off-topic: historical query concerning the Internet bubble
Apologies for intruding with this question, but I can't think of any group that might have more concrete information relevant to my current research. Enclosed below is an announcement of a paper on technology bubbles. It is based largely on the Internet bubble of a decade ago, and concentrates on the "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" tale. As the paper shows, this myth was perceived in very different ways by different people, and this by itself helps undermine the foundations of much of modern economics and economic policy making. To get a better understanding of the dynamics of that bubble, to assist in the preparation of a book about that incident, I am soliciting information from anyone who was active in telecom during that period. I would particularly like to know what you and your colleagues estimated Internet traffic growth to be, and what your reaction was to the O'Dell/Sidgmore/WorldCom/UUNet myth. If you were involved in the industry, and never heard of it, that would be extremely useful to know, too. Ideally, I would like concrete information, backed up by dates, and possibly even emails, and a permission to quote this information. However, I will settle for more informal comments, and promise confidentiality to anyone who requests it. Andrew Odlyzko odlyzko@umn.edu http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania03.pdf Bubbles, gullibility, and other challenges for economics, psychology, sociology, and information sciences Andrew Odlyzko School of Mathematics and Digital Technology Center University of Minnesota odlyzko@umn.edu http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko Preliminary version, August 5, 2010 ABSTRACT Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a "beautiful illusion" and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility. This paper argues that it should be possible to develop such a measure. Examples demonstrate, contrary to the efficient market dogma, that in some manias, even top-level business and technology leaders do fall prey to collective hallucinations and become irrational in objective terms. During the Internet bubble, for example, large classes of them first became unable to comprehend compound interest, and then lost even the ability to do simple arithmetic, to the point of not being able to distinguish 2 from 10. This phenomenon, together with advances in analysis of social networks and related areas, points to possible ways to develop objective and quantitative tools for measuring gullibility and other aspects of human behavior implicated in bubbles. It cannot be expected to infallibly detect all destructive bubbles, and may trigger false alarms, but it ought to alert observers to periods where collective investment behavior is becoming irrational. The proposed gullibility index might help in developing realistic economic models. It should also assist in illuminating and guiding decision making. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like to be on the mailing list for notifications of future papers on technology bubbles, please send me a note at odlyzko@umn.edu The previous three papers in this series are available at: 1. Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/hallucinations.pdf 2. This time is different: An example of a giant, wildly speculative, and successful investment mania, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 10, issue 1, 2010, article 60 (registration required) http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol10/iss1/art60 preprint available at: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania01.pdf 3. The collapse of the Railway Mania, the development of capital markets, and Robert Lucas Nash, a forgotten pioneer of accounting and financial analysis http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania02.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source materials for the Railway Mania and the Internet bubble are available at the web pages http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/rrsources/ and http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/isources/
Ask on the Internet History list. <http://www.postel.org/internet-history/> Although, as someone active in 2000, I can tell you that traffic did not grow 12.55 times per year (doubling every 100 days), or anything even close to that. -- TTFN, patrick On Aug 5, 2010, at 2:38 PM, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
Apologies for intruding with this question, but I can't think of any group that might have more concrete information relevant to my current research.
Enclosed below is an announcement of a paper on technology bubbles. It is based largely on the Internet bubble of a decade ago, and concentrates on the "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" tale. As the paper shows, this myth was perceived in very different ways by different people, and this by itself helps undermine the foundations of much of modern economics and economic policy making.
To get a better understanding of the dynamics of that bubble, to assist in the preparation of a book about that incident, I am soliciting information from anyone who was active in telecom during that period. I would particularly like to know what you and your colleagues estimated Internet traffic growth to be, and what your reaction was to the O'Dell/Sidgmore/WorldCom/UUNet myth. If you were involved in the industry, and never heard of it, that would be extremely useful to know, too.
Ideally, I would like concrete information, backed up by dates, and possibly even emails, and a permission to quote this information. However, I will settle for more informal comments, and promise confidentiality to anyone who requests it.
Andrew Odlyzko odlyzko@umn.edu
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania03.pdf
Bubbles, gullibility, and other challenges for economics, psychology, sociology, and information sciences
Andrew Odlyzko
School of Mathematics and Digital Technology Center University of Minnesota
odlyzko@umn.edu http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko
Preliminary version, August 5, 2010
ABSTRACT
Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a "beautiful illusion" and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility.
This paper argues that it should be possible to develop such a measure. Examples demonstrate, contrary to the efficient market dogma, that in some manias, even top-level business and technology leaders do fall prey to collective hallucinations and become irrational in objective terms. During the Internet bubble, for example, large classes of them first became unable to comprehend compound interest, and then lost even the ability to do simple arithmetic, to the point of not being able to distinguish 2 from 10. This phenomenon, together with advances in analysis of social networks and related areas, points to possible ways to develop objective and quantitative tools for measuring gullibility and other aspects of human behavior implicated in bubbles. It cannot be expected to infallibly detect all destructive bubbles, and may trigger false alarms, but it ought to alert observers to periods where collective investment behavior is becoming irrational.
The proposed gullibility index might help in developing realistic economic models. It should also assist in illuminating and guiding decision making.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like to be on the mailing list for notifications of future papers on technology bubbles, please send me a note at odlyzko@umn.edu
The previous three papers in this series are available at:
1. Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/hallucinations.pdf
2. This time is different: An example of a giant, wildly speculative, and successful investment mania, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 10, issue 1, 2010, article 60 (registration required)
http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol10/iss1/art60
preprint available at:
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania01.pdf
3. The collapse of the Railway Mania, the development of capital markets, and Robert Lucas Nash, a forgotten pioneer of accounting and financial analysis
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania02.pdf
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source materials for the Railway Mania and the Internet bubble are available at the web pages
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/rrsources/
and
In article <5AC3E79A-392B-4D1B-BFC7-2700942FDC3C@ianai.net>, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> writes
Although, as someone active in 2000, I can tell you that traffic did not grow 12.55 times per year (doubling every 100 days), or anything even close to that.
