice of 8/768 cable 6/768 dsl or maybe fios if you happen to be in the right market.
What "parts of the world" have long since upgraded to those speeds - and how do they compare size-wise to the USA? We've got an awful lot of legacy infrastructure that would need to be overcome.
Japan has, for one. Definitely a size difference. In US metropolitan areas we are seeing a lot more fiber to the home. The cost will never be justified in US rural areas. Just look at Oklahoma. Most connectivity in Oklahoma will actually be from Dallas or Kansas City.
I will happily agree that it would be nice to have higher upload speeds than DSL generally provides nowadays. What are cable upload speeds like?
I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down.
VDSL2 ITU G.993.2 supports variable and symmetric negotiation of rates. obviously distance is a factor, cause you're down to ~50Mb/s at 1000 meters. at&t and bell south, now at&t and at&t had vdsl rollouts that could in theory be upgraded to vdsl2. If you were in helsinki, I know Päijät-Hämeen Puhelin (php.fi) would sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month.
Jack Bates
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Joel Jaeggli wrote: ...
I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down.
VDSL2 ITU G.993.2 supports variable and symmetric negotiation of rates. obviously distance is a factor, cause you're down to ~50Mb/s at 1000 meters.
at&t and bell south, now at&t and at&t had vdsl rollouts that could in theory be upgraded to vdsl2.
If you were in helsinki, I know Päijät-Hämeen Puhelin (php.fi) would sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month.
As cable was mentioned in earlier posts.. There are also (proprietary) solutions leveraging cable for symmetric 10/10 or 100/100 Mbit/s. One example I'm aware of is Teleste's ETTH technology: http://www.teleste.fi/index.phtml?page_id=1114&navi_id=1114 -- Pekka Savola "You each name yourselves king, yet the Netcore Oy kingdom bleeds." Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month.
100/10 over CAT5 ethernet (and also 100/100) is available here in Sweden for around $35+tax in quite a lot of places. Weirdly enough it's more commonly available in places where the real estate owner has a harder time renting out apartments, because it actually brings people over who wouldn't normally considering living there. Competetive advantage. Real estate owner will pay up front for the CAT5 cabling and will then bring in one or more ISPs to provide IP connectivity and switches (well, a lot of different business models are available). Real estate owner invests a few hundred dollars and gets more apartments rented out, the ISP has to bring fiber into the building/area and can then reach a lot of people with highspeed connections that give high take rates. Some ISPs that prefer CAT5 do so because of less maintenance and that the VDSL(2) equipment is actually more expensive than CAT5 cabling+ethernet switches in a lot of the cases. I think it's weird that cable(coax) is the premium service in the US, because here it's considered inferior to DSL, and it's the service you get when you don't care about performance and quality. Just the other month there was some kind of disruption on the cable system where I live, and when I called in to report it they first asked me to go check with my neighbors (beside me, and both upstairs and downstairs) before they would even take my fault report. Then they had to coordinate a time when both I and my upstair neighbor could be home from work at the same time so the technician could try to find the fault. Ended up me having basically no TV (almost unwatchable) or Telephony (cable modem wouldnt link up) for 10 days. I'm glad I had my internet connectivity via other means. I'll take star topology all days of the week, thank you. So to sum it all up, my take on the US problems is that there is too little competition in the market place. LLUB has brought a lot of competition into the marketplace here and to compete with the LLUB offerings, some other ISPs go directly with infrastructure to the curb or even directly into homes in some of the cases. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
I'd say the reason cable is more popular is because most DSL is ran by the incumbent telcos and you can't get good anything from those guys. DSL is a better technology, but the companies doing it suck. --Mike -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Mikael Abrahamsson Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 2:05 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
sell you 100/24 vdsl2 for around 80euro a month.
