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Comments on news posted 2008-09-03 13:02:38: Broadband industry lobbyists and PR departments have ceaselessly predicted a bandwidth crunch that never seems to arrive, usually because they're trying to justify a new policy or rate hike, stave off regulation -- or in the case of hardware vendors,.. ..

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NOZIREV
join:2008-07-10
New Bedford, MA

NOZIREV

Member

price of bandwidth is going up

just like the price of gas. In my eyes the price of everything is going up and i dont think that it has much to do with the amount of bandwidth that is available but just the fact that inflation is a mother F***er.

QuakeFrag
Premium Member
join:2003-06-13
NH

QuakeFrag

Premium Member

Better network management

Better network management = less backbone usage. Just recently and article was published here about how data between countries has gone down in percentage. The reason... servers are being moved to more convenient locations instead of far away destinations.

WiseOldBear
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
Premium Member
join:2001-11-25
Litchfield Park, AZ
Motorola MB8600
Synology RT2600ac

WiseOldBear

Premium Member

No I Am Not Buying It!

Thanks for the detailed information.

Isn't it amazing how anyone with a financial gain to be made uses information in questionable ways to create bogeymen that suck the unsuspecting public into their clutches. Greed and avarice are certainly the major motivators for most corporate entities and elected politicians.

"The pursuit of money is the root of all evil." Honesty, concern for humanity and just about everything good gets sacrificed when greed be it personal or corporate become the driving force in business. To paraphrase the Bard, "First we kill all the analysts and MBAs."

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

FFH5

Premium Member

Who is funding Odlyzko

»Deconstructing The Exaflood Myth [51] comments
were told in countless editorials like this 2007 one from an AT&T-backed think tanker that hinted the end of the Internet was perilously close
The above is listed as a reason to be suspect of the AT&T backed study.

Well, to be fair, let's look at who is backing the "everything is fine" study:
»www.dtc.umn.edu/mints/pe ··· ple.html
MINTS projects is supported by the Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and the ADC Chair held by Andrew Odlyzko, which comes from an endowment donated by the ADC Foundation.
Which points to:
»www.dtc.umn.edu/industri ··· st.shtml
ADC
IBM
LSI Logic
3M
Seagate
Sun Microsystems
Symantec
Unisys
Companies that want to continue selling products based on the premise that the internet is just fine and dandy and that no problems are on the horizon.
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

nasadude to NOZIREV

Member

to NOZIREV

Re: price of bandwidth is going up

if inflation is the culprit, why hasn't my comcast broadband connection gone up in price? comcast hasn't changed broadband pricing in 3-4 years (except to add higher cost, higher speed tiers).

are you telling me they are eating the cost of inflation because of competition? because they're nice? because of ...?

insomniac84
join:2002-01-03
Schererville, IN

insomniac84 to NOZIREV

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to NOZIREV
Clearly it's the speculators on the bandwidth futures market causing the increase.
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

nasadude to FFH5

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to FFH5

Re: Who is funding Odlyzko

so your point is what?

the guy is fudging statistics and internet traffic data because he's in the tank with outside interests?

that he's a crooked researcher/academic that is either getting paid under the table or hopes for future remuneration from grateful hardware companies?

as is frequently pointed out but equally frequently ignored, facts have a known liberal bias.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

FFH5

Premium Member

Internet utilization down internationally; BUT NOT in the US

»Deconstructing The Exaflood Myth [51] comments
Between 2007 and 2008, average traffic utilization levels decreased from 31 percent to 29 percent while peak utilization fell from 44 percent to 43 percent.
The above is for international traffic utilization of the internet.

But checking the Telegeography news site, that is NOT TRUE for the US backbone.

»www.telegeography.com/cu ··· ail=html
While utilisation on international links to Europe and Asia fell in 2008, they rose in the US & Canada and Latin American where traffic growth outpaced the deployment of new internet bandwidth.
FFH5

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FFH5 to nasadude

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to nasadude

Re: Who is funding Odlyzko

said by nasadude:

so your point is what?

the guy is fudging statistics and internet traffic data because he's in the tank with outside interests?

that he's a crooked researcher/academic that is either getting paid under the table or hopes for future remuneration from grateful hardware companies?

as is frequently pointed out but equally frequently ignored, facts have a known liberal bias.
Just pointing out that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

If a study backed by AT&T money is AUTOMATICALLY suspect and distrusted, then why should I not suspect a study funded by companies that benefit from the idea that the internet has no bandwidth problems.

