iCloud - Is it going to hurt access providers?
Hey all, I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet. My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres. Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
* Users with plans that count upload and download together. * The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL * The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics * The design of some transit metrics So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion. This post is really just to prompt discussion if people think there is anything to actually worry about, or there are other implications that I've not really thought of yet. …Skeeve -- Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists skeeve@eintellego.net<mailto:skeeve@eintellego.net> ; www.eintellego.net Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954 Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellego or eintellego@facebook.com<mailto:eintellego@facebook.com> twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia -- eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call - Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade
My understanding was that the whole point of iCloud is to not upload but rather use Apple's stored music files as long as you have them in your library. You have a valid point however with other similar services, like amazon's. But that's been out for a while. --Andrey On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 7:20 AM, Skeeve Stevens <Skeeve@eintellego.net>wrote:
Hey all,
I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
* Users with plans that count upload and download together. * The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL * The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics * The design of some transit metrics
So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.
This post is really just to prompt discussion if people think there is anything to actually worry about, or there are other implications that I've not really thought of yet.
…Skeeve
--
Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
skeeve@eintellego.net<mailto:skeeve@eintellego.net> ; www.eintellego.net
Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve
facebook.com/eintellego or eintellego@facebook.com<mailto: eintellego@facebook.com>
twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve
PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia
--
eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call
- Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade
That is only for musicŠ Photos will be the big killer, documents and iDevice backups as well. ŠSkeeve -- Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists skeeve@eintellego.net ; www.eintellego.net Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954 Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellego or eintellego@facebook.com twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia -- eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call - Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade -----Original Message----- From: Andrey Khomyakov <khomyakov.andrey@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2011 08:52:37 -0400 To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: iCloud - Is it going to hurt access providers?
My understanding was that the whole point of iCloud is to not upload but rather use Apple's stored music files as long as you have them in your library. You have a valid point however with other similar services, like amazon's. But that's been out for a while.
--Andrey
On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 7:20 AM, Skeeve Stevens <Skeeve@eintellego.net>wrote:
Hey all,
I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
* Users with plans that count upload and download together. * The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL * The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics * The design of some transit metrics
So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.
This post is really just to prompt discussion if people think there is anything to actually worry about, or there are other implications that I've not really thought of yet.
ŠSkeeve
--
Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
skeeve@eintellego.net<mailto:skeeve@eintellego.net> ; www.eintellego.net
Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve
facebook.com/eintellego or eintellego@facebook.com<mailto: eintellego@facebook.com>
twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve
PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia
--
eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call
- Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade
----- Original Message -----
From: "Skeeve Stevens" <Skeeve@eintellego.net>
I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.
Aw, c'mon; what a boring Whacky Weekend thread... :-)
So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.
IOW: The Tragedy Of The Commons. Yup; this is definitely going to be fun. This is, I think, slightly different from the Netflix Instant arguments we always have: the ones wherein it's pointed out that carriers aren't really entitled to charge Netflix because they've made improper bets on their capacity engineering for What Might Come Next: Apple really had better have already *known* what the engineering of consumer grade Internet looked like (or several high level product and engineering people are dangerously underqualified for their jobs), so as this problem gets worse, and I concur that it will, the result will be that they bet wrong. Gambling means that sometimes you lose. Alas, the costs won't be on Apple. This seems to be an ongoing situation: carriers discovering that they also bet wrong on how to engineer the network: they've been making the beams thinner and thinner, and then along came something reasonably rational... that was heavy enough to break them. Anyone betting carriers will stop gambling quite so hard, and build networks the way John Roebling built bridges? Cheers, -- jr 'first woodpecker that came along...' a -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
Subject: Re: iCloud - Is it going to hurt access providers? Date: Sat, Sep 03, 2011 at 10:17:40AM -0400 Quoting Jay Ashworth (jra@baylink.com):
Gambling means that sometimes you lose. Alas, the costs won't be on Apple.