Keeping it in the family a little, Mike was quoted as saying this - see p2: https://www.linx.net/files/hotlinx/hotlinx-3.pdf Although there were two factors here as far as LINX itself was concerned - growth in members as well as growth in traffic from each individual member. -- Roland Perry
On Aug 6, 2010, at 12:13 PM, Roland Perry wrote:
In article <5AC3E79A-392B-4D1B-BFC7-2700942FDC3C@ianai.net>, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> writes
Although, as someone active in 2000, I can tell you that traffic did not grow 12.55 times per year (doubling every 100 days), or anything even close to that.
Keeping it in the family a little, Mike was quoted as saying this - see p2: https://www.linx.net/files/hotlinx/hotlinx-3.pdf
Although there were two factors here as far as LINX itself was concerned - growth in members as well as growth in traffic from each individual member.
Even ignore the fact this is overestimating growth, it still is not 12.55 times in one year. Or even double in 100 days. -- TTFN, patrick
In article <E3F9273B-A257-4869-BE8A-42AB37AB43B7@ianai.net>, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> writes
Keeping it in the family a little, Mike was quoted as saying this - see p2: https://www.linx.net/files/hotlinx/hotlinx-3.pdf
Although there were two factors here as far as LINX itself was concerned - growth in members as well as growth in traffic from each individual member.
Even ignore the fact this is overestimating growth, it still is not 12.55 times in one year. Or even double in 100 days.
I wasn't suggesting LINX traffic was doubling every 100 days (it was tripling annually), simply pointing out that in 2001 Mike said that "a good rule of thumb during the late 1990's was that traffic doubled every 100 days", and going into print with that shows it was an accepted meme at the time. -- Roland Perry
I wasn't suggesting LINX traffic was doubling every 100 days (it was tripling annually), simply pointing out that in 2001 Mike said that "a good rule of thumb during the late 1990's was that traffic doubled every 100 days", and going into print with that shows it was an accepted meme at the time.
actually, my altzheimer's device says that it is a meme today that mo said that then. my memory is that he said doubling every nine months. randy
Fascinating. Memories may be plastic (something that has been established scientifically), or else we may have yet another inconsistency to add to the pile of others. Is there any documentation about the "doubling every nine months"? I have never seen that particular claim emanating from anyone involved with WorldCom/UUNet. On the other hand, existing record shows (among others): 1. U.S. Department of Commerce white paper from April 1998, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ecommerce/EDEreprt.pdf on p. 8 declares that "UUNET, one of the largest Internet backbone providers, estimates that Internet traffic doubles every 100 days," with a reference to an Inktomi white paper that attributes this claim to Mike O'Dell. The Inktomi report is no longer on the Web, but I can provide a copy to anyone interested. 2. The transcript of the May 2000 presentation by O'Dell at a Stanford conference clearly has him saying that the capacity of the UUNet network, as measured by OC12-miles, doubles every four months, http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/isources/odell-transcript.txt As is explained in my paper, in the 1998-2000 time frame, essentially all the WorldCom/UUNet claims then seemed to be about capacity, not traffic. 3. The year-end 2000 email from O'Dell to Dave Farber's IP list, http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200011/msg0005... has him talking of traffic doubling each year, while capacity grows 8-fold. If some time in that period there was a claim of a "doubling every nine months," too, that would be very interesting. Andrew Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:
my memory is that he said doubling every nine months. Mine too.
mo's too. i asked.
randy
One thing I have heard repeated about one large carrier is that only 10% of their network is used for their Internet product. The remainder of it is used for private leased lines (could also be someone running IP) or another carrier that is leasing a loop or tdm service from them. Jared Mauch On Aug 8, 2010, at 9:30 AM, odlyzko@umn.edu (Andrew Odlyzko) wrote:
Fascinating. Memories may be plastic (something that has been established scientifically), or else we may have yet another inconsistency to add to the pile of others. Is there any documentation about the "doubling every nine months"? I have never seen that particular claim emanating from anyone involved with WorldCom/UUNet.
On the other hand, existing record shows (among others):
1. U.S. Department of Commerce white paper from April 1998,
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ecommerce/EDEreprt.pdf
on p. 8 declares that "UUNET, one of the largest Internet backbone providers, estimates that Internet traffic doubles every 100 days," with a reference to an Inktomi white paper that attributes this claim to Mike O'Dell. The Inktomi report is no longer on the Web, but I can provide a copy to anyone interested.
2. The transcript of the May 2000 presentation by O'Dell at a Stanford conference clearly has him saying that the capacity of the UUNet network, as measured by OC12-miles, doubles every four months,
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/isources/odell-transcript.txt
As is explained in my paper, in the 1998-2000 time frame, essentially all the WorldCom/UUNet claims then seemed to be about capacity, not traffic.
3. The year-end 2000 email from O'Dell to Dave Farber's IP list,
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200011/msg0005...
has him talking of traffic doubling each year, while capacity grows 8-fold.
If some time in that period there was a claim of a "doubling every nine months," too, that would be very interesting.
Andrew
Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:
my memory is that he said doubling every nine months. Mine too.
mo's too. i asked.
randy
In article <m2bp9d2t16.wl%randy@psg.com>, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> writes
my memory is that he said doubling every nine months. Mine too.
mo's too. i asked.
This isn't just my recollection of what Mike said in 2001, the news item I quoted was printed in 2001. So even if it's a mistaken memory (of the late 90's), it was a mistaken memory captured in 2001. I mentioned it simply as a fairly contemporary reference to the meme. Having said that, doubling every 9 months was approximately the growth that LINX was seeing at the time. -- Roland Perry
while most of us seem to remember traffic doubling every nine months or a year (and some have memories of that being the meme then) [0], capacity build was massively above that level. think of the compound rate one gets when one substitutes owned wet glass for a few leased stm-1s. to quote a friend if a network's capacity grows O(10**6) in 6 years, measured in miles*gigabits/sec, how would you describe it? randy -- [0] - we're seeing about 50% broadband growth a year in japan according to thems that track, see Kenjiro Cho. "Broadband Traffic Report" Internet Infrastructure Review vol.4, pp18-23. August 2009.
On 7 Aug 2010, at 18:09, Roland Perry didn't exactly write:
'a good rule of thumb during the late 1990's was that traffic doubled every 100 days'
This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. To the original poster, there is another collection of memes (some might even/one day be true) on the 'Future of the Internet' lecture series, on Stanford's 'iTunes U' area - lecture 3 is on Internet Economics and touches on the history of this (mis?)-quote ? Best wishes Andy
On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Andrew Odlyzko <odlyzko@umn.edu> wrote:
To get a better understanding of the dynamics of that bubble, to assist in the preparation of a book about that incident, I am soliciting information from anyone who was active in telecom during that period.