jmn1207
Premium Member
join:2000-07-19
Sterling, VA

jmn1207 to nasadude

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to nasadude

Re: price of bandwidth is going up

said by nasadude:

if inflation is the culprit, why hasn't my comcast broadband connection gone up in price? comcast hasn't changed broadband pricing in 3-4 years (except to add higher cost, higher speed tiers).

are you telling me they are eating the cost of inflation because of competition? because they're nice? because of ...?
This statement is absolutely misleading. While my Comcast HSI price has remained the same, Comcast makes up the difference by raising rates on their other services. My TV service will be increasing for the 6th time in 4 years. This time it will be a $5 increase in the package I subscribe to, which is their most feature-rich tier that includes every movie channel and their digital service. Before that it was the increased price in the HD service, the DVR boxes, the "sports tier", and on and on. Comcast prices for stand-alone HSI is ridiculously high at $67.95 as opposed to my current $52.95 with their TV service. No reason for them to raise the prices of their stand-alone service as they are making a fortune at that price. Obviously most Comcast customers are also paying for TV and/or phone service or surely they would have increased the price of their internet service as well.

And, I seem to recall that the lower speed HSI tiers for stand-alone service saw a price increase a few years ago. So Comcast IS increasing their prices, it is just misleading to suggest that their HSI service has not changed prices, when the truth is that Comcast can raise prices elsewhere and this effectively causes a price increase for 95% or more of their customers, no matter how they shift the costs around for marketing purposes. Obviously it is much easier to hide increased prices in the TV service, and just about all cable companies make it difficult to find the exact cost of TV service, while they flash around internet costs all over their site and in advertising.

Don't even get me started on the mysterious fees and cost-defraying BS that I see each month on my bill.

TScheisskopf
World News Trust
join:2005-02-13
Belvidere, NJ

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Re: Who is funding Odlyzko

I know this will come as a completely foreign concept, but instead of attacking the messenger(s), why not try attacking his data and their conclusions? Perhaps, for all your corporate tubthumping, you have data in hand that might show errors in these reports?

And how, in dog's name, do you come to the conclusion that these companies might profit from debunking the exaflood argument?
TScheisskopf

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to FFH5

Re: Internet utilization down internationally; BUT NOT in the US

said by FFH5:

»Deconstructing The Exaflood Myth [51] comments
Between 2007 and 2008, average traffic utilization levels decreased from 31 percent to 29 percent while peak utilization fell from 44 percent to 43 percent.
The above is for international traffic utilization of the internet.

But checking the Telegeography news site, that is NOT TRUE for the US backbone.

»www.telegeography.com/cu ··· ail=html
While utilisation on international links to Europe and Asia fell in 2008, they rose in the US & Canada and Latin American where traffic growth outpaced the deployment of new internet bandwidth.
Let's see the headline:

"Internet traffic is growing fast — but capacity is keeping pace"

Am I the only one noticing the cognitive dissonance between the headline and the above assertions?

And as regards the deployment of new bandwidth, can there possibly be some connection between this present attempt to jam a new pricing model down the throats of customers and the slowdown in deployment of new BB connections, thus resulting in "and just add water" data? Oh, heaven forfend.

And in the case of the cablecos, could some of this be the result of not wanting to split nodes? Case in point: In speaking to a Comcast Bucket Barbarian the other day, he was telling me about a recent node split they finally HAD to do: there was over 900 connections on the loop. He said that there were far worse loops out there, but management was completely disinterested in addressing them, until they became an issue that could go before the BPU.

StevenB
Premium Member
join:2000-10-27
New York, NY
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My company buys circuits globally - I'll tell you right now first hand bandwidth is cheaper now that it's ever been. This is on the business side of the equation, on the residential side of things...

I can only say, they did not predict nor have any sort of 'plan' for future network growth. Sure it's expensive to maintain/manage/upgrade a ISP type network - But money shouldnt be an issue - with all the growth that's been booming since broadband was first introduced in the late 90s.

I seriously think, this is just another way to charge more, for piss-poor management of a company's funds.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

1 edit

1 recommendation

SpaethCo

MVM

This isn't that difficult, people...

Drawing conclusions about access network capacity using numbers from consolidated transit links is a misguided approach. That's like saying there's no congestion on Las Vegas Blvd because I-15 is running free and clear.

