Tag Archives: ISP

How much does it cost to provide broadband in Australia and New-Zealand?

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I recently came across a thorough study by Market Clarity (download it here), which focused on the differences in the value and costs of ISPs on the opposite sides of the Tasman sea.

The median bandwidth allocation per residential subscriber is quite similar in Australia and New-Zealand (161Kbps and 128Kbps respectively). The network cost per subscriber per month, however, is 50% more expensive in Australia than in New-Zealand ($41 and $27 respectively); see image below.

Monthly network cost per subsciber in Australia and New-Zealand

Monthly network cost per subscriber in Australia and New-Zealand

Even when normalizing the cost per Mbps allocated, rather than per subscriber, Australia has higher costs; see below.

Monthly network cost per Mbps allocated in Australia and New-Zealand

Monthly network cost per Mbps allocated in Australia and New-Zealand

Transit and transport costs account for 27% and 23% in the network cost in Australia and New-Zealand respectively. These costs can be significantly eased by taking modern approaches to wholesale capacity.

Visit DiViNetworks to learn more.

Should the ISP play the role of babysitter?

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I came across a post on DSL Reports titled “Australian ISP Refuses to Play Copyright Babysitter“. The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft sued iiNet  ISP for allowing pirated content to be distributed over their network. In the DSL post, iiNet CEO Michael Malon was quoted saying that “these guys are asking us to be judge, jury and executioner.”

Internet Police

On a personal level, I worry about an ISP being sued into submission and accept the role of “rule enforcer” by their government.  Should the ISP be responsible for the content distributed on their network? Is our postal system responsible for any illegal items shipped over its network? No. So why does it apply in this situation?

I am curious how others in our industry feel about this specific tactic to eliminate pirated content. Does it matter if the government is part owner of the ISP or if it is entirely private?

Is it the ISP’s responsibility or someone else’s to police the internet?

Have you read the latest GTB International Carrier Guide 2012

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GTB published its annual International Carrier Guide for 2012 at the beginning of the month. We just wanted to make sure our readers were aware there was such a resource out there.

                                   Click on the image to get to the publication

Question for our readers – are there other publications that you find are a “must have” ? If so .. would you please share it with us in the comments?

Adding S.E.Asia and Carrier Traffic to our Global Data Flow Report

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We recently released a first glimpse to our Global Data Flow report. Located at major Internet junctions, the DiViCloud network oversees masses of traffic in different locations, providing us with insights about traffic patterns and sources. Below is an updated graph, which includes information about traffic in S.E.Asia, as well as traffic originating from major local and global carriers.

CDN and Carrier contribution to ISP’s traffic, as measured by DiViCloud network in: LATAM, Africa, Europe, S.E.Asia and CIS.

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

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.

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.

Infographic – To be or not to be Unique?

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We did a little bit of research to find out if our web surfing habits are really unique like we would all like to believe, or, are we all viewing the same content?

Click on the infographic (you may want to zoom in), and you’ll find out  that 50% of the data traffic has already passed the network – even in a short window of 6 hours. Isn’t that a waste of expensive bandwidth?

In Yair‘s post “we are all individuals,” it was explained that with as little as 150GB of storage at the network edges, most of this redundant data can be saved without any deterioration in service.

Cache strategies are diverging

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In the last year or so the Internet caching market returned from its hibernation decade, straight onto the radar screens of leading telecom equipment manufacturers – fixed and mobile alike. (for example Juniper and Cisco)

During this long cache winter independent software vendors have invested in developing solutions which may share the same name, yet address different needs – capacity savings vs. quality of experience (QoE) improvement, managed content vs. over-the-top (OTT), content specific vs. application specific vs. everything-HTTP vs. protocol agnostic, saving peering vs. saving transport, located at the network core vs. located at network edge.

This spaghetti of solutions triggered operators and ISPs to redefine their cache strategies. Whereas previously an ISP would just require a single file-caching system in the entry to its network, nowadays legacy file-caching is no longer effective for most of the Internet content (which is just not files anymore but rather fragments of streams, example here), and CDNs replace much of file-caching traditional role. The new environment requires new solutions.

Networking gear providers are taking a close look at this market, rehearsing before they play an active role. Speaking to such players I have witnessed significantly different points of view, perhaps emerging from the different positions such players come from.

Yet, they all share the same concerns – cache servers, as the name implies, serve content. They act as a “mini Internet in a box.” Placing such an entity in the network (a) puts constraints on routing and traffic engineering (b) requires endless goose chase after the evolving Internet, its protocols, formats and business logic. The independence of the network and the IT may be jeopardized by introducing application manipulators into the network.

Whereas such approach can be contained for managed content, it raises many concerns with regards to OTT. Content not managed by the operator should arrive from the content providers directly or through their representatives – namely CDNs. If you worry about peering or transport costs, expand your bandwidth using virtual capacity – a content-agnostic solution, equivalent to addition of bandwidth.

From the core southbound – let the network be a network. Make sure you network is efficient as possible by expanding it virtually for all bits without application, protocol or content discrimination. This way you get best of all worlds – optimal network, full design flexibility and zero application-level configuration.