100/10 over CAT5 ethernet (and also 100/100) is available here in Sweden for around $35+tax in quite a lot of places. Weirdly enough it's more commonly available in places where the real estate owner has a harder time renting out apartments, because it actually brings people over who wouldn't normally considering living there. Competetive advantage. Real estate owner will pay up front for the CAT5 cabling and will then bring in one or more ISPs to provide IP connectivity and switches (well, a lot of different business models are available). Real estate owner invests a few hundred dollars and gets more apartments rented out, the ISP has to bring fiber into the building/area and can then reach a lot of people with highspeed connections that give high take rates. Some ISPs that prefer CAT5 do so because of less maintenance and that the VDSL(2) equipment is actually more expensive than CAT5 cabling+ethernet switches in a lot of the cases. I think it's weird that cable(coax) is the premium service in the US, because here it's considered inferior to DSL, and it's the service you get when you don't care about performance and quality. Just the other month there was some kind of disruption on the cable system where I live, and when I called in to report it they first asked me to go check with my neighbors (beside me, and both upstairs and downstairs) before they would even take my fault report. Then they had to coordinate a time when both I and my upstair neighbor could be home from work at the same time so the technician could try to find the fault. Ended up me having basically no TV (almost unwatchable) or Telephony (cable modem wouldnt link up) for 10 days. I'm glad I had my internet connectivity via other means. I'll take star topology all days of the week, thank you. So to sum it all up, my take on the US problems is that there is too little competition in the market place. LLUB has brought a lot of competition into the marketplace here and to compete with the LLUB offerings, some other ISPs go directly with infrastructure to the curb or even directly into homes in some of the cases. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
Thus spake "Jack Bates" <jbates@brightok.net>
I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up? Can't I have 12 and 12? Someone please tell me there's a valid reason why the download range couldn't be variable and negotiated and that's it's completely impossible for one to have 20Mb up and 1.5 Mb down.
That's ADSL. I have 25+25 VDSL at home. My ISP frowns on "excessive" uploading, though, but they were kind enough to tell me what "excessive" means and I happily capped my uploads at that rate. Everyone wins. So why has Ma Bell chosen to only use ADSL for consumers? Economics. Their model of having business customers subsidize residential customers relies on having at least one end of every conversation be a business customer. When both ends are residential, as in P2P, there's nobody to pay the bills and keep them afloat. That's also where the net neutrality and peering disputes come from; you only care about people using your pipes "for free" when your customers aren't paying the true cost to get bits to/from the peering point. By limiting residential upload speeds, they make it difficult to source content and thus keep their subsidy model on life support. At least the cablecos have a decent excuse for bad upload speeds; shared bandwidth is bad enough, but in addition 1000 nodes transmitting to 1 node is much tougher electrically than 1 node transmitting to 1000 nodes. Sooner or later, they're going to have to start shrinking cell sizes and/or allocating a heck of a lot more channels to data to keep up with demand. S Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do." K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
On 3/13/07, Jack Bates <jbates@brightok.net> wrote:
In US metropolitan areas we are seeing a lot more fiber to the home.
That depends highly on your location. Additionally, many FTTH deployments (*cough*some parts of a company with former ticker symbol "T"*wheeze*) are artificially rate limited to standard US ADSL ranges.
The cost will never be justified in US rural areas.
Not that I'd expect it to be so. There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded.
I would like to blame the idiots that decided that of the signal range to be used on copper for dsl, only a certain amount would be dedicated to upload instead of negotiating. What on earth do I want to do with 24Mb down and 1Mb up?
It has to do with the transmitter/receiver populations. Without going into deep technical detail ("frequency division multiplexing"), a single talker on the cableco's end makes it "much easier" to channelize downstream traffic across a large number of carrier frequencies, because there's essentially zero traffic collision. On the upstream, the talkers are more like 802.11* wireless clients engaged in a babblefest. -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:11 AM, Todd Vierling wrote:
There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded.
Or something like WiMAX? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Words that come from a machine have no soul. -- Duong Van Ngo
On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> wrote:
There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded.
Or something like WiMAX?