We saw that or better growth at Flying Crocodile (aka sextracker.com) during that period. I don't have access to the stats anymore (if they even exist) but in two years we went from 1Mb/s to over 1Gb/s in outbound traffic. This was 1998 to 2000ish. It was "fun" to try to keep enough pipe and cards in the GSR12000s even being in the Westin. Joe Hamelin, W7COM, Tulalip, WA, 360-474-7474
On Thu, Aug 05, 2010 at 01:38:38PM -0500, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
Apologies for intruding with this question, but I can't think of any group that might have more concrete information relevant to my current research.
Enclosed below is an announcement of a paper on technology bubbles. It is based largely on the Internet bubble of a decade ago, and concentrates on the "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" tale. As the paper shows, this myth was perceived in very different ways by different people, and this by itself helps undermine the foundations of much of modern economics and economic policy making.
To get a better understanding of the dynamics of that bubble, to assist in the preparation of a book about that incident, I am soliciting information from anyone who was active in telecom during that period. I would particularly like to know what you and your colleagues estimated Internet traffic growth to be, and what your reaction was to the O'Dell/Sidgmore/WorldCom/UUNet myth. If you were involved in the industry, and never heard of it, that would be extremely useful to know, too.
Ideally, I would like concrete information, backed up by dates, and possibly even emails, and a permission to quote this information. However, I will settle for more informal comments, and promise confidentiality to anyone who requests it.
The doubling rate from various parts of the tier 1 world I've seen since mid 90s until now has been pretty consistent. It's been ranging around 9-14 months or so with the shorter end of the doubling number coming mostly during the 1996-2000 years, modulo specific fortunes of the tier 1 in question. Was Mike O'Dell's famous doubling every 100 days just a myth? Like any good tale, there most likely was an element of truth behind it. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a 6-12 month span during 96-98 when the Internet traffic as a whole did grow by ~10x especially as backbones made the painful and much delayed leap past DS3 and the back pressure was finally relieved. The problem is, the relevant data are spread out all over and probably not obtainable. I seem to remember thinking that those numbers seemed a bit high, but mostly shrugging at it at the time I heard Mike and other UUNet folks say it since it wasn't off by more than an order of magnitude and back then we tended to ignore things that were that close, and UUNet was well known for their "forward looking statements" anyway. Btw, just so we can at least put some real world scale to these traffic doubling rates tales, a non-descript tier 1 network that's not particularly any more or less successful than others have had an average doubling rate of roughly 13.1 months from 2000 to 2010 for their transpacific traffic. -dorian
As you may recall (because you have been part of it) the 1995-2000 was a period of major consolidation in the ISP industry, metrics were hard to obtain and the ones available were hard to believe. Due to the consolidation of many small networks from various ISPs (I remember that in my former life we engulfed several of the surviving post NSFNet regionals), almost all the big pipes of those ISPs were up to the choking point, then when the time came to move all those pipes to a better backbone and exchange points, and in the process make them bigger, traffic started to increase dramatically, accompanied as well by a decrease in packet loss and delays. The consolidation also helped to move mom & pop configuration of stacked us robitics modems to much modern, efficient and reliable aggregation technologies and architectures on the access side, add ISDN, DSL, cable, etc. Not sure how to include it as a variable, but at least in the US the Telecom Act of 1996 also changed the playing field, CLECs and other new telecom companies were born. On top of that, in that period there was also a big increase in international capacity, some connections (particularly south and central america) were switching from satellite to fiber, many developing countries (some of them were just coming out of highly monopolized and regulated telecom services) were able to have access to better international connections, plus all the traffic growth driven from the application side, plus the contribution of dramatic growth in shared and dedicated hosting services. I don't recall or have at hand at this time the exact figure, but I'd agree with you that at some time it looked like a ~10x thing whit some spurts of much higher growth. Cheers Jorge
On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Dorian Kim <dorian@blackrose.org> wrote:
Was Mike O'Dell's famous doubling every 100 days just a myth? Like any good tale, there most likely was an element of truth behind it.
I think, from another list about 2 yrs ago, the person responsible for this data inside the company at the time (now not there) said someone misinterpreted his stats/numbers... -chris
On 09/08/2010 16:12, Christopher Morrow wrote:
I think, from another list about 2 yrs ago, the person responsible for this data inside the company at the time (now not there) said someone misinterpreted his stats/numbers...
No doubt this is true. And I note we haven't even started discussing whether this "doubling every N time periods" refers to bit-rate, bytes passed or daily max. I would have said that most networks during that period had occasional burst growth rates of up to 100% within 100 days. The growth curve second derivative is usually much bumpier than the first derivative. So, regardless of source, the quotation is a truism, an urban myth and ultimately means very little. Nick
In article <4C6030BF.1030306@foobar.org>, Nick Hilliard <nick@foobar.org> writes
On 09/08/2010 16:12, Christopher Morrow wrote:
I think, from another list about 2 yrs ago, the person responsible for this data inside the company at the time (now not there) said someone misinterpreted his stats/numbers...
No doubt this is true. And I note we haven't even started discussing whether this "doubling every N time periods" refers to bit-rate, bytes passed or daily max.
In the case of LINX traffic it was bits-per-second; any of: average, peak or total per day, because the shape of the daily and weekly curve didn't change much even over a period of years.
I would have said that most networks during that period had occasional burst growth rates of up to 100% within 100 days. The growth curve second derivative is usually much bumpier than the first derivative. So, regardless of source, the quotation is a truism, an urban myth and ultimately means very little.