This seems to be an ongoing situation: carriers discovering that they also bet wrong on how to engineer the network: they've been making the beams thinner and thinner, and then along came something reasonably rational... that was heavy enough to break them.
Anyone betting carriers will stop gambling quite so hard, and build networks the way John Roebling built bridges?
Well put. I find it hard to blame the users for using the network. That is what they pay the provider for. Any implicit assumptions about _how_ users should use the network are simply corners cut to make things cheaper. Gambling. -- Måns Nilsson primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina MN-1334-RIPE +46 705 989668 JAPAN is a WONDERFUL planet -- I wonder if we'll ever reach their level of COMPARATIVE SHOPPING ...
On Sat, 03 Sep 2011 11:20:13 -0000, Skeeve Stevens said:
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their idata centres.
This is probably not goind to be any harder on your network that BitTorrent and friends.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
You missed the *really* key issue. The more people store data in the cloud, the more irate people are going to be calling your help desk if you have an outage. We've already seen a few news stories where a cloud service has whoopsied and lost data. (And yes, I know that technically, the fact that Joe Sixpack made a poor choice of backup/storage strategies doesn't impose added duties on you. But your help desk is going to have a hard time explaining that to a pissed-off Joe) Am I the only one who thinks iCloud style services plus a Cogent peering dispute is a likely "perfect storm" scenario? ;)
I think the effect will be limited unless Apple give alot more space away for free. there arny many iphones/pads/pods with just 5GB Neil On 3 Sep 2011, at 12:22, "Skeeve Stevens" <Skeeve@eintellego.net> wrote:
Hey all,
I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
* Users with plans that count upload and download together. * The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL * The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics * The design of some transit metrics
So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.
This post is really just to prompt discussion if people think there is anything to actually worry about, or there are other implications that I've not really thought of yet.
…Skeeve
--
Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
skeeve@eintellego.net<mailto:skeeve@eintellego.net> ; www.eintellego.net
Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve
facebook.com/eintellego or eintellego@facebook.com<mailto:eintellego@facebook.com>
twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve
PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia
--
eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call
- Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade
On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Skeeve Stevens <Skeeve@eintellego.net> wrote:
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
What would be obscene about that is from a design POV it would be a waste of resources. "Music" and "TV" content are from a small number of sources, and there are a massive potential number of users. What should happen is instead of transmitting large video files... block checksums should be transmitted, and only files that are completely foreign should be transferred. Whereas everything else being "backed up" is just an assignment of account access to existing blocks that would already have been stored on the content servers. And then also, a user storing 10GB of music would probably take only a few megabytes of their account space, once the "space used" is evenly divided by the number of users that have that block saved, since a majority of music files backed up would be file-identical with material someone else had already backed up, and identical to material already in the iTunes store (which they could pre-seed their database with). -- -JH
Op 3 sep 2011, om 19:49 heeft Jimmy Hess het volgende geschreven:
On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Skeeve Stevens <Skeeve@eintellego.net> wrote:
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
since a majority of music files backed up would be file-identical with material someone else had already backed up, and identical to material already in the iTunes store (which they could pre-seed their database with).
How would storage vendors otherwise sell de duplication. I mean you could make the application smarter but that wouldn't sell more spinning rust or licenses. Regards, Seth
I'm not 100% certain and have no references to back it up but I recall reading an article which described the Apple cloud music strategy as being one where for existing identified music it merely stores a reference of some kind against your account rather than actually storing an additional copy. Presumably for the sake of sanity it would be implemented in the application where it saves the end user the cost/time of uploading as well, if for no other reason that said cost/time/cpu resource would also be a real cost to Apple directly or indirectly. Mumble-something about "even for your own music you have ripped-not-purchased, pay $nominal-annual-fee and it magically becomes a legal licensed object" (which obviously they did because then it becomes something they have one single stored copy of with references on remote accounts). Phil P On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 3:49 AM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Skeeve Stevens <Skeeve@eintellego.net> wrote:
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
What would be obscene about that is from a design POV it would be a waste of resources. "Music" and "TV" content are from a small number of sources, and there are a massive potential number of users.