Depends on how rural the area is. Some parts of the US have problematic terrain and *very* sparse population; there, the cost would far outweigh the subscriber uptake. Should someone want bandwidth in such an area, powerline or satellite are probably better choices. (I don't mention cell-based wireless technologies, because the providers in that market space haven't truly awakened to the possibility of fixed cell termination sites for broadband-type access. That is generally seen as a congestion threat, not an opportunity, by the carriers.) -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
On 13-Mar-2007, at 14:15, Todd Vierling wrote:
Depends on how rural the area is. Some parts of the US have problematic terrain and *very* sparse population; there, the cost would far outweigh the subscriber uptake. Should someone want bandwidth in such an area, powerline or satellite are probably better choices.
If powerlines are an option, you're not really rural :-) However, just because you're remote doesn't mean that there aren't options in the last mile, so long as you're prepared to do something rather than just complain about others not doing it. The island of Niue in the South Pacific has had free, nation-wide wifi available for all since 2003, for example, and you don't get much more remote than Niue. Joe
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:50:43 EDT, Joe Abley said:
However, just because you're remote doesn't mean that there aren't options in the last mile, so long as you're prepared to do something rather than just complain about others not doing it. The island of Niue in the South Pacific has had free, nation-wide wifi available for all since 2003, for example, and you don't get much more remote than Niue.
Keeping this in perspective, the CIA Factbook says that Niue had a population of 2,166 in July 2006, an area of 100 square miles (1.5 times the size of Wash DC), and a highest elevation of a whole whopping 250 feet. Meanwhile, Montgomery County, Virginia has some 85K or so people, 393 square miles, and more ridgelines and hollows than you can shake a stick at (elevations from 1,300 to 3,700 feet inclusive). Probably 70K of those people are crowded into about 40 square miles in 2 main plateaus - those are easy to cover. The other 15K people scattered across 350 square miles of ridgelines and hollows are a lot harder to cover. I posit that those 350 square miles are more remote, measured from "the point the big fat cable lands at" (whatever landing station Niue has, and the 2 or 3 main telco CO's here), than any point on the island of Niue. At least measured by criteria that matter to the guy engineering the towers.
On 13-Mar-2007, at 18:36, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
Keeping this in perspective, the CIA Factbook says that Niue had a population of 2,166 in July 2006, an area of 100 square miles (1.5 times the size of Wash DC), and a highest elevation of a whole whopping 250 feet.
They used to have a bunch of trees that caused unwelcome attenuation the 2.4GHz band, but cyclone Heta took care of that little problem.
Meanwhile, Montgomery County, Virginia has some 85K or so people, 393 square miles, and more ridgelines and hollows than you can shake a stick at (elevations from 1,300 to 3,700 feet inclusive).
Probably 70K of those people are crowded into about 40 square miles in 2 main plateaus - those are easy to cover. The other 15K people scattered across 350 square miles of ridgelines and hollows are a lot harder to cover.
I posit that those 350 square miles are more remote, measured from "the point the big fat cable lands at" (whatever landing station Niue has, and the 2 or 3 main telco CO's here), than any point on the island of Niue. At least measured by criteria that matter to the guy engineering the towers.
This conversation has suddenly become very weird. I suggest you go and spend a year on Niue before you decide to make claims that anywhere in the US is as remote (and, for the record, there are no cables which land in Niue, fat or otherwise). If there's a practical difference between Niue and Montgomery County with respect to network access, perhaps it's that Niue is home to someone who decided to build a network rather than just complain about it not being there (hi, Rich!). Do the 70k people that are "easy to cover" in Montgomery County have free wifi? If it's so easy, why not? Joe
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:15:30 EDT, Joe Abley said:
This conversation has suddenly become very weird. I suggest you go and spend a year on Niue before you decide to make claims that anywhere in the US is as remote (and, for the record, there are no cables which land in Niue, fat or otherwise).