Growth at LINX was extremely steady (being an aggregate of over a hundred operators). -- Roland Perry
BTW, in the context of Andrew's paper (very interesting indeed) I believe that one of the issues is that many executives took that "spurt growth" I was referring to in my previous message, as organic growth and used it to make unrealistic projections which in turn led to unrealistic valuations, and so on. In some cases we "wasted" tons of money over building capacity, particularly during the datacenter frenzy, later to find that we had a lot of empty hi-tech real state. I like how you characterized the investment waste in your paper. Regards Jorge
Jorge, Many thanks for the comments. To the entire NANOG list: I have received many comments, a few through the list, most off-list. I greatly appreciate all, and will be responding to them all off-list, since this is not an operational matter. If there is interest, I can summarize for the list in a few days. In the meantime, please keep sending in more data! Best regards, Andrew On Fri, 6 Aug 2010, Jorge Amodio wrote:
BTW, in the context of Andrew's paper (very interesting indeed) I believe that one of the issues is that many executives took that "spurt growth" I was referring to in my previous message, as organic growth and used it to make unrealistic projections which in turn led to unrealistic valuations, and so on.
In some cases we "wasted" tons of money over building capacity, particularly during the datacenter frenzy, later to find that we had a lot of empty hi-tech real state.
I like how you characterized the investment waste in your paper.
Regards Jorge
I have a concern that your posting and your paper mix UUNet traffic with the Internet traffic. I personally was very much involved in the ISP world (was working for Tier1 ISPs) during the period and I’d like to point out the following: UUNet’s (or any other individual network’s) traffic does NOT equal to the Internet traffic, even at that time! I was working at ANSnet and later UUnet due to a three party acquisition deal between AOL, WorldCom and CompuServe during that time period. I did hear presentations about network traffic being doubling every 100 days by O’Dell but my understanding was that he was referring to UUnet’s traffic not the Internet traffic. At the time, the Tier 1 ISPs included UUNet, MCI Network, Sprint Network, ANSnet, etc. Each ISP could only collect network traffic stats on its own backbone and there was no one entity could collect the entire Internet traffic. For this reason, the prediction by O’Dell could only be based on UUNet’s traffic stats. I really doubt that O’Dell would say the Internet traffic doubling every 100 days rather than saying that of UUNet’s traffic. I’d encourage you to do some research to find out if he was really referring to the Internet traffic or just UUNet traffic. The reference listed by your paper showed that he was saying ‘network traffic’ not ‘Internet traffic.’ I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica ________________________________ From: Andrew Odlyzko <odlyzko@umn.edu> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Thu, August 5, 2010 11:38:38 AM Subject: off-topic: historical query concerning the Internet bubble Apologies for intruding with this question, but I can't think of any group that might have more concrete information relevant to my current research. Enclosed below is an announcement of a paper on technology bubbles. It is based largely on the Internet bubble of a decade ago, and concentrates on the "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" tale. As the paper shows, this myth was perceived in very different ways by different people, and this by itself helps undermine the foundations of much of modern economics and economic policy making. To get a better understanding of the dynamics of that bubble, to assist in the preparation of a book about that incident, I am soliciting information from anyone who was active in telecom during that period. I would particularly like to know what you and your colleagues estimated Internet traffic growth to be, and what your reaction was to the O'Dell/Sidgmore/WorldCom/UUNet myth. If you were involved in the industry, and never heard of it, that would be extremely useful to know, too. Ideally, I would like concrete information, backed up by dates, and possibly even emails, and a permission to quote this information. However, I will settle for more informal comments, and promise confidentiality to anyone who requests it. Andrew Odlyzko odlyzko@umn.edu http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania03.pdf Bubbles, gullibility, and other challenges for economics, psychology, sociology, and information sciences Andrew Odlyzko School of Mathematics and Digital Technology Center University of Minnesota odlyzko@umn.edu http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko Preliminary version, August 5, 2010 ABSTRACT Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a "beautiful illusion" and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility. This paper argues that it should be possible to develop such a measure. Examples demonstrate, contrary to the efficient market dogma, that in some manias, even top-level business and technology leaders do fall prey to collective hallucinations and become irrational in objective terms. During the Internet bubble, for example, large classes of them first became unable to comprehend compound interest, and then lost even the ability to do simple arithmetic, to the point of not being able to distinguish 2 from 10. This phenomenon, together with advances in analysis of social networks and related areas, points to possible ways to develop objective and quantitative tools for measuring gullibility and other aspects of human behavior implicated in bubbles. It cannot be expected to infallibly detect all destructive bubbles, and may trigger false alarms, but it ought to alert observers to periods where collective investment behavior is becoming irrational. The proposed gullibility index might help in developing realistic economic models. It should also assist in illuminating and guiding decision making. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like to be on the mailing list for notifications of future papers on technology bubbles, please send me a note at odlyzko@umn.edu The previous three papers in this series are available at: 1. Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/hallucinations.pdf 2. This time is different: An example of a giant, wildly speculative, and successful investment mania, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 10, issue 1, 2010, article 60 (registration required) http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol10/iss1/art60 preprint available at: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania01.pdf 3. The collapse of the Railway Mania, the development of capital markets, and Robert Lucas Nash, a forgotten pioneer of accounting and financial analysis http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania02.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source materials for the Railway Mania and the Internet bubble are available at the web pages http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/rrsources/ and http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/isources/
To entire list: I have received several requests to post a summary of the comments that are flowing in, so I will do so in a couple of days, say by Tuesday of next week, to allow for vacations, ... In the meantime, I encourage further contributions. To Jessica: If my posting or my paper mix UUNet traffic with that of the entire Internet, I apologize for not being clear enough. O'Dell and Sidgmore always, as far as I know (although I only have a transcript of the O'Dell presentation at Stanford in May 2000, http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/isources/odell-transcript.txt) spoke just about UUNet capacity. However, the myth was that the traffic on the Internet as a whole was "doubling every 100 days." The puzzle of how people could confuse traffic and capacity is considered in some detail in Section 5 of the paper. From the O'Dell presentation it is possible to guess that the intended implication was that UUNet was growing much faster than the rest of the Internet, but in any case I have not seen any references where either O'Dell or In the presentations that you heard by O'Dell (was that internal to WorldCom, and if so when), are you sure he was talking of traffic, and not capacity? It makes a difference in evaluting his claims. Which of my references has O'Dell saying ‘network traffic’? I cannot find it. The only similar quote I can find is in Section 5, where Joe Cook of WorldCom is talking of ‘network traffic,' but there it is clear it is just WorldCom traffic he has in mind. Andrew Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote:
I have a concern that your posting and your paper mix UUNet traffic with the Internet traffic. I personally was very much involved in the ISP world (was working for Tier1 ISPs) during the period and I’d like to point out the following: UUNet’s (or any other individual network’s) traffic does NOT equal to the Internet traffic, even at that time! I was working at ANSnet and later UUnet due to a three party acquisition deal between AOL, WorldCom and CompuServe during that time period. I did hear presentations about network traffic being doubling every 100 days by O’Dell but my understanding was that he was referring to UUnet’s traffic not the Internet traffic.