What should happen is instead of transmitting large video files... block checksums should be transmitted, and only files that are completely foreign should be transferred.
Whereas everything else being "backed up" is just an assignment of account access to existing blocks that would already have been stored on the content servers.
And then also, a user storing 10GB of music would probably take only a few megabytes of their account space, once the "space used" is evenly divided by the number of users that have that block saved,
since a majority of music files backed up would be file-identical with material someone else had already backed up, and identical to material already in the iTunes store (which they could pre-seed their database with).
-- -JH
--
two eyes to tease, an aargh ... an oh there's a pie in there somewhere <<<<<
If you're worried about the problem of tens of thousands of users simultaneously trying to upload files to a "central point" then I'm not the slightest bit concerned about the network as a whole. In this circumstance, one of two things will happen and possibly both, depending: either a) the users will screw themselves by flooding their uplinks in which case they will know what they've done to themselves and will largely accept the problems for the durration or b) (and far more likely) the links apple is using will become flooded or the systems overloaded in some way or another in which case the customers will say, "MAN, this *SUCKS*" and likely whine at apple. Because the nature of the traffic isn't much different than, say, a windows patch release, the traffic won't be *all of a sudden* but will be spread out over hours and days. The probability of it causing disruptions anywhere but at the immediate source or within the near vicinity of the desination is low, as I see it. IMO, the only ones who really need be concerned are Apple's bandwidth prodivers because traffic will be concentrating within their networks and especially in the nodes apple connects to. -Wayne On Sat, Sep 03, 2011 at 11:20:13AM +0000, Skeeve Stevens wrote:
Hey all,
I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
* Users with plans that count upload and download together. * The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL * The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics * The design of some transit metrics
So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.
This post is really just to prompt discussion if people think there is anything to actually worry about, or there are other implications that I've not really thought of yet.
?Skeeve
--
Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
skeeve@eintellego.net<mailto:skeeve@eintellego.net> ; www.eintellego.net
Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve
facebook.com/eintellego or eintellego@facebook.com<mailto:eintellego@facebook.com>
twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve
PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia
--
eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call
- Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade
--- Wayne Bouchard web@typo.org Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne E Bouchard" <web@typo.org>
and will largely accept the problems for the durration or b) (and far more likely) the links apple is using will become flooded or the systems overloaded in some way or another in which case the customers will say, "MAN, this *SUCKS*" and likely whine at apple.
If you think that call traffic's going to *Apple*, either you're an optimist, or I'm nutsabago. Cheers, -- jr 'shut *up*' a -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On Sep 3, 2011, at 5:02 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne E Bouchard" <web@typo.org>
and will largely accept the problems for the durration or b) (and far more likely) the links apple is using will become flooded or the systems overloaded in some way or another in which case the customers will say, "MAN, this *SUCKS*" and likely whine at apple.
If you think that call traffic's going to *Apple*, either you're an optimist, or I'm nutsabago.
The current apple "media" is reporting it's likely going to amazon and microsoft azure. I've not bothered to look too deeply at dns and packet traces myself. I'm guessing that all these things are going to hurt the DSL providers more than the docsis/fttx/pon based providers. Those folks have broader capabilities by pushing updated configs to the devices. The DSL based providers are more limited in my experience and likely to see a poorer ratio of up:down. SDSL was just not common enough, so most A/VDSL based providers have something like 15:1.5 whereas comcast (for example) has 22:5. I've seen the 22:5 service burst (or should that be buffer/manage the queue) to around 80Mb/s down in some cases. This is something you are unlikely to see from a DSL provider unless the equipment is in-building. - Jared
On 9/3/11 2:02 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne E Bouchard" <web@typo.org>
and will largely accept the problems for the durration or b) (and far more likely) the links apple is using will become flooded or the systems overloaded in some way or another in which case the customers will say, "MAN, this *SUCKS*" and likely whine at apple.