We're specifically talking about the connection from where the end of the fat pipe is, be it a fiberoptic or copper or a satellite dish, and where the user is. Craig Mountain: http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=37.0836&lon=-80.3281&datum=nad27&u=4&layer=DRG&size=l&s=50 About 2 square miles, almost all trees. All the houses are marked (the little squares). How many towers do you need? How many are economically viable, especially for "free" wifi? http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&z=12&ll=37.198612,-80.407562&spn=0.191156,0.395164&t=h&om=1 To be fair, you can probably get away with hand-waving away trying to provide coverage to all the green areas - they're forested because they're too steep for either farming or building houses on, so it isn't like you will be cutting off a lot of people.
about it not being there (hi, Rich!). Do the 70k people that are "easy to cover" in Montgomery County have free wifi? If it's so easy, why not?
It's hard to find somebody who will underwrite the cost of free wifi. You can't even ask the local government to do it, because they respond with "But we got everybody online on copper a *decade* ago". http://www.bev.net/about/history.php (That page dates back to 2002 or so - we got out of the ISDN business around then. Uptake rates are even higher now) We wired the town up. We're not feeling real motivated to un-wire it. Somebody wants to come in and get bits to that last 10% that none of the dozen ISPs with presences in the county have found economical ways to reach, they're welcome to do so.
Free WIFI is just a joke anyway. Most of the time when someone is referring to wanting or providing free WIFI, they don't really know what they're talking about. People like free and people dislike being tethered, thus all of the buzz around free WIFI. --Mike -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 1:45 AM To: Joe Abley Cc: Todd Vierling; Roland Dobbins; NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:15:30 EDT, Joe Abley said:
This conversation has suddenly become very weird. I suggest you go and spend a year on Niue before you decide to make claims that anywhere in the US is as remote (and, for the record, there are no cables which land in Niue, fat or otherwise).
We're specifically talking about the connection from where the end of the fat pipe is, be it a fiberoptic or copper or a satellite dish, and where the user is. Craig Mountain: http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=37.0836&lon=-80.3281&datum=nad27&u=4&lay er=DRG&size=l&s=50 About 2 square miles, almost all trees. All the houses are marked (the little squares). How many towers do you need? How many are economically viable, especially for "free" wifi? http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&z=12&ll=37.198612,-80.407562&spn=0.19115 6,0.395164&t=h&om=1 To be fair, you can probably get away with hand-waving away trying to provide coverage to all the green areas - they're forested because they're too steep for either farming or building houses on, so it isn't like you will be cutting off a lot of people.
about it not being there (hi, Rich!). Do the 70k people that are "easy to cover" in Montgomery County have free wifi? If it's so easy, why not?
It's hard to find somebody who will underwrite the cost of free wifi. You can't even ask the local government to do it, because they respond with "But we got everybody online on copper a *decade* ago". http://www.bev.net/about/history.php (That page dates back to 2002 or so - we got out of the ISDN business around then. Uptake rates are even higher now) We wired the town up. We're not feeling real motivated to un-wire it. Somebody wants to come in and get bits to that last 10% that none of the dozen ISPs with presences in the county have found economical ways to reach, they're welcome to do so.
Lower frequencies such as TV whitespace and 700 MHz will greatly help the WISP of today serve areas where current wireless technologies cannot due to frequency. WiMAX will have very little coverage advantage over current wireless technologies. --Mike -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Todd Vierling Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 1:15 PM To: Roland Dobbins Cc: NANOG list Subject: Re: [funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd) On 3/13/07, Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> wrote:
There are other technologies better suited to rural deployment, such as satellite, powerline, some cable, or even re-use of the previous generation's ADSL gear once metro areas are upgraded.
Or something like WiMAX?