At the time, the Tier 1 ISPs included UUNet, MCI Network, Sprint Network, ANSnet, etc. Each ISP could only collect network traffic stats on its own backbone and there was no one entity could collect the entire Internet traffic. For this reason, the prediction by O’Dell could only be based on UUNet’s traffic stats. I really doubt that O’Dell would say the Internet traffic doubling every 100 days rather than saying that of UUNet’s traffic. I’d encourage you to do some research to find out if he was really referring to the Internet traffic or just UUNet traffic. The reference listed by your paper showed that he was saying ‘network traffic’ not ‘Internet traffic.’
I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica
________________________________ From: Andrew Odlyzko <odlyzko@umn.edu> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Thu, August 5, 2010 11:38:38 AM Subject: off-topic: historical query concerning the Internet bubble
Apologies for intruding with this question, but I can't think of any group that might have more concrete information relevant to my current research.
Enclosed below is an announcement of a paper on technology bubbles. It is based largely on the Internet bubble of a decade ago, and concentrates on the "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" tale. As the paper shows, this myth was perceived in very different ways by different people, and this by itself helps undermine the foundations of much of modern economics and economic policy making.
To get a better understanding of the dynamics of that bubble, to assist in the preparation of a book about that incident, I am soliciting information from anyone who was active in telecom during that period. I would particularly like to know what you and your colleagues estimated Internet traffic growth to be, and what your reaction was to the O'Dell/Sidgmore/WorldCom/UUNet myth. If you were involved in the industry, and never heard of it, that would be extremely useful to know, too.
Ideally, I would like concrete information, backed up by dates, and possibly even emails, and a permission to quote this information. However, I will settle for more informal comments, and promise confidentiality to anyone who requests it.
Andrew Odlyzko odlyzko@umn.edu
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania03.pdf
Bubbles, gullibility, and other challenges for economics, psychology, sociology, and information sciences
Andrew Odlyzko
School of Mathematics and Digital Technology Center University of Minnesota
odlyzko@umn.edu http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko
Preliminary version, August 5, 2010
ABSTRACT
Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a "beautiful illusion" and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility.
This paper argues that it should be possible to develop such a measure. Examples demonstrate, contrary to the efficient market dogma, that in some manias, even top-level business and technology leaders do fall prey to collective hallucinations and become irrational in objective terms. During the Internet bubble, for example, large classes of them first became unable to comprehend compound interest, and then lost even the ability to do simple arithmetic, to the point of not being able to distinguish 2 from 10. This phenomenon, together with advances in analysis of social networks and related areas, points to possible ways to develop objective and quantitative tools for measuring gullibility and other aspects of human behavior implicated in bubbles. It cannot be expected to infallibly detect all destructive bubbles, and may trigger false alarms, but it ought to alert observers to periods where collective investment behavior is becoming irrational.
The proposed gullibility index might help in developing realistic economic models. It should also assist in illuminating and guiding decision making.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like to be on the mailing list for notifications of future papers on technology bubbles, please send me a note at odlyzko@umn.edu
The previous three papers in this series are available at:
1. Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/hallucinations.pdf
2. This time is different: An example of a giant, wildly speculative, and successful investment mania, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 10, issue 1, 2010, article 60 (registration required)
http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol10/iss1/art60
preprint available at:
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania01.pdf
3. The collapse of the Railway Mania, the development of capital markets, and Robert Lucas Nash, a forgotten pioneer of accounting and financial analysis
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania02.pdf
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source materials for the Railway Mania and the Internet bubble are available at the web pages
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/rrsources/
and
Andrew, don't know if you want to research a little bit about this topic and add something to your paper but IMHO there is another Internet related bubble that keeps growing and may end exploding someday. The governance, speculation and commercialization of the Domain Name System. If you are interested I can give you some pointers off-list. Regards Jorge
They were private peering stats (aggregated) from UUNET which show 3.5 x for roughly two years, right before the MPLS conference in GMU. The stats included 15% or whatever% ATM cell tax. ANS was not included;-) There was also another dimension. In addition to the vertical growth. The backbone also expanded horizontally (coverage/millage), in a very rapid pace. I guess this was the reason some said the growth rate was double digits. I'm not sure simplify the math can explain the complexity of the network growth. Of cause, this is another topic. Min On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 5:52 PM, Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote:
I have a concern that your posting and your paper mix UUNet traffic with the Internet traffic. I personally was very much involved in the ISP world (was working for Tier1 ISPs) during the period and I’d like to point out the following: UUNet’s (or any other individual network’s) traffic does NOT equal to the Internet traffic, even at that time! I was working at ANSnet and later UUnet due to a three party acquisition deal between AOL, WorldCom and CompuServe during that time period. I did hear presentations about network traffic being doubling every 100 days by O’Dell but my understanding was that he was referring to UUnet’s traffic not the Internet traffic.
At the time, the Tier 1 ISPs included UUNet, MCI Network, Sprint Network, ANSnet, etc. Each ISP could only collect network traffic stats on its own backbone and there was no one entity could collect the entire Internet traffic. For this reason, the prediction by O’Dell could only be based on UUNet’s traffic stats. I really doubt that O’Dell would say the Internet traffic doubling every 100 days rather than saying that of UUNet’s traffic. I’d encourage you to do some research to find out if he was really referring to the Internet traffic or just UUNet traffic. The reference listed by your paper showed that he was saying ‘network traffic’ not ‘Internet traffic.’
I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica
________________________________ From: Andrew Odlyzko <odlyzko@umn.edu> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Thu, August 5, 2010 11:38:38 AM Subject: off-topic: historical query concerning the Internet bubble
Apologies for intruding with this question, but I can't think of any group that might have more concrete information relevant to my current research.
Enclosed below is an announcement of a paper on technology bubbles. It is based largely on the Internet bubble of a decade ago, and concentrates on the "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" tale. As the paper shows, this myth was perceived in very different ways by different people, and this by itself helps undermine the foundations of much of modern economics and economic policy making.