If you think that call traffic's going to *Apple*, either you're an optimist, or I'm nutsabago.
Well, Apple is building giant mysterious data centers for something. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/01/apples-new-data-center-is-visible-at-... ~Seth
----- Original Message -----
From: "Seth Mattinen" <sethm@rollernet.us>
On 9/3/11 2:02 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne E Bouchard" <web@typo.org>
and will largely accept the problems for the durration or b) (and far more likely) the links apple is using will become flooded or the systems overloaded in some way or another in which case the customers will say, "MAN, this *SUCKS*" and likely whine at apple.
If you think that call traffic's going to *Apple*, either you're an optimist, or I'm nutsabago.
Well, Apple is building giant mysterious data centers for something.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/01/apples-new-data-center-is-visible-at-...
Two people making the same mistake: end-user support telephone calls don't generally go to datacenters, do they? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On Sat, 03 Sep 2011 18:38:40 EDT, Jay Ashworth said:
Two people making the same mistake: end-user support telephone calls don't generally go to datacenters, do they?
Maybe they've figured out how to let an AI answer the phones. All you need is text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and the script the outsourced semi-trained monkeys would have been using. Or maybe they've not been outsourced at all, and 'Mumbai' is the codeword for the data center, and it's all a coverup because even outsourcing a job is an easier PR job than replacing somebody with a robot/computer. ;)
* Wayne E. Bouchard:
the users will screw themselves by flooding their uplinks in which case they will know what they've done to themselves and will largely accept the problems for the durration
With shared media networks (or insufficient backhaul capacities), congestion affects more than just the customer causing it.
On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 12:56:25PM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
* Wayne E. Bouchard:
the users will screw themselves by flooding their uplinks in which case they will know what they've done to themselves and will largely accept the problems for the durration
With shared media networks (or insufficient backhaul capacities), congestion affects more than just the customer causing it.
Okay, so to state the obvious for those who missed the point... The congestion will either be directly in front of user because they're flooding their uplink or towards the destination (beit a single central network or a set of storage clusters housed at, say, 6 different locations off 3 different providers.) It is very hard, in my experience, for something like this to congest the general network. The congestion occurs where either bandwidth drops off--such as with the edge dialup, DSL, or cable modem link--or traffic concentrates. Just like someone broadcasting a concert. Either you as a user can't receive the feed because your pipe isn't big enough for the stream or the network/servers sourcing the traffic get bogged down and, generally, the rest of the folks out there not watching the feed don't know there's a problem. If you're not participating in that traffic, the likelihood that you'll be impacted by it drops off dramatically. Yes, the PTP model will behave a little differently but in that case, you're more likely to see individual users having issues (either hosts or clients) rather than everyone as a whole and it *still* won't impact the broader network. The more "central clusters" you add, the more the traffic pattern will start to behave like the PTP scenario and the lower the probabilty of broad impact. My point was simply that if you think it through, there really isn't any reason to be concerned about it. (It can't be any worse than the Jackson verdict or the Pope and, as far as I recall, since we're all still here, I don't believe the world ended when those events happened.) -Wayne --- Wayne Bouchard web@typo.org Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 4:45 PM, Wayne E Bouchard <web@typo.org> wrote:
Okay, so to state the obvious for those who missed the point...
The congestion will either be directly in front of user because they're flooding their uplink or towards the destination (beit a single central network or a set of storage clusters housed at, say, 6 different locations off 3 different providers.) It is very hard, in my
If scaling up Internet bandwidth were the hardest thing about deploying SaaS / "cloud" services, don't you think transit vendors would suddenly be more profitable than EMC and friends? It should be obvious to you, and everyone else, that datacenter Internet connectivity is a trivial concern compared to everything else that goes into these platforms. -- Jeff S Wheeler <jsw@inconcepts.biz> Sr Network Operator / Innovative Network Concepts
On Sat, 3 Sep 2011, Skeeve Stevens wrote:
Hey all,
I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
* Users with plans that count upload and download together. * The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL * The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics * The design of some transit metrics
So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.