Depends on how rural the area is. Some parts of the US have problematic terrain and *very* sparse population; there, the cost would far outweigh the subscriber uptake. Should someone want bandwidth in such an area, powerline or satellite are probably better choices. (I don't mention cell-based wireless technologies, because the providers in that market space haven't truly awakened to the possibility of fixed cell termination sites for broadband-type access. That is generally seen as a congestion threat, not an opportunity, by the carriers.) -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
{re: BPL will bring competition...} I am totally baffled by all the hype over BPL. What is true is the utilities would wet their pants over having same. Not for offering Internet access, but so they could read every electric meter in realtime, and do load-shedding as well. What they SEEM to be doing is trying to convince the Vulture Capitalists that BPL makes sense for 'Net access, and "By the way, as long as you're paying, we'd like to use it ourselves.." But using BPL for 'Net access is well, insane. a) It not only makes RF interference out the yingyang; it is also highly susceptible to other RF emitters confusing it. So it's "Ahh Grasshopper" ish in constantly jumping around retraining its spectrum useage, rather like a modem on a bad line. Ergo, unpredictable latency/throughput. That's OK for Jill Winecooler's email & baby picture sharing, and totally unacceptable for VOIP, XM & other music streaming, TV episode replays, YouTube, etc. b) It makes the most sense in dense neighberhoods where lots of folks share a power trasnformer. [Each one needs a $hunt installed to pass the data around the transformer.] I.e: Europe, and maybe US dense surburbia/apt houses, and such. But that's exactly where DSL & cable are already available... c) Note that the equipment installers in b) are not your average Cable Guy. They must be $killed HV power linemen in bucket trucks etc. d) It won't reach DSL/cable fiber speeds Ever. So as demand grows... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
On Mar 14, 2007, at 3:02 AM, David Lesher wrote:
{re: BPL will bring competition...}
I am totally baffled by all the hype over BPL.
What is true is the utilities would wet their pants over having same. Not for offering Internet access, but so they could read every electric meter in realtime, and do load-shedding as well.
What they SEEM to be doing is trying to convince the Vulture Capitalists that BPL makes sense for 'Net access, and "By the way, as long as you're paying, we'd like to use it ourselves.."
But using BPL for 'Net access is well, insane.
a) It not only makes RF interference out the yingyang; it is also highly susceptible to other RF emitters confusing it. So it's "Ahh Grasshopper" ish in constantly jumping around retraining its spectrum useage, rather like a modem on a bad line.
Ergo, unpredictable latency/throughput. That's OK for Jill Winecooler's email & baby picture sharing, and totally unacceptable for VOIP, XM & other music streaming, TV episode replays, YouTube, etc.
b) It makes the most sense in dense neighberhoods where lots of folks share a power trasnformer. [Each one needs a $hunt installed to pass the data around the transformer.] I.e: Europe, and maybe US dense surburbia/apt houses, and such. But that's exactly where DSL & cable are already available...
c) Note that the equipment installers in b) are not your average Cable Guy. They must be $killed HV power linemen in bucket trucks etc.
d) It won't reach DSL/cable fiber speeds Ever. So as demand grows...
I would agree. The last time I looked at the economics of this in detail, it would have been cheaper to have just strung fiber along the electric lines, at least for above ground power distribution. The system I looked at had fiber along the high voltage lines anyway, to get enough bandwidth to the neighborhood - i.e., fiber to the neighborhood, plus equipment there to put the data onto the copper. After that, each transformer requires a shunt. Therefore, each transformer requires a truck roll plus equipment to get service. And, every time a transformer blows, a new truck roll plus equipment. And, many line splices were good enough for power but not good enough for data, so these had to be found and replaced. All of this required new techs, or extensive training, as the existing techs weren't trained for it. All of this was for fairly short run to the house, and fairly crappy bandwidth. It seemed much more sensible to me to just run fiber along the wires to the house (i.e., to treat the power lines as an easement, not a data pipe), but maybe that's just me. Regards Marshall
-- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Broadband-over-powerlines, like its cousin ethernet-over-domestic wiring, is one of those things that gets discovered every three years, hyped, oohed and aahed over, then disappears. Reason: it's a solution looking for a problem, for the reasons given above. Why not, rather than try to kludge data over high voltage, just borrow the pylons or the cable dig and use proper data networking technology? If the electricity grid is suitable for good BPL, there's probably a reasonable copperline phone network, and anyway the distances are short enough that laying cat5 isn't out of the question. And if you're in the wilds enough that you can't do DSL, then you probably can't do BPL. Something amusing in the fact that power-over-ethernet is a lot more useful than ethernet-over-power!
