how-to block ads
|
|
Share Topic
 |
 |
|
|
4 edits | reply to AKUSA49
Re: Is GCI.net misleading customers? Yes, GCI is overcharging customers and they have been on their unbundled tiers for a very long time. Now GCI wants to overcharging the rest by setting limits on ultimate package tiers that previously were labeled as "unlimited downloads". I've been having an academic argument with koolman2 for awhile, but I thought I'd post the more revealing information about how GCI is ripping off residential customers
As an academic argument let's compare what data transfer is possible vs. what GCI now expects customers to use on it's "unlimited downloads" tiers. lol
1 Mbit = 1,000,000 bits
1,000,000 bps * 60 = 60,000,000 bpm
60,000,000 bpm * 60 = 3,600,000,000 bph
3,600,000,000 bph * 24 = 86,400,000,000 bpd
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that we have a baseline measure of the total data transfer possible from a 1Mbps line PER DAY, lets convert bits to bytes and gigabytes.
8 bits = 1 byte
86,400,000,000 bits / 8 bits = 10,800,000,000 bytes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now let's convert this to gigabytes
1,000,000,000 bytes = 1GB
10,800,000,000 bytes / 1,000,000,000 bytes = 10.8 GB
This means that 10.8GB of data transfer is possible with a 1Mbps connection operating 24/7 PER DAY.
NOTE: This figure doesn't take into account network overhead or other loss.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ultimate package speed tiers.
»www.gci.com/forhome/internet/ult···rnet.htm
(Total Throughput possible PER DAY)
4Mbps = 10.8 * 4 = 43.2 GB
8Mbps = 10.8 * 8 = 86.4 GB
10Mbps = 10.8 * 10 = 108.0 GB
12Mbps = 10.8 * 12 = 129.6 GB
(Total Throughput possible PER MONTH)
Assume 30 days = 1 month
4Mbps = 43.2 * 30 = 1296 GB = 1.296 TB
8Mbps = 86.4 * 30 = 2592 GB = 2.592 TB
10Mbps = 108.0 * 30 = 3240 GB = 3.240 TB
12Mbps = 129.6 * 30 = 3888 GB = 3.888 TB
Now this is what GCI expects its customers to use.
4Mbps = 40 GB
8Mbps = 60 GB
10Mbps = 80 GB
12Mbps = 100 GB
GCI expected utilization factor (actual/possible usage)
40 / 1296 = 0.0308 = 3.08 %
60 / 2592 = 0.0231 = 2.31 %
80 / 3240 = 0.0246 = 2.46 %
100 / 3888 = 0.0257 = 2.57 %
It should be no surprise that as technology continues to develop the true costs of broadband have continued to fall.
(it costs well less than .01 per 1GB)
Given the true cost of bandwidth today , GCI's forced bundling, and the price it's asking this is pathetic.
Some might choose to ignore it or want to be a water carrier for GCI and similar US ISP, but advertising a service and expecting less than 3% usage is overbilling IMHO. It's overcharging, and GCI and other US ISP can get away with thanks to franchise agreements that allow ISP to retain a regional monopoly. It's also manipulative because the general population doesn't understand IT and can be easily duped into believing whatever they're told to believe by an ISP. | |
| Null, You don't seem to understand the first thing about the telecom industry.
Where do you come up with $.01 per Gigabyte? I assume from either from an article you read regarding large CDN customers or some little web hosting type setup.
First of all transit is purchased by the Mbit per second not in the volume purchased. GCI being such a tiny little carrier is probably paying about $10-$20 per Mbit per second for transit. Don't forget because of overhead and the spiky nature of usage they have to purchase about double what is actually being used most of the time.
Now the important part, those prices (which are greater than $.01 per gigabyte) are what they are paying to hand over traffic in Seattle. Those costs are insignificant rounding errors to GCI. The real costs are in operating and maintaining the infrastucture in Alaska and operating the undersea cables connecting alaska to Seattle. The price they are paying for bandwidth once they get to Seattle are insignificant rounding errors.
You are comparing Apples to Steak with your $.01 per gigabyte nonsense.
I do not work for GCI I am just a customer and clearly know a lot more about this than you do. | |
4 edits | said by noname10:Null, You don't seem to understand the first thing about the telecom industry. Your opinion.
said by noname10:Where do you come up with $.01 per Gigabyte? I assume from either from an article you read regarding large CDN customers or some little web hosting type setup. You're welcome to try and discredit Dave Burstein editor at dslprime.com. Mr Burstein most recently wrote in 2008 that the cost to provide 1GB of transfer to the end user was hovering at around "4-7 cents". He is in a position to know ISP costs firsthand including smaller regional ISP. Two years have passed since then and yes, Moore's law does apply.