In my opinion. Home networking (including personal clouds) have to change the brain damaged model of asymmetric tail technologies. Giving back the original peer-to-peer nature of networking the asymmetricity of the access technologies will not be tolerable in such a level (1:10) we have today. Maybe 1:2 should be more acceptable. You don't have to worry bout this changes, but access provider cannot claim any longer 100MBps (while upload speed ~10 Mbps), but probably 60-70 Mbps (with upload ~ 30 Mbps).... They have to retune access services. Best Regards, Janos
Mohacsi Janos wrote:
In my opinion. Home networking (including personal clouds) have to change the brain damaged model of asymmetric tail technologies. Giving back the original peer-to-peer nature of networking the asymmetricity of the access technologies will not be tolerable in such a level (1:10) we have today. Maybe 1:2 should be more acceptable.
I think a more fundamental question is why in 2011 we're stuck with statically shaped asymmetric up and down. You can pretty dynamically shape *within* a given direction to do just about anything you want to the traffic, but I don't know of last mile access technologies that do that *across* the up and downstream. If it were more like ethernet that doesn't have those artificial distinctions, this conversation would be moot. I recall the reason that DOCSIS is asymmetric is had a lot to do with how they carved out spectrum of the analog channels -- and relegating upstream to slots that weren't very good for those analog channels. That's been about 15 years ago though and in the mean time the internet has sort of become important. Now things may have changed -- I'd love to hear about it. Maybe Fred or John Chapman can comment. Mike
In my opinion. Home networking (including personal clouds) have to change the brain damaged model of asymmetric tail technologies. Giving back the original peer-to-peer nature of networking the asymmetricity of the access technologies will not be tolerable in such a level (1:10) we have today. Maybe 1:2 should be more acceptable.
I think a more fundamental question is why in 2011 we're stuck with statically shaped asymmetric up and down. You can pretty dynamically shape *within* a given direction to do just about anything you want to the traffic, but I don't know of last mile access technologies that do that *across* the up and downstream. If it were more like ethernet that doesn't have those artificial distinctions, this conversation would be moot.
I recall the reason that DOCSIS is asymmetric is had a lot to do with how they carved out spectrum of the analog channels -- and relegating upstream to slots that weren't very good for those analog channels. That's been about 15 years ago though and in the mean time the internet has sort of become important.
With dsl technologies like vdsl (flexible) or adsl (fixed 1/8 or 1/24) the total bandwidth (up+down) is not linear. example: adsl: 1mbit up, 24mbit down - total 25mbit can not be used with 12.5mbit up/down. at the co the noise is very high, as there are many lines in a bundle and the dslams "cry" with high signal levels into the lines. Also the crosstalk is high. downstream: co-side: dslams send signal with high level + high level noise. cpe-side: signal arrives damped, noise arrives damped -> signal to noise (snr) is acceptable. high bandwiths can be achieved. upstream: cpe-side: cpe send signal with high level, low level noise co-side: high level noise produce crosstalk to damped signal that arrives from cpe -> signal to noise (snr) is low only low bandwiths can be achieved. so dsl technologies, that use old, unshielded cables operate now at the maximum what the cable can do (up to 30MHz with vdsl2). Higher speeds can only be achieved with better cables; like fiber or coax. coax technologies use in oposite to dsl technologies no point to point links but bus technology to connect several customers to one head-end. asymmetric bandwith -> more clients per head-end. high-speed symmetric services can only be offered with new network types like fiber. Kind regards, Ingo Flaschberger
Here's a very timely article on the topic of DOCSIS upstream: http://accessintelligence.imirus.com/Mpowered/book/vcomm11/i8/p18 Frank -----Original Message----- From: Michael Thomas [mailto:mike@mtcc.com] Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2011 6:06 PM To: Mohacsi Janos Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: static asymmetry Mohacsi Janos wrote:
In my opinion. Home networking (including personal clouds) have to change the brain damaged model of asymmetric tail technologies. Giving back the original peer-to-peer nature of networking the asymmetricity of the access technologies will not be tolerable in such a level (1:10) we have today. Maybe 1:2 should be more acceptable.