To get a better understanding of the dynamics of that bubble, to assist in the preparation of a book about that incident, I am soliciting information from anyone who was active in telecom during that period. I would particularly like to know what you and your colleagues estimated Internet traffic growth to be, and what your reaction was to the O'Dell/Sidgmore/WorldCom/UUNet myth. If you were involved in the industry, and never heard of it, that would be extremely useful to know, too.
Ideally, I would like concrete information, backed up by dates, and possibly even emails, and a permission to quote this information. However, I will settle for more informal comments, and promise confidentiality to anyone who requests it.
Andrew Odlyzko odlyzko@umn.edu
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania03.pdf<http://www.dtc.umn.edu/%7Eodlyzko/doc/mania03.pdf>
Bubbles, gullibility, and other challenges for economics, psychology, sociology, and information sciences
Andrew Odlyzko
School of Mathematics and Digital Technology Center University of Minnesota
odlyzko@umn.edu http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko<http://www.dtc.umn.edu/%7Eodlyzko>
Preliminary version, August 5, 2010
ABSTRACT
Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a "beautiful illusion" and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility.
This paper argues that it should be possible to develop such a measure. Examples demonstrate, contrary to the efficient market dogma, that in some manias, even top-level business and technology leaders do fall prey to collective hallucinations and become irrational in objective terms. During the Internet bubble, for example, large classes of them first became unable to comprehend compound interest, and then lost even the ability to do simple arithmetic, to the point of not being able to distinguish 2 from 10. This phenomenon, together with advances in analysis of social networks and related areas, points to possible ways to develop objective and quantitative tools for measuring gullibility and other aspects of human behavior implicated in bubbles. It cannot be expected to infallibly detect all destructive bubbles, and may trigger false alarms, but it ought to alert observers to periods where collective investment behavior is becoming irrational.
The proposed gullibility index might help in developing realistic economic models. It should also assist in illuminating and guiding decision making.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like to be on the mailing list for notifications of future papers on technology bubbles, please send me a note at odlyzko@umn.edu
The previous three papers in this series are available at:
1. Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s
2. This time is different: An example of a giant, wildly speculative, and successful investment mania, B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 10, issue 1, 2010, article 60 (registration required)
http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol10/iss1/art60
preprint available at:
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania01.pdf<http://www.dtc.umn.edu/%7Eodlyzko/doc/mania01.pdf>
3. The collapse of the Railway Mania, the development of capital markets, and Robert Lucas Nash, a forgotten pioneer of accounting and financial analysis
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania02.pdf<http://www.dtc.umn.edu/%7Eodlyzko/doc/mania02.pdf>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source materials for the Railway Mania and the Internet bubble are available at the web pages
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/rrsources/<http://www.dtc.umn.edu/%7Eodlyzko/rrsources/>
and
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/isources/<http://www.dtc.umn.edu/%7Eodlyzko/isources/>
On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote:
I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica
Agree with Jessica: you can't say the 'Internet' doubles every x number of days/amount of time no matter what the number of days or amount of time is. The 'Internet' is a series of tubes...hahaha couldn't help it....As we all know the Internet is a bunch of providers plugged into each other. Provider A may see an 10x increase in traffic every month while provider B may not. For example, if Google makes a deal with Verizon only Verizon will see a huge increase in traffic internally and less externally (or vice versa). Until Google goes somewhere else! So the whole 'myth' of Internet doubling every 100 days to me is something someone (ODell it seems) made up to appease someone higher in the chain or a government committee that really doesn't get it. IE - it's marketing talk to quantify something. I guess if all the ISP's in the world provided a central repository bandwidth numbers they have on their backbone then you could make up some stats about Internet traffic as a whole. But without that - it just doesn't make much sense. Just my .02 Kenny
In article <AANLkTi=MsYAfA5EttFjpo71Bq1fUB+RSyBRgD4HEeHca@mail.gmail.com>, Kenny Sallee <kenny.sallee@gmail.com> writes
So the whole 'myth' of Internet doubling every 100 days to me is something someone (ODell it seems) made up to appease someone higher in the chain or a government committee that really doesn't get it.
[Whether it was really 100 days, or 200 days...] a statistic like this has very real operational significance, because it sets expectations in the minds of senior management and investors that the new shiny hardware (or leased line, or peering agreement...) you just put in place isn't going to last "a lifetime", and will need replacing/upgrading really quite soon. Another meme at the time (at least in the UK) was the idea of "Internet Time", where things happened four times as fast as "real life". So you'd realise that things like a "five year plan" were really only going to last just over a year. And, of course, policy and law related to the Internet gets out of date four times as fast, too. -- Roland Perry
Roland Perry wrote:
Kenny Sallee writes
So the whole 'myth' of Internet doubling every 100 days to me is something someone (ODell it seems) made up to appease someone higher in the chain or a government committee that really doesn't get it.
[Whether it was really 100 days, or 200 days...] a statistic like this has very real operational significance, because it sets expectations in the minds of senior management and investors that the new shiny hardware (or leased line, or peering agreement...) you just put in place isn't going to last "a lifetime", and will need replacing/upgrading really quite soon.
Part of this rapid hardware replacement cycle almost certainly had to do with the rapid growth in CPU capabilities in comparison to software. New classes of applications and capabilities were opening up just as fast as CPUs would allow. Many network appliances use embedded processors based on the same chips used in desktops or laptops of similar vintage. They run custom software and may have additional dedicated chips. Thus the development of the FrankenPix and custom Linksys wireless router firmwares. Today even a 3(+) year old machine can do a fine job running office tasks (given enough RAM), whereas in the late 90s/early 00s, a three year old PC was not likely to be able to run the then current software very well. Today CPUs have progressed so far ahead of most software that we're able to combine multiple systems into one through virtualization and still obtain good performance. Tasks formerly given to dedicated chips (RAID, sampling rate conversions, compression) are now commonly done on CPUs and GPUs. I also recall articles/webpages/blog-precursors talking about how many packets a particular CPU could route per second. The articles might have been in relation to building custom Linux based routers and router hybrids (such as router-bridges, adding QoS, etc.) I feel that recently many changes in information technology have become less revolutionary and more evolutionary as we look for the reasons to build newer/faster/stronger/better equipment. The rise of netbooks as low CPU/GPU power machines underlines the evolutionary changes. The next series of revolutionary changes are still waiting in the wings (compact/portable devices, realtime 3D, gaming, scientific, and rendering applications are still pushing the envelope).