The carriers have no problem handling the load because core transmission technology has continued to improve over the last decade. We've gone from OC3/12/48 circuits to GigE, then to 10GigE, now 40G OC768 and 100GigE interfaces are starting to come around. They can use the same physical cabling they started out with, and just swing the endpoints from GigE ports to 10GigE ports and get an instant 1000% boost in capacity.

There has been no similar evolution in either the DOCSIS or DSL delivery platforms. The 38mbps DOCSIS downstream channels are basically the same spec as when they started rolling out HSI over cable in the late 90s. There's been few significant changes to the DSL to improve speeds -- and distance is still the determining factor over your max data rate. DSL does have and advantage in that at least the connection to the DSLAMs can be upgraded to add capacity at the DSLAM level, but to increase capacity out to the subscriber edge means deeper deployments like what Qwest and ATT are doing. On the DOCSIS side, there's no "interface swap" solution -- the only thing that can be done at the moment is to keep doing node splits to get the subscriber per channel densities to continue to come down. DOCSIS3 has been claimed to be the savior of some of these problems, but even though the spec was finalized in 2006 there is still only a single vendor (Casa) with a fully certified CMTS today. Also, the largest benefits of D3 don't come about until you can replace the majority of your installed cable modems on the plant -- so we need to get new hardware in the homes of 10s of millions of people before the benefits of a 300-400% bump in backbone capacity will be realized. (all at significantly greater costs than the transit/carrier link upgrades where they get 1000+% bumps in capacity)

Over the last decade the strategy on the DOCSIS plant has been to set a limit, observe, split capacity where necessary, increase limit, return to "observe" step. What started out as 1.5mbps connections into a 38mbps channel has evolved to 16+mbps connections into a 38mbps channel.

The real problem we are facing is a shift in the type of traffic we are seeing. Most networks are designed around a "burst" utilization model; it's expected for user demands of the network to increase over time and for there to be periods of intense network activity. What hasn't been expected is the shift to long-duration heavy impact utilization brought about by 30+ minute streaming applications or P2P apps that generate traffic constantly.

To sell the situation as impending doom is a bit misguided. There are very few technology related issues that cannot be solved by a combination of time and money. In this case, if the trend for extended long-duration network impact is going to continue, then the provisioning model at the edge is going to need to change, and that's going to bring about new cost structures. At the carrier level things are set -- the carriers charge by either full interface capacity or measured utilization on an interface, so the more you use the more you pay -- the network is self sustaining to handle future growth. On the access side, however, if there will continue to be drivers to force drastic changes in the oversubscription ratios of the infrastructure then there will be a similar drastic change in the cost structure.

IHM
Premium Member
join:2001-12-18
Hamilton, ON

1 recommendation

IHM

Premium Member

the backbone is only one part of a network....

Ummm...the last mile anyone? Lot's of bandwidth on the backbone is no use to an ISP if you have local congestion. It's got to get to your home somehow. That local bandwidth is expensive and limited, especially on cable networks where someone transferring data 24/7 can be very damaging.

FIOS, DOCSIS 3, Wireless clouds will all help, but they as well take money to implement. Where is the return on this investment to come from?

mod_wastrel
anonome
join:2008-03-28

mod_wastrel

Member

"The End...

...(of your arm) is at (your) hand."

So true.

"There is (not) an impending exaflood."

What a difference a word (or two) makes.

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium Member
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
Netgear WNDR3700v2
Zoom 5341J

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KrK

Premium Member

Let me just sum it all up:

Network capacity issues are NOT the reason companies are pushing metered billing/and/or Caps, or other "network management" techniques.

1) It's all about revenue: For some, charging more money for the services they provide now.
2) For some, it's about protecting lucrative services they charge for now being lost to over the internet competition.
3) For some, it's about cutting upgrade expenses to increase profit through lower costs.

However, for just about all, it's a combination of all 3 of the above.

And that is it in a nutshell.

jmn1207
Premium Member
join:2000-07-19
Sterling, VA

jmn1207

Premium Member

Too bad there are far too few corporations that adopt a Mondragon approach to things. It would be one thing if the revenues were distributed more effectively, rather than to boost the portfolios and salaries of the top 1%.
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

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Re: price of bandwidth is going up

please note I said "broadband pricing"; I agree with you 100% on the tv side of things but I purposely stayed away from that because I didn't want to start ranting.

the absolute worst thing (in my mind) comcast has done on the broadband side of things is their $15 "penalty" for not bundling at least one other product (as you pointed out).