I think a more fundamental question is why in 2011 we're stuck with statically shaped asymmetric up and down. You can pretty dynamically shape *within* a given direction to do just about anything you want to the traffic, but I don't know of last mile access technologies that do that *across* the up and downstream. If it were more like ethernet that doesn't have those artificial distinctions, this conversation would be moot. I recall the reason that DOCSIS is asymmetric is had a lot to do with how they carved out spectrum of the analog channels -- and relegating upstream to slots that weren't very good for those analog channels. That's been about 15 years ago though and in the mean time the internet has sort of become important. Now things may have changed -- I'd love to hear about it. Maybe Fred or John Chapman can comment. Mike
The copper technologies of DOCSIS and xDSL are well established in residential deployments and they are asymmetric by design. I don't think near-symmetric speeds are on the CableLab's and Broadband Forum's short list of future features. Even GPON is 1:4. As more fiber is deployed, I believe deployments will eventually migrate to some variation of EPON where symmetricity is built into the design. In the meantime it is what it is. Somewhat tangential, has anyone graphed out the upstream/downstream ratios of the various technologies (various generations of dial-up, DSL, fiber, etc)? Frank -----Original Message----- From: Mohacsi Janos [mailto:mohacsi@niif.hu] Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2011 5:07 PM To: Skeeve Stevens Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: iCloud - Is it going to hurt access providers? <snip> In my opinion. Home networking (including personal clouds) have to change the brain damaged model of asymmetric tail technologies. Giving back the original peer-to-peer nature of networking the asymmetricity of the access technologies will not be tolerable in such a level (1:10) we have today. Maybe 1:2 should be more acceptable. You don't have to worry bout this changes, but access provider cannot claim any longer 100MBps (while upload speed ~10 Mbps), but probably 60-70 Mbps (with upload ~ 30 Mbps).... They have to retune access services. Best Regards, Janos
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Bulk" <frnkblk@iname.com>
Subject: RE: iCloud - Is it going to hurt access providers? The copper technologies of DOCSIS and xDSL are well established in residential deployments and they are asymmetric by design. I don't think near-symmetric speeds are on the CableLab's and Broadband Forum's short list of future features. Even GPON is 1:4. As more fiber is deployed, I believe deployments will eventually migrate to some variation of EPON where symmetricity is built into the design. In the meantime it is what it is.
That's as may be... but the real question, I think, is this: What's the asymmetry of the *intermediate* networks? It wouldn't make sense for cablemodem providers to provision symmetric transport inside their MANs if they didn't have to... so if they *don't* have to, how hard can the push it with the way they're provisioned now? Or is the transport natively symmetric, as I suspect, and they're just letting it all sit there on the return side. Must gall their sisters... :-) Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On 9/3/11 04:20 , Skeeve Stevens wrote:
Hey all,
I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.
My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.
It won't been obscene amounts, the free tier's quota is only 10GB. the music which is probably the thing that moves into the the cloud the fashion you described isn't moved into the cloud by uploading. I'd expect the reads to dominate over writes so your traffic pattern asymmetry is preserved.
Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.
having customers that want to use your service is rarely a bad thing. One of the things that this discussion point misses is that when you operate at a distance from your data, you become rather sensitive to latency. while apple is rather good about caching data locally, that doesn't eliminate it from consideration.
From what I can see there are some key issues:
* Users with plans that count upload and download together. * The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL * The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics * The design of some transit metrics
So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.
This post is really just to prompt discussion if people think there is anything to actually worry about, or there are other implications that I've not really thought of yet.
…Skeeve
--
Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
skeeve@eintellego.net<mailto:skeeve@eintellego.net> ; www.eintellego.net
Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve
facebook.com/eintellego or eintellego@facebook.com<mailto:eintellego@facebook.com>
twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve
PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia
--
eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call
- Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel jaeggli" <joelja@bogus.com>
having customers that want to use your service is rarely a bad thing.