Another meme at the time (at least in the UK) was the idea of "Internet Time", where things happened four times as fast as "real life". So you'd realise that things like a "five year plan" were really only going to last just over a year. And, of course, policy and law related to the Internet gets out of date four times as fast, too.
I know organizations where equipment refresh/purchase cycles have been stretched from 3 years in the early 2000s to 5 years now, as they've observed both a slowing in need for the latest and greatest, as well as this being a response to budget pressures. Replacement periods are becoming less based on technological obsolescence than on equipment failures and end of warranties.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 At the time these statements were made it was possible to make reasonable assumptions about the size of the Internet. As a Tier 1 knew how much traffic our customer links generated by the size of the link. We knew exactly how much traffic stayed within our backbones and how much traffic ended up in a peering arrangement. We knew with some precision just how much of the Tier 2 ISP market was connected to us and how much was connected to others, and who the others were. I don't think the theory still holds but traffic on-net versus off-net was a pretty good indication of market share. Today's Internet handles much more traffic in-region and is bounded by phenomenon such as language barrier (although the amount of spam I get in Chinese characters has increased recently, who let the barrier down?). This phenomenon wasn't as prominent in '98-'01 and while I wouldn't say it's impossible I think you'd have to commission the folks at UCSD to get anything that resembled a value for total Internet capacity today. Doubling in 9-12 months was a reasonable figure back then. 100 days might have been a short-term spike caused by a back-log of activations (we sometimes stopped the machine while we made upgrades) but it certainly was an anomaly. jy On 10/08/2010, at 9:01 AM, Kenny Sallee wrote:
On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote:
I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica
Agree with Jessica: you can't say the 'Internet' doubles every x number of days/amount of time no matter what the number of days or amount of time is. The 'Internet' is a series of tubes...hahaha couldn't help it....As we all know the Internet is a bunch of providers plugged into each other. Provider A may see an 10x increase in traffic every month while provider B may not. For example, if Google makes a deal with Verizon only Verizon will see a huge increase in traffic internally and less externally (or vice versa). Until Google goes somewhere else! So the whole 'myth' of Internet doubling every 100 days to me is something someone (ODell it seems) made up to appease someone higher in the chain or a government committee that really doesn't get it. IE - it's marketing talk to quantify something. I guess if all the ISP's in the world provided a central repository bandwidth numbers they have on their backbone then you could make up some stats about Internet traffic as a whole. But without that - it just doesn't make much sense.
Just my .02 Kenny
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin) iF4EAREIAAYFAkxh4LUACgkQxvthcni5E2+7AwD+Lx+Dm14XTn/qZpy2co3CrcI1 dzA9QycoM2VmMBjmfxwA/1LD7gqI3zd80VozkHMDbDIREDPxKBPPtMlb+7Tu/nPV =wt/O -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
A comment from Jeremy Orbell at LINX: -- The period of growth being discussed predates my own involvement in the industry as I didn't join LINX until 2003. However I do know that LINX regularly announced new traffic milestones at the exchange as they happened back in the late 90s. I've looked back through our archive of press releases and noted a few of these so you will get an idea of how peak traffic was increasing at LINX at that time. 27 April 1998 - 200 Mbps 24 August 1999 - 850 Mbps 17 September 1999 - 1 Gbps 5 November 1999 - 1.25 Gbps 13 December 1999 - 1.5 Gbps 27 March 2000 - 2 Gbps 11 January 2001 - 5 Gbps Unfortunately I cannot post links the original material as it isn't available online at the moment but in the LINX 15th anniversary issue of HotLINX last year we reprinted a copy of a LINX press release from 17th September 1999 which said: "The London Internet Exchange is pleased to announce it has this week reached traffic levels of one Gigabit, positioning it clearly as one of the top 5 Internet Exchanges in the world. This shows a 455% increase in traffic from the level of 180 Mbps one year ago." Looking at that 180 Mbps number it looks like it might refer to a Spring 1998 figure rather than September 1998 because I did find a reference to a peak of 200 Mbps being achieved in April of that year. The discrepency could perhaps be explained by other means such as averages but like I say, it was before my time. Anyway, the full press release which I quoted from can be read on page 3 of the following PDF:https://www.linx.net/files/hotlinx/hotlinx-20.pdf I hope this will be of hope to you. Jeremy Orbell LINX Marketing & Communications On Aug 10, 2010, at 4:28 PM, Jeff Young wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
At the time these statements were made it was possible to make reasonable assumptions about the size of the Internet. As a Tier 1 knew how much traffic our customer links generated by the size of the link. We knew exactly how much traffic stayed within our backbones and how much traffic ended up in a peering arrangement. We knew with some precision just how much of the Tier 2 ISP market was connected to us and how much was connected to others, and who the others were. I don't think the theory still holds but traffic on-net versus off-net was a pretty good indication of market share.
Today's Internet handles much more traffic in-region and is bounded by phenomenon such as language barrier (although the amount of spam I get in Chinese characters has increased recently, who let the barrier down?). This phenomenon wasn't as prominent in '98-'01 and while I wouldn't say it's impossible I think you'd have to commission the folks at UCSD to get anything that resembled a value for total Internet capacity today.
Doubling in 9-12 months was a reasonable figure back then. 100 days might have been a short-term spike caused by a back-log of activations (we sometimes stopped the machine while we made upgrades) but it certainly was an anomaly.
jy
On 10/08/2010, at 9:01 AM, Kenny Sallee wrote:
On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote:
I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica
Agree with Jessica: you can't say the 'Internet' doubles every x number of days/amount of time no matter what the number of days or amount of time is. The 'Internet' is a series of tubes...hahaha couldn't help it....As we all know the Internet is a bunch of providers plugged into each other. Provider A may see an 10x increase in traffic every month while provider B may not. For example, if Google makes a deal with Verizon only Verizon will see a huge increase in traffic internally and less externally (or vice versa). Until Google goes somewhere else! So the whole 'myth' of Internet doubling every 100 days to me is something someone (ODell it seems) made up to appease someone higher in the chain or a government committee that really doesn't get it. IE - it's marketing talk to quantify something. I guess if all the ISP's in the world provided a central repository bandwidth numbers they have on their backbone then you could make up some stats about Internet traffic as a whole. But without that - it just doesn't make much sense.