I originally started out with @home cable broadband. It was $45/mo and 9M down and about 1M up. When Comcast swooped in and bought out @home, the price stayed the same but speeds dropped significantly, to something like 3M/256k. Then, after some months at this price, I all of a sudden get notice that I either buy their basic cable tv service ($15/mo) or the price of broadband would be raised to $60/mo. I said FU and paid the extra money, but have hated them ever since.
nasadude

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Re: Who is funding Odlyzko

said by FFH5:

Just pointing out that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

If a study backed by AT&T money is AUTOMATICALLY suspect and distrusted, then why should I not suspect a study funded by companies that benefit from the idea that the internet has no bandwidth problems.
I knew you were gandering the goose and all that, but I repeat, facts have a known liberal bias.

the reason ATT is automatically suspect is:

a) they specifically fund astroturf "think tanks" to churn out "studies", op-ed/opinion pieces and other stuff to support industry positions,

b) it has been shown that many past ATT funded studies and articles have been, to put it kindly, pieces of trash

why not do as TScheisskopf suggests and argue on the facts? I can guess why, but I leave that for the reader to figure out.

jmn1207
Premium Member
join:2000-07-19
Sterling, VA

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Re: price of bandwidth is going up

said by nasadude:

please note I said "broadband pricing"; I agree with you 100% on the tv side of things but I purposely stayed away from that because I didn't want to start ranting.
If you read my post you would see that I explained my disagreement with your "broadband pricing" statement. I thought my comment was fairly explicit with regards to the disingenuous nature of Comcast's supposedly stagnant HSI pricing.
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

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Re: the backbone is only one part of a network....

said by IHM:

... Where is the return on this investment to come from?
Ummmmm...the 14.4 million subscribers they are charging $52/mo?

seems to me if a company can't afford capex to expand their facilities to keep up with growth and make a decent profit on $700,000,000/mo revenue, just from the consumer, maybe they shouldn't be in business.

S_engineer
Premium Member
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL

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Re: Let me just sum it all up:

said by jmn1207:

Too bad there are far too few corporations that adopt a Mondragon approach to things. It would be one thing if the revenues were distributed more effectively, rather than to boost the portfolios and salaries of the top 1%.
why do you arbitrarily stop at the top 1%...why not 5 or 10 %? Why does my neighbor have a Cadillac and I only have a Buick? Why is the White House bigger than my house...it's just not fair!

Choices....

StevenB
Premium Member
join:2000-10-27
New York, NY
·Charter

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Re: This isn't that difficult, people...

If there aren't any Vendors selling tech, its impossible to implement it. I 100% agree that replacing end-user modems mta/emta will be a PITA to do. But here is where you and I disagree.

I dont think the congestion issue or the bandwidth crunch/caps have anything to do with the network side of things. I think its the suits in the exec office's making this to be such an issue. Because they simply do not want to allocate funds to networking upgrades. They'd rather have their plant techs/engineers etc.. duct-tape and try and it together.

There are limitations on any network of what it can and cannot handle. Congestion does happen, but there is so many QOS tools available, that it should never be as bad as companies are making it sound.

If Plant Engineers/Techs etc.. were making the decisions, not the suits. I dont think the last mile will be an issue in 2008 and beyond. Nor do i think Caps or PIS, or whatever new scheme of the month is. The only way for MSO's to compete with Fiber or DSL is to spend the money on the network, so users dont leave it.

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

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MVM

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Re: Who is funding Odlyzko

said by FFH5:
MINTS projects is supported by the Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and the ADC Chair held by Andrew Odlyzko, which comes from an endowment donated by the ADC Foundation.
Which points to:
»www.dtc.umn.edu/industri ··· st.shtml
ADC
IBM
LSI Logic
3M
Seagate
Sun Microsystems
Symantec
Unisys
Companies that want to continue selling products based on the premise that the internet is just fine and dandy and that no problems are on the horizon.
Your argument makes absolutely no sense to me.

How do you sell products based on the premise of what we have now is just fine? You sell products because your customer has a problem that your product solves.

jmn1207
Premium Member
join:2000-07-19
Sterling, VA

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Re: Let me just sum it all up:

said by S_engineer:

said by jmn1207:

Too bad there are far too few corporations that adopt a Mondragon approach to things. It would be one thing if the revenues were distributed more effectively, rather than to boost the portfolios and salaries of the top 1%.
why do you arbitrarily stop at the top 1%...why not 5 or 10 %? Why does my neighbor have a Cadillac and I only have a Buick? Why is the White House bigger than my house...it's just not fair!