Ask a chief engineer at a national wireless carrier who told his administrative bosses that selling "unlimited" wireless data was a Pretty Neat Idea if he thinks that's a good generalization to make, Joel. :-) Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On 9/5/2011 22:39, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel jaeggli" <joelja@bogus.com>
having customers that want to use your service is rarely a bad thing.
Ask a chief engineer at a national wireless carrier who told his administrative bosses that selling "unlimited" wireless data was a Pretty Neat Idea if he thinks that's a good generalization to make, Joel. :-)
Jay, are you saying the engineers in a wireless telecom company are driving what plans to offer? Hate to say it, but that's all done by marketing, and engineering normally finds out about the plans they offer by seeing the PDSN/SGSN going into overload :D I would love a world where engineering was consulted by marketing :( -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice 727-214-2508 - Fax http://bryanfields.net
I would love a world where engineering was consulted by marketing :(
Wouldn't be a problem is management invested based on engineering's recommendations. There are few problems that money can't solve .. in this case, it's "sure, we can offer unlimited bandwidth, we just need to build (x) new towers at this map of locations, based on our usage patterns". Michael Holstein Cleveland State University
On 9/7/11 09:02 , Michael Holstein wrote:
I would love a world where engineering was consulted by marketing :(
Wouldn't be a problem is management invested based on engineering's recommendations.
There are few problems that money can't solve .. in this case, it's "sure, we can offer unlimited bandwidth, we just need to build (x) new towers at this map of locations, based on our usage patterns".
The way to achieve a return on invested capital is to attract and retain customers who pay for a service which they find compelling.
Michael Holstein Cleveland State University
On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:28:28 PDT, Joel jaeggli said:
The way to achieve a return on invested capital is to attract and retain customers who pay for a service which they find compelling.
Only true if long-term returns on investment are suitable for consideration instead of short-term returns.
On 9/7/11 09:37 , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:28:28 PDT, Joel jaeggli said:
The way to achieve a return on invested capital is to attract and retain customers who pay for a service which they find compelling.
Only true if long-term returns on investment are suitable for consideration instead of short-term returns.
When was the last time you built out a network plant for a quarterly pop?
Most networks have been trying to avoid that, building out a quarterly pop thing,... problem is now its an ongoing cumulative quarterly pop across many years, .... With pent up frustrated consumer demand for more and more video....including face time on these apple devices! Iridescent iPhone +1 972 757 8894 On 7 Sep 2011, at 11:40, Joel jaeggli <joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
On 9/7/11 09:37 , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:28:28 PDT, Joel jaeggli said:
The way to achieve a return on invested capital is to attract and retain customers who pay for a service which they find compelling.
Only true if long-term returns on investment are suitable for consideration instead of short-term returns.
When was the last time you built out a network plant for a quarterly pop?
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 9:28 AM, Joel jaeggli <joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
On 9/7/11 09:02 , Michael Holstein wrote:
I would love a world where engineering was consulted by marketing :(
Wouldn't be a problem is management invested based on engineering's recommendations.
There are few problems that money can't solve .. in this case, it's "sure, we can offer unlimited bandwidth, we just need to build (x) new towers at this map of locations, based on our usage patterns".
The way to achieve a return on invested capital is to attract and retain customers who pay for a service which they find compelling.
Good simplification, but i think this thread is about the word "pay" .... who and how much.
participants (23)
-
Andrey Khomyakov -
Bryan Fields -
Cameron Byrne -
Chrisjfenton -
Florian Weimer -
Frank Bulk -
Ingo Flaschberger -
Jared Mauch -
Jay Ashworth -
Jeff Wheeler -
Jimmy Hess -
Joel jaeggli -
Michael Holstein -
Michael Thomas -
Mohacsi Janos -
Måns Nilsson -
Neil J. McRae -
Phil Pierotti -
Seth Mattinen -
Seth Mos -
Skeeve Stevens -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu -
Wayne E Bouchard