Just my .02 Kenny
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.14 (Darwin)
iF4EAREIAAYFAkxh4LUACgkQxvthcni5E2+7AwD+Lx+Dm14XTn/qZpy2co3CrcI1 dzA9QycoM2VmMBjmfxwA/1LD7gqI3zd80VozkHMDbDIREDPxKBPPtMlb+7Tu/nPV =wt/O -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
In article <621C1B2C-F7E3-438F-9DDD-D5DC41979922@gmail.com>, kris foster <kris.foster@gmail.com> quotes Jeremy Orbell
Anyway, the full press release which I quoted from can be read on page 3 of the following PDF:https://www.linx.net/files/hotlinx/hotlinx-20.pdf
And on page 2 there's the "Internet Time x4" meme, which was indeed in its heyday in 2001. -- Roland Perry
Wait a sec, you seems to assume that the 'Doubling every 100 days" statement was referring to the Internet traffic not just UUNet traffic. My recollection was that the statement was referring to UUNet traffic based on the stats collected in a period of time (see my previous email). That is why I urged the author of the paper to make this important distinction. If one made a prediction based on stats collected and the prediction was not accurate due to the imperfection of stats (in this case, it may be caused by a short term growth abnormally, as Jeff Young pointed out), it is unfair to assume the person misled public on purpose. Thanks! --Jessica ________________________________ From: Kenny Sallee <kenny.sallee@gmail.com> To: Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com>; Andrew Odlyzko <odlyzko@umn.edu> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Mon, August 9, 2010 4:01:00 PM Subject: Re: off-topic: historical query concerning the Internet bubble On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote: I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your
paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica
Agree with Jessica: you can't say the 'Internet' doubles every x number of days/amount of time no matter what the number of days or amount of time is. The 'Internet' is a series of tubes...hahaha couldn't help it....As we all know the Internet is a bunch of providers plugged into each other. Provider A may see an 10x increase in traffic every month while provider B may not. For example, if Google makes a deal with Verizon only Verizon will see a huge increase in traffic internally and less externally (or vice versa). Until Google goes somewhere else! So the whole 'myth' of Internet doubling every 100 days to me is something someone (ODell it seems) made up to appease someone higher in the chain or a government committee that really doesn't get it. IE - it's marketing talk to quantify something. I guess if all the ISP's in the world provided a central repository bandwidth numbers they have on their backbone then you could make up some stats about Internet traffic as a whole. But without that - it just doesn't make much sense. Just my .02 Kenny
Jessica, As I explained in an email in response to your earlier posting, my paper makes it very clear that Mike O'Dell and John Sidgmore were, for most of the time in the 1997-2001 time frame, talking of a doubling every 100 days of capacity, not traffic, and only for UUNet. (In fact, the Sidgmore paper from Vortex98 that I have just posted, at http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/isources/sidgmore-vortex98b.pdf, has him saying pretty explicitly that UUNet was gaining market share, and the rest of the industry was growing more slowly.) However, the press, and the public, assumed that the traffic of the entire Internet was growing at those rates. How people could make such a mistake is a mystery that I point out as a mystery in my paper. In fact, the Sidgmore paper has an interesting exchange. In the Q&A session (included in the paper), Bob Lucky asks Sidgmore about traffic growth, clearly assuming that Sidgmore had been talking of traffic. Sidgmore responds, very clearly talking about capacity, but clearly assuming that Lucky had asked about capacity. So here we have a record of two people, both industry insiders, talking past each other. Another mystery to add to the others. If you want to get into this further, let's take the discussion off-list, as I doubt this picayune non-operational matter will interest too many folks here. Best regards, Andrew Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote:
Wait a sec, you seems to assume that the 'Doubling every 100 days" statement was referring to the Internet traffic not just UUNet traffic. My recollection was that the statement was referring to UUNet traffic based on the stats collected in a period of time (see my previous email). That is why I urged the author of the paper to make this important distinction. If one made a prediction based on stats collected and the prediction was not accurate due to the imperfection of stats (in this case, it may be caused by a short term growth abnormally, as Jeff Young pointed out), it is unfair to assume the person misled public on purpose.
Thanks!
--Jessica
________________________________ From: Kenny Sallee <kenny.sallee@gmail.com> To: Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com>; Andrew Odlyzko <odlyzko@umn.edu> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Mon, August 9, 2010 4:01:00 PM Subject: Re: off-topic: historical query concerning the Internet bubble
On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Jessica Yu <jyy_99@yahoo.com> wrote: I do not know if making such distinction would alter the conclusion of your
paper. But, to me, there is a difference between one to predict the growth of one particular network based on the stats collected than one to predict the growth of the entire Internet with no solid data. Thanks!--Jessica
Agree with Jessica: you can't say the 'Internet' doubles every x number of days/amount of time no matter what the number of days or amount of time is. The 'Internet' is a series of tubes...hahaha couldn't help it....As we all know the Internet is a bunch of providers plugged into each other. Provider A may see an 10x increase in traffic every month while provider B may not. For example, if Google makes a deal with Verizon only Verizon will see a huge increase in traffic internally and less externally (or vice versa). Until Google goes somewhere else! So the whole 'myth' of Internet doubling every 100 days to me is something someone (ODell it seems) made up to appease someone higher in the chain or a government committee that really doesn't get it. IE - it's marketing talk to quantify something. I guess if all the ISP's in the world provided a central repository bandwidth numbers they have on their backbone then you could make up some stats about Internet traffic as a whole. But without that - it just doesn't make much sense.
Just my .02 Kenny
participants (19)
-
Andrew Odlyzko -
Andy Davidson -
Christopher Morrow -
Dorian Kim -
Haudy Kazemi -
Jared Mauch -
JC Dill -
Jeff Young -
Jessica Yu -
Joe Hamelin -
Jorge Amodio -
Kenny Sallee -
kris foster -
Min -
Nick Hilliard -
odlyzko＠umn.edu
-
Patrick W. Gilmore -
Randy Bush -
Roland Perry