Tag Archives: DiViNetworks

How vulnerable is international connectivity?

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I came across an interesting BBC article – “The Internet’s weakest links,” analyzing the vulnerability of a country’s international connectivity. The vulnerability metric, adopted from Renesys’ blog, is the number of international Internet gateways (IIG) a country has. To be more precise – the number of AS (autonomous systems) actually connected to networks abroad. Renesys term this a Country’s International Frontier.
Let’s take Myanmar as an example. Searching Hurricane Electric’s database for networks in Myanmar you will find five AS’s. Digging a bit you’ll find that only MPT (AS45558) connects to international networks, whereas the other networks connect to the world via MPT. Myanmar has, therefore, only a single company in its international frontier, making it very vulnerable.

International connectivity vulnerability

Governments in several countries enjoy centralization of international connectivity, enabling them to monitor, filter or block all international traffic. You often see countries with a single IIG, owned by the incumbent telecom operator, which in turn is government controlled.
Nevertheless, appreciating the drawbacks in narrow international frontier, regulators are slowly relaxing their policies, slowly opening the IIG market, while maintaining most of their interests.
ISPs served by the DiViCloud network actually peer with us (AS57731) over-the-top of their existing upstream providers, enjoying the benefits of direct international peering, without physical connectivity. That is, of course, apart from the 50% discount they have on the international capacity.

How do you think this map will change two years from now?

Does LTE impact traffic patterns on the International network?

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LTE is becoming a reality  in developed countries, but even more in emerging markets. The reasons being (a) many developing countries do not have fixed broadband infrastructure (b) MNOs and MVNOs skipped the 2.5-3.75G bubble and enjoy capital and demand.

LTE’s RAN indeed offers broadband speeds. LTE backhaul is addressed by major vendors (some of which are embedding DiViNetworks’ technology). Yet deploying LTE in emerging markets places a huge load on the feeding International link.

Some MNOs in such markets connect to the Internet by merely a single STM-1 (155Mbps) – that’s equivalent to the RAN capacity of 1.5 LTE cells. These operators will invest tens of millions in rolling out LTE, yet will have to spend similar amounts per year to feed the bandwidth beast.

Core Analysis’ Patrick Lopez explains the elastic nature of video traffic – let it have one finger, it takes your whole hand. Combine this with 85% of LTE traffic being video (Vodafone Germany) and the challenge is clearer than ever.

At DiViNetworks we are focused on helping ISPs (that includes MNOs) to change the economics of their international links using our DiViCloud network. Some of our MNO customers are planing to deploy LTE soon and are working closely with us on sizing their International network.

Packet Loss – International and Access – Asia, LATAM, Africa

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Handling over 100Gbps for over 50 ISPs worldwide, combined with smart devices on international and domestic PoPs, the DiViCloud Network holds a unique view on packet flow in international networks.

We recently are taking a closer look at packet loss on international and domestic links. Surprisingly, high packet loss occurs also during off-peak hours, without any congestion on the line – see results below. Such packet loss results in compromised QoE.

Packet loss – International and Access – DiViCloud’s Hong Kong PoP – Serving S.E.Asia

Packet loss – International and Access – DiViCloud’s NYC PoP – Serving LATAM

Packet loss – International and Access – DiViCloud’s Amsterdam PoP – Serving Africa

Summary of the above findings is presented below.

Packet Loss on International Links as Measured by DiViCloud

Holding both sides of the link, DiViNetworks can almost eliminate such packet losses, significantly improving end-users QoE.

An interesting case occurred this week, when a carrier providing transport from Singapore to one of our customers, suffered fiber fault. The following figures present the packet-loss rate prior to the fault, and during the fault.

Packet loss – International and Access – DiViCloud’s Amsterdam PoP – Serving Africa

Packet loss – International and Access – DiViCloud’s Singapore PoP – Serving S.E.Asia – During Fiber Fault

Additional observations are offered in our Global Data Flow Report.

How can the IP price gap be bridged? Hint: Beam me up Scotty

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In my recent post I highlighted the differences in IP transit cost between locations. At the low end of transit costs are those locations where content is generated – major cities in which the major content server farms are located (typically in the US and in W. Europe major cities). Baseline prices of $0.5-1 per Mbps per month are the actual cost for placing it on the web. From there on, prices start to rise as the factor of transport costs go up and as the distance grows from the content source creation to the content consumption destination.