The system I looked at had fiber along the high voltage lines anyway, to get enough bandwidth to the neighborhood - i.e., fiber to the neighborhood, plus equipment there to put the data onto the copper. After that, each transformer requires a shunt. Therefore, each transformer requires a truck roll plus equipment to get service. ...
My understanding is that in North America, the average number of customers per transformer is about 4, while in Europe it's closer to 200, due both to the higher voltage and the different housing patterns. At 200 potential customers per transformer, it sorta makes sense, give or take the performance and RF issues. At four per transformer it's absurd. As someone else suggested, we might consider the fabulous success of HomePlug, which everyone uses to distribute Ethernet over their home power wiring. Oh, they don't? I wonder why not. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, Todd Vierling wrote:
Critical mass is approaching. There's only so long that North American consumers can be held back from bandwidth-hogging applications and downloads while parts of the world have long since upgraded to 10Mbit/s bidirectional (and beyond) consumer-grade access speeds.
There is the "advertised speed" and then the "*" fine print conditions. Providers in some countries have high advertised speeds, but low usage caps, fair use policies, low actual speeds to different destinations, expensive measured telephone usage charges (i.e. dialup) and various other things which aren't always included in the comparisons. The advertised speeds vary widely around the world in different markets. The actual average consumer speeds are more interesting. Nevertheless, the US is still behind. If many of US consumers were already buying the biggest pipe and were willing to pay even more for even higher speeds; would we be having this discussion? Or is the reality that US consumers are buying lower priced services even when bigger services are available. Several US Providers are very happy to sell 1Gbps and even 10Gbps to anyone in major (i.e. NFL/top 30) cities, but not at $14.95/month. 45Mbps symetrical is readily available from most COs in the US, but again not at $14.95/month. I don't know of any US provider who wants to turn away profitable business. The question is how to make it profitable.
On 3/13/07, Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
If many of US consumers were already buying the biggest pipe and were willing to pay even more for even higher speeds; would we be having this discussion? Or is the reality that US consumers are buying lower priced services even when bigger services are available.
The reality is probably more that
Several US Providers are very happy to sell 1Gbps and even 10Gbps to anyone in major (i.e. NFL/top 30) cities, but not at $14.95/month.
Of course not; I wouldn't expect that. However, there are many markets where even "small business broadband" -- rate-limited at *exactly* the same numbers as consumer services -- are twice the price as consumer services. I happen to live in one, and it's true of both the major ADSL and cable carriers there. A typical "small business" usage profile even puts that price past a typical (bidirectional 95p, not rate-capped) Mbit/s cost of a real fiber connection to a Tier-[123] type carrier. The only remaining difference skewing away from direct connection is the cost of the loop. -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
On 3/13/07, Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com> wrote:
On 3/13/07, Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
If many of US consumers were already buying the biggest pipe and were willing to pay even more for even higher speeds; would we be having this discussion? Or is the reality that US consumers are buying lower priced services even when bigger services are available.
The reality is probably more that
Bah! Botched my own keystrokes there. The reality is probably that the service is available, but the slow motion of *infrastructure* network upgrades (where the CPE might not even need a change in some cases) is holding back the rest of the works. -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>
Todd Vierling wrote:
The reality is probably that the service is available, but the slow motion of *infrastructure* network upgrades (where the CPE might not even need a change in some cases) is holding back the rest of the works.