»stopthecap.com/2008/08/04/fronti···five-gb/
For Ultimate Package broadband subscribers, maintenance costs of regional infrastructure are already factored into the $100/mo price you pay for the Ultimate Package. GCI internet services are provided over the same hybrid coax/fiber infrastructure as cable tv. Now you may be able to argue that the .01 per GB cost could be marginally higher for GCI or ACS because they have additional costs to maintain their undersea cables and termination points, but it isn't going to be that much more as GCI needs to maintain those cables for its highly profitable long distance and national wireless service plans. Undersea cable expenses are shared amongst all of GCI's services that use that infrastructure. Nice try 
said by noname10:First of all transit is purchased by the Mbit per second not in the volume purchased. I am well aware of this. If you lease an OC-3, OC-48, OC-192 etc there is a finite limit of transfer possible. From there, you could have transit costs. You have dedicated traffic, and shared traffic that is portioned by a utilization formula by each ISP for specific services. My earlier post argued GCI's expected utilization for advertised residential services. I did not delve into an argument of backhaul other than to briefly note that it should cost around .01 per GB from end to end. You may choose to ignore the reality of the situation, but GCI expecting less than 3% utilization of residential services is a ripoff. Any argument you make trying to defend GCI on 3% utilization being acceptable is an argument of semantics or subterfuge on your behalf.
GCI and ACS now maintain their own cables, so they don't lease transit capacity on an undersea cable, but do retain maintenance costs. They may have some additional traffic costs if they do not have a peering arrangement in place at POP where they link to NSP, but these costs are minimal because many NSP offer peering at POP and prices are competitive amongst NSP (prices continue to fall).
said by noname10: GCI being such a tiny little carrier is probably paying about $10-$20 per Mbit per second for transit. I highly doubt this. GCI no longer has a middleman to pay a toll charge (undersea cable) and have not had this expense for a long time. They can peer directly at a large POP (seattle) and get cheap bandwidth like any other ISP or carrier.
said by noname10: Don't forget because of overhead and the spiky nature of usage they have to purchase about double what is actually being used most of the time. Yes and this is the same for any ISP or wireless provider, not just GCI.
said by noname10:Now the important part, those prices (which are greater than $.01 per gigabyte) are what they are paying to hand over traffic in Seattle. If it is greater for GCI, it's not by much. Let's assume GCI's $.02 cost per gigabyte. Let's even be overly generous and make it $.03-.05 cents. GCI's total cost per residential subscriber assuming 100GB of bandwidth consumed is no more than $5 (.05 x 100). GCI is making money hand over fist.
said by noname10:Those costs are insignificant rounding errors to GCI. The real costs are in operating and maintaining the infrastucture in Alaska and operating the undersea cables connecting alaska to Seattle. The price they are paying for bandwidth once they get to Seattle are insignificant rounding errors. Now this is the first sensible thing you've said. However, you clearly are ignoring that infrastructure maintenance costs are shared amongst GCI's many services. Cable tv, GCI's main source of residential business? It's provided over the same coax/fiber infrastructure. local phone (POTS)? It can be provided FTTN (same fiber) to a wiring cabinet. long distance? same as local.
You also seem to casually ignore that GCI made a complete digital transition and that cleared up a ton of spectrum that previously was held by its analog video/cable tv service. That move right there extended the life of GCI's existing infrastructure for quite some time.
said by noname10:You are comparing Apples to Steak with your $.01 per gigabyte nonsense. Again, your opinion and you've clearly not shown any real or factual information to present a counter argument.
said by noname10:I do not work for GCI I am just a customer and clearly know a lot more about this than you do. Well I hear that astroturfing has its perks. How is that working out for you? lol I know, I know, you're just a "concerned citizen". | |
| reply to noname10
noname10,
I would like very much to see you debate Omar Sultan of Cisco Systems.
»blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/comme···f_moore/
March 24, 2009
Networking: Delivering More by Exceeding the Law of Moore
Doug and I were having an interesting conversation the other day, which I thought was worth sharing….
In 1965 Gordon Moore postulated in a paper that transistor density would double approximately every two years. We’ve heard people question why networking does not follow Moore’s Law, presuming that it is behind the curve. It is easy for those without the domain expertise in any particular technology or IT area to try to force fit Moore’s Law in as a catch-all measuring stick for technology evolution. So, let’s take a look at the evolution of networking contrasted with the predictable transistor densities of Moore’s law.