The further away the eyeballs are, the smaller the market is. The fewer the transport alternatives are, the longer the transport chain is – and the price of transport (obviously) increases.

Actually this model is no different than shipping any other goods. An orange in California costs $0.5 per kg in wholesale prices. In Vancouver, wholesalers charge $3 since they have to pay the $0.5 and an additional $2 transport fee, plus they want to make a profit. The supermarket owner in  the remote Whitehorse, Yukon, pays $12 for the oranges. What starts off at $3 in Vancouver, plus a cascade of transporters all the way to Whitehorse inevitably drives up the cost to sell those oranges. No one is ripping anyone else off in this process. But is there a way to provide affordable oranges to Whitehorse?

What if you could just teleport the oranges from California to Whitehorse? What if this teleportation could be achieved at fractions of the transport cost, and without involving any middlemen?

That’s exactly what we do at DiViNetworks; for bits, not oranges. We are able to teleport 30-50% of the content from its source to any destination worldwide, without loading any transport, and over any combination of transport networks. No data is lost along the way. That’s what we term VIRTUAL CAPACITY.

We share the price gap between our cost and the market IP price with our customers, guaranteeing that our customer ISPs pay HALF PRICE for the additional bandwidth.

Beam me up Scotty for a Free 14 Day DiViCloud Trial

Follow our LinkedIn for more information and statistics on International Bandwidth.

Demand for International data capacity grows 50% and more annually

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For 15 years I’ve been hearing the same argument against innovative ways to provide data capacity: “Demand for capacity will not grow forever”. Time and time again skeptics are proven wrong. Not only does demand continue to grow, but its pace far surpasses expectations.

Telegeography reveals that data bandwidth increases 50-100% year-over-year in various regions, as viewed below.

Europe, Asia, Oceania, Middle East, Latin America, Africa, US & Canada

Regional International Bandwidth Growth 2007-2011

The demand for doubling capacity in the Middle East and the high growth in Asia, Africa and LATAM can be accounted for the increasing penetration of fixed and mobile broadband in those regions.

Yet at the low-end of the spectrum, developed countries demonstrate 50% annual growth, surpassing Cisco’s VNI growth forecast and at the time dismissed saying “Cisco publishes fantastic forecasts to steer the market.” This growth is not fueled by increasing broadband population, but rather by increase in media, bit-rate and more time spent online.

Taking into consideration that the deployment of CDNs offset much of the growth, the actual demand may be significantly higher.

So after all, international bandwidth requirements continue to boom. Innovative affordable ways to scale international data transport are a must, and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

Euro 2012 – A view from the content side

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In yesterday’s post I decrowned the Internet as the medium for watching planned live event. A comment from Svetoslav Hristov of Evolink revealed a different picture. Evolink put Euro 2012 online for the Bulgarian national TV. See figure below.

Evolink CDN traffic during Euro 2012 semi-finals and final

As opposed to the decline in traffic viewed at Internet Exchanges (IX) during matches, Evolink’s traffic increased from around 5Gbps to over 17Gbps during the final. That’s a very high impact compared to around 60Gbps total Bulgarian IX traffic.

The decline in IX traffic as observed by RIPE is due to people being busy with watching the match on TV or Internet. It would have been much deeper if live traffic was omitted.

Euro 2012 – TV is still king (but watch the throne)

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In the aftermath of Euro 2012 (and no, I’m not trying to replace Prandelli’s…) we learn one clear lesson – TV still dominates live video consumption.

The figure below (source: RIPE’s study) shows traffic in DE-CIX Munich Internet Exchange during the Germany-Greece match (22 June), compared to traffic same time in previous weeks.  As people get ready for the match – driving to friends, catching a nap, cooling the beers – Internet traffic declines. During the break they turn to check out what others say on the net.

Traffic seen at DECIX Munich during Germany v Greece match on 22 June 2012

Yesterday’s final was no different. Check out TOP-IX - Torino’s Exchange point – traffic stats.