Network upgrades tend to not be cheap, and I doubt the vendors care to lower their pricing. Coupling voice and data in the same remotes is even more costly, although for some rural telcos has meant finally integrating carrier and providing v90 dialup speeds for those who couldn't get broadband. Add to this the cost of "oops, last years technology isn't good enough, for X amount per system, you can replace it all for this years technology." Of course the worst financial hit that WILL be reflected in DSL speeds, pricing, and QOS is CALEA packet intercepts by far. 98% of my tasks are on hold until May 15th while I redesign and replace equipment across the board. Half the vendors don't even support CALEA directly, and if not for Cisco, I'd be up a creek without a paddle. As it is, everyone I've talked to has pretty much said that they won't be compliant to the letter of the law (though 99% is better than nothing). I just watched a telco just now getting into the broadband business get slapped with CALEA fees. $400-$600/mo may not seem alot (and is cheap even for many of the trusted 3rd parties), but for a startup service that may have 1-10 customers initially, it's a complete loss and will still be a large chunk of profits when the most the area can sustain is 400-1000 subscribers (being generous as the one I'm thinking of only has 1500 phone subscribers). -Jack
Sean Donelan wrote:
Several US Providers are very happy to sell 1Gbps and even 10Gbps to anyone in major (i.e. NFL/top 30) cities, but not at $14.95/month.
Sure, as long as you're willing to fork over the cash for CPE capable of handling OC-XX linecards. The service cost is hardly the only cost associated with buying that kind of bandwidth. It's amusing to me that we're worrying about FTTH when some of the largest carriers are still not capable of delivering ethernet handoffs in some of those same top 30 cities. Don't we need to get there first before we start wiring everyone's home with fiber and a small router with an SFP? Andrew Cruse
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 andrew2@one.net wrote:
we're worrying about FTTH when some of the largest carriers are still not capable of delivering ethernet handoffs in some of those same top 30 cities.
so... 'ethernet handoff' to me is 'just another access media'. I had asked at one point in time about this and part of the answer was: "people aren't asking for it" which I thought odd since probably 50% of the people asking me for 'can you get a sales person to call me about XXX' was 'a fast-e handoff at ...' (or some form of 'ethernet'). Someone, a wise person, told me that some carriers are more interested in selling 'pipe' than access, I think he meant 'sonet pipe' or 'tdm pipe'. I think we'll see FTTX become 'just another access method' as well shortly. Afterall, what's the difference between sonet/fttX/dsX/etherX if you just talk about last-mile access? (surely gear in the lastmile matters here, but if you're rolling it out to 150M locations what's 1% more locations for 'business access'?)
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, andrew2@one.net wrote:
Sure, as long as you're willing to fork over the cash for CPE capable of handling OC-XX linecards. The service cost is hardly the only cost associated with buying that kind of bandwidth. It's amusing to me that we're worrying about FTTH when some of the largest carriers are still not capable of delivering ethernet handoffs in some of those same top 30 cities. Don't we need to get there first before we start wiring everyone's home with fiber and a small router with an SFP?
Bell Atlantic had ethernet access since the early 1990's, along with FDDI, SMDS, ATM, etc, etc, etc and whatever else various government agencies wanted to buy around Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. Now AT&T, Qwest and Verizon have metro ethernet access tariffs in major cities in each of their territories. Ethernet seems to have won for data access especially for 10Gbps and greater. If you've got the money, they've got the ethernet for you. Unfortunately, "I want it" isn't a good business case.
On Mar 13, 2007, at 11:20 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
On Tue, 13 Mar 2007, andrew2@one.net wrote:
Sure, as long as you're willing to fork over the cash for CPE capable of handling OC-XX linecards. The service cost is hardly the only cost associated with buying that kind of bandwidth. It's amusing to me that we're worrying about FTTH when some of the largest carriers are still not capable of delivering ethernet handoffs in some of those same top 30 cities. Don't we need to get there first before we start wiring everyone's home with fiber and a small router with an SFP?
Bell Atlantic had ethernet access since the early 1990's, along with FDDI, SMDS, ATM, etc, etc, etc and whatever else various
NMLI (native mode LAN interconnect or today it'd be called metro e) has actually been available by a variety of LECs around the same time frame.
participants (53)
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