We have to pick a starting point, so we’ll start with 1994, it’s fifteen years ago and gives us enough iterations of Moore’s Law to see if there is a noticeable trend or not. In 1994 Cisco started shipping the Catalyst 5000 series of modular LAN switches- it had a 1.2Gb/s backplane based on a shared bus and had modules supporting 12-port 100Mb Ethernet and 24-port 10Mb Ethernet. We will baseline all assumptions on a 1994 starting point with a 1.2Gb/s backplane. We will double the performance every two years on the Moore’s Law row, and track historical performance of Cisco’s networking products on the Cisco Switching Row.
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
Moore’s Law
Backplane (Gb) 1.2 2.4 4.8 9.6 19.2 38.4 76.8 153.6
Cisco Switching
Backplane (Gb) 1.2 3.6 32 256 256 720 1440 7200
If networking followed Moore’s Law backplane capacities would be around 150Gb today as opposed to the 7.2 Terabit that is shipping on the Nexus 7000. Networking outperformed Moore’s Law by a factor of 47x.
Where did Moore go wrong? Simply put, he didn’t. The issue is not Moore’s Law, it’s that Moore’s Law applies to transistor densities, not to I/O speed. I/O speed is gated on a subtly different set of variables, somewhat linked to transistor density (improves processing capacity on chip), but more importantly linked to I/O pin density on the package and the ability to generate clean signal over the wires on the circuit board.
Generating clean signal on the wire, depends on the signal to noise ratio of the medium. So let’s look at two mediums: Circuit Boards and External Cables:
Circuit Boards: On circuit boards we can hardwire the traces and we manage the cross-talk and noise. Today we run a variety of speeds on copper traces depending on the length of the hardwired trace but it usually is around 3.125Gb/s per transmission lane (used in switch fabric design and XAUI/XGMII interfaces). The shorter the wire the stronger a signal can be received for less power input and we tune wattage to keep power efficient.
Cables: In networking we are always trying to preserve the investment in the standards our customers have deployed that support our infrastructure. i.e. if we can reasonably support a new transport speed on a pre-existing medium that is commonly deployed it is great for everyone. It tends to be that the faster we want to transmit data the more ‘clean up’ we need to do to compensate for high noise on older cabling mediums. We compensate by adding buffers and digital signal processors to the PHY interfaces, this takes more power, and adds latency, so we have to balance the power and latency costs against the benefit of supporting installed-base cabling. Often this results in a variety of media types being supported with variable latency and power draw rates between media types and this feels confusing.
Net-net: Link speeds will not directly follow Moore’s law, but more or less align to it. Networking backplane capacity will continue to track well ahead of Moore’s Law on a linear extrapolation. Transistor density little to do with signal-to-noise ratio on different physical cabling types, it has a little bit to do with DSP efficiency, and has nothing to do with preserving a customers investment in structured cabling.
In summary, network performance has generally been significantly super-linear to the performance rates predicted if they tracked to Moore’s Law. However, singular link-speed has been roughly inline with Moore’s Laws predicted performance and future 40Gb and 100Gb Ethernet interfaces will prove this out once again.
Omar Sultan Posted by Omar Sultan at 06:38PM PST | |
| reply to Anon
Re: Is GCI.net misleading customers? said by noname10:Oh my god you are so ignorant on the topic you don't even understand the difference between transport and transit. OC 192's and OC'3 have nothing to due with transit. Those are transport circuits. GCI and ACS own and operate OC 192's ETC for TRANSPORT to the lower 48. They purchase TRANSIT from other carriers in Seattle. I never equated transport to transit, you made that assumption. I simply implied that GCI and ACS no longer have to pay exorbitant costs to another party to get their traffic to the lower 48. Where and who they peer with is where transit costs come into play.
said by noname10:I'm not going to argue with you. I understood more about this when I was 12 years old than you do now. Keep crying. The only thing you seem to understand is parsing passages. | |
2 edits | reply to Anon
said by noname10:LOL you idiot. I just briefly looked at the link to the Cisco blog. I knew it wouldn't back up your claims and not only that it's not even on the same topic. Router and backplane capacity have nothing to due with a HFC system. Dude you're are truy and ignorant fool that doesn't know dick about this topic. Jumping to conclusions and parsing topics again. HFC has to terminate someplace and that's at the headend. What does that CMTS connect to? Switching capacity does apply. Further again, you casually ignore the main point of the blog, that networking technology is advancing much faster than Moore's Law. This makes it possible to reduce costs while increasing network capacity.
It's funny, you always know someone is losing an argument when they lose self control and resort to personal attacks. | | |
|
|