Traffic seen at TOPIX Torino during Spain v. Italy match on 1 July 2012

So TV is still holding the throne for planned live events. Yet, we are keeping a close look on two trends:

Near-live traffic is booming. Missed the goal? Want to hear the Spanish Goooooal? Wish to poke your Italian friends? Go to the web.

Many events are not freely accessible on TV. Some events are premium, whereas others are just not broadcasted at all places. DiViNetworks serves many territories where people turn to the Internet to take part of such mainstream events. One example is presented in the graph below, demonstrating traffic growth during  a soccer match, as well as DiViLive‘s capability to flatten live traffic. The red marks the traffic actually passing on the link, and the green marks the virtual capacity generated by DiViLive (operating on live and near-live data). The traffic added due to the live event is shrunk to 10% of its original size.

Traffic during a soccer match flattened with DiViLive

Stay Tuned for: DiViNetworks Global Data Flow Report

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In the last year since we launched DiViCloud in production, we became experts in the macro picture of content flow in the global Internet. DiViCloud’s unique position – overseeing masses of data traffic passing through most major Internet junctions, combined with understanding of traffic source and data similarity – triggered some new insights about data flow. We want to share our findings with you, and will soon launch our global data flow periodical report.

Telegeography are doing a great job presenting the physical links and their capacity (see below). Sandvine’s global Internet phenomena report wonderfully depicts the use of applications in different networks.

DiViCloud views IP packets as they are generated in content servers or CDNs, flowing from hub to hub, until finally reaching the ISP. This information is valuable to make the Internet more efficient and scalable.

Follow our LinkedIn or you can go here and fill out a form to be notified when the report is available.

Asia traffic map, May 2012, Robert Schult, Telegeography (source)

Can Broadband Access Heal The World Economy? (To be discussed at G20)

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In an open letter the ITU (International Telecom Union) urges G20 leaders, meeting in Mexico next week, to define targets making broadband affordable in all countries. ITU claims that Broadband (BB) is the remedy to recession and recommends top-priority targets:

  1. Universal BB policy – all countries should have BB plan
  2. Affordable BB – by regulation and/or market forces
  3. Connecting homes to BB – 40% of homes in developing countries
  4. Getting people online – 50% of population in developing countries should be Internet-literate

Providing affordable BB in developing countries is not a simple task. Take a look at the table below depicting two cases, serving a territory with population of 500,000 in developing vs. developed country.

Apparently, the transport cost, just to ensure reasonable ROI, is highly sensitive to physical distance and link utilization, rendering transport to developing countries extremely expensive. Carriers are therefore reluctant to invest in such links, making international data transport a monopoly exactly in those cases in need.

Regulation can only press vendors’ profit margins. Market forces are totally irrelevant in the developing world. Connecting developing countries to the world is therefore up to pseudo-philanthropy (a la World Bank), or to technological solutions changing the table above. And guess what – such are DiViCloud and DiViLive.

What’s Common to Helena, Montana and Cochabamba, Bolivia? (hint: data capacity cost)

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We’ve often been asked if virtual capacity is relevant only for developing countries, or are data-optimization-services required in USA and Europe too. So we hit the road, met a bunch of ISPs in rural USA, participated in a WISPA event, and started working with distribution channels.

The traffic mix in rural USA is not significantly different from other places, and thus DiViNetworks’ guaranteed 30-50% capacity expansion can be reached. Calix did a great job, and analyzed 45 rural ISPs (here).

Traffic mix in rural USA ISPs

You can also learn that even a small ISP with 1,000 subscriber will need about 500Mbps Internet capacity (36.7GB per sub per month, assuming 6 hours effective per day).

In most cases only one carrier is laying fiber to rural towns (a.k.a. middle-mile), spending $25-60K per mile, and expecting reasonable ROI. Wholesale prices range between $20/Mbps/month and $200/Mbps/month. That’s without counting the backhaul often required. In that sense Helena, Montana is no different from Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Simple calculation shows that even a small ISP will have to spend $20K per month (500×40), making Internet connectivity a huge obstacle to profitability.

The thousands of rural ISPs, and tens of thousands of rural campuses, for which DiViCloud can virtually expand capacity by 30-50% make an interesting opportunity. With our US PoPs at major Internet junctions, this will soon become a reality.