Choices....
Because such an enormous disparity in incomes helps to erode a civilization of it's middle class, which I think is extremely important for the type of lifestyle I would prefer to enjoy. More of these profits could be spent improving customer service, strengthening the infrastructure proactively, enhancing research and development in pursuit of new and better technology, and to increase the wellness and satisfaction of a majority of their employees, which could distribute this wealth more evenly to help invigorate other businesses throughout the community.

With a more democratic approach to how a business is operated, it seems like a better solution for everyone involved, including the CEO, rather than just the CEO in the usual systems that only care about short-term profit maximization. I'm not suggesting all conglomerates have their revenues completely socialized, but we could all benefit from a more balanced distribution.

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

funchords to SpaethCo

MVM

to SpaethCo

Re: This isn't that difficult, people...

Your message is spot on WRT to the last mile. The Exaflood prediction wasn't a last-mile prediction, though -- it was an Internet prediction. It focused on these long, middle-of-the-network links.

S_engineer
Premium Member
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL

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Re: Let me just sum it all up:

The type of lifestyle that you would prefer shouldn't come at the expense of others. There seems to be mass confusion about the liberties that this country entitles you to, and the entitlements people feel that they should have by living in this country.
This is evident in your statement
"which I think is extremely important for the type of lifestyle I would prefer to enjoy".

Why should anybody but YOU pay for the way that you prefer to live?
It's up to the shareholders to compensate their board members. if you want a voice in that process, then buy some shares instead of just standing there with your hand out!

jmn1207
Premium Member
join:2000-07-19
Sterling, VA

1 edit

jmn1207

Premium Member

said by S_engineer:

Why should anybody but YOU pay for the way that you prefer to live?
I'm concerned about having the choice to live the type of lifestyle I desire. Not everyone can own a castle, and I have no ambition to do so, but I would like my other choice to be something other than a miserable shanty.
said by S_engineer:


It's up to the shareholders to compensate their board members. if you want a voice in that process, then buy some shares instead of just standing there with your hand out!
This is precisely why I mentioned Mondragon in the first place. I think we have it backwards. The board of directors choose a CEO to operate what they see as a cold, faceless, money-generating entity. In the Mondragon model, the employees vote for and elect their management, oftentimes from a pool of their own workers. And this is not some idealistic pipe dream, there is a legitimate, successful working model right now in Spain.

Anyway, my knowledge of such things is obviously minimal, and I am just throwing things out there that intrigued me to see why types of responses I would get. I'm a long way from being set in my ways as far as this topic goes. Thanks for the civil discourse.
Rick5
Premium Member
join:2001-02-06

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to jmn1207

Re: price of bandwidth is going up

Your post simply ignores so many of the things that Comcast gives us at no cost. I was with adelphia a year and a half ago getting 4Mb..today..i'm at 30Mb with powerboost.
Price difference? Zero.

How about all the extra channels..more hd content we're all getting? Price increase? Zero.

Comcast is a company like virtually every other one. In it to make money. They have seen their costs rise along with inflation like every other one as well. Programming costs..going up. How about the big ten network we get now? price increase..zero. How about gas prices to fuel their fleet of what must be thousands of vehicles? Seen a price increase for that since gas hit 4 bucks a gallon? Not me.

No one likes to see prices go up..but I think they are responsible about it and not out of line by any means when you consider all these points. And, it's not out of line at all when you consider you can get virtually everything they have for 4 or 5 bucks a day. Unlimited phone..long distance..dvr..hsi..tv..all the premiums. Five bucks a day.
What else does 5 bucks buy you each day? A gallon of milk maybe? Cup of coffee and a donut perhaps? This service is not expensive when you look at it that way in relation to what we all spend our money on each day.

Anyways..as i've posted before..I support caps and even metered billing. I really think it's come down to that with the way that some people abuse this network and service.
Comcast..nor their customers..are here to support the excessive usage of some people to the tune of 400 and 500 gigs a month. That is unreasonable to expect from a one price..residential service. And, it's time they pay the piper and not expect everyone else to subsidize that.
95% of people don't do it..and won't be affected. The other 5% may be..and that's something they'll have to deal with.
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