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TheRogueX
join:2003-03-26
Springfield, MO

TheRogueX to baineschile

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to baineschile

Re: Remember When

Uh, 77 TB in one month is more than a little excessive for a residential account. It's flat out ludicrous.

baineschile
2600 ways to live
Premium Member
join:2008-05-10
Sterling Heights, MI

1 recommendation

baineschile

Premium Member

So says you. What about 30TB? 10TB? 500GB? 100GB? Everyones definition of "excessive" varies. Thats why companies started to implement a hard cap.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

1 recommendation

iansltx

Member

I'd draw the line at 10TB, for now, even on gigabit fiber. If you can't colo a box somewhere and get that kind of bandwidth speed, on a good quality network, with that kind of transfer cap, you're probably losing the ISP money and it's abuse.

The number of customers on Verizon's entire network who are classified as abusers (less than 0.001%) shows you just how out of line their usage is with everyone else. If it was 0.1%, or even 0.05%, I can see your point. But when someone is six deviations off the bell curve you've got issues.
BlueC
join:2009-11-26
Minneapolis, MN

BlueC

Member

And that's exactly it.

77TB is insanely outside of what the average user consumes. Even 10TB stands out by quite a bit. My average sub on a 100mbps/100mbps connection consumes somewhere between 20GB-100GB/month. I can take a sample size of around 150 users (each having access to a congestion-free 100mbps connection) and the total downstream consumption in a month is around 6-8TB, of which 10% is all tied to one user (largest consumer).

Obviously average consumption will increase over time, but when you're consuming more than 100x what the average user consumes, it stands out as abuse.

baineschile
2600 ways to live
Premium Member
join:2008-05-10
Sterling Heights, MI

baineschile

Premium Member

My Grandma averages 9b/mo (at least when Comcast had the measuring stick). That means and that does just 900GB uses 100x more than her.

My point is, its all relative (pun on the grandma too). YOU consider 10TB a lot, but apparently this is regular for 45 or so people.

That being said, I agree that it is excessive. I realize though, I am not the ruler of the internet, and everyone uses their service for different reasons; some use it a lot, some just a little. I personally average about 150gb/mo, so I cant really fathom how one household even uses 1TB
Bengie25
join:2010-04-22
Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Bengie25 to iansltx

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to iansltx
Verizon Business is a Tier 1 ISP, they don't pay for bandwidth, people pay them.(applies to most cases)

Bandwidth prices drop 50% year over year. If the cap is 4TB this year, then it should be 6TB next year.

Internet backbone bandwidth is out-pacing Moore's law. It is actually outpacing demand.
BlueC
join:2009-11-26
Minneapolis, MN

BlueC to baineschile

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to baineschile
No, I was explaining that real-world statistics of average consumption is what helps highlight excessive use. Which is what iansltx was also pointing out.

45 users from Verizon's total FiOS subscribers. That's an extremely small percentage of users when you're taking into consideration an entire portfolio of subscribers from a Tier 1 provider.
BlueC

BlueC to Bengie25

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to Bengie25
said by Bengie25:

Verizon Business is a Tier 1 ISP, they don't pay for bandwidth, people pay them.(applies to most cases)

True, however no one is necessarily saying it's about money.
quote:
Bandwidth prices drop 50% year over year. If the cap is 4TB this year, then it should be 6TB next year.
Are you willing to back that up with actual statistics? I haven't seen these "50% annual drops" in transit pricing every consecutive year.

Regardless, if Verizon is being paid for transit services, that would mean their revenue is dropping. Doesn't necessarily prove your point in this case.
quote:
Internet backbone bandwidth is out-pacing Moore's law. It is actually outpacing demand.

Backbone costs are only a fraction of the total costs of delivering internet service to homes. Middle/last-mile is where the majority of costs come into play, and labor costs (ahem... fiber construction) will only go up each year (inflation).
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO

1 recommendation

rradina to BlueC

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to BlueC
20-100GB is quite a wide range. Regardless, 100GB isn't much for anyone streaming a litte HD video over their HSI connection. Most of the day my Internet connection sits around doing absolutely NOTHING. However, I easily use ~150GB/month because I typically rent an HD movie/week through my AppleTV. That right there is about 40GB (5x8GB). Three kids use about 2GB/day with their on-line gaming activities, homework, Facebook, etc. -- that's another 60GB. Add in various downloads to keep machines patched and safe, e-mail, Skype, sporadic YouTube videos and it adds up.

aaronwt
Premium Member
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
Asus RT-AX89

1 recommendation

aaronwt to baineschile

Premium Member

to baineschile
said by baineschile:

My Grandma averages 9b/mo (at least when Comcast had the measuring stick). That means and that does just 900GB uses 100x more than her.

My point is, its all relative (pun on the grandma too). YOU consider 10TB a lot, but apparently this is regular for 45 or so people.

That being said, I agree that it is excessive. I realize though, I am not the ruler of the internet, and everyone uses their service for different reasons; some use it a lot, some just a little. I personally average about 150gb/mo, so I cant really fathom how one household even uses 1TB

1TB is extremely easy to use each month when using online backup services.
Then add a bunch of HD streaming and downloads and it goes up higher.

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

4 recommendations

rebus9 to TheRogueX

Member

to TheRogueX
said by TheRogueX:

Uh, 77 TB in one month is more than a little excessive for a residential account. It's flat out ludicrous.

I agree it's way out there. But where else but telecom can you buy something you can't really use "all of it"?

Buy a full tank of gas but not be allowed to use the last 5 gallons?

Buy a gallon of milk but can't drink the last quart?

Buy a plane ticket but get forced off 300 miles away from your destination?

Pay a toll on the expressway for a 20 mile trip, but must exit at mile 15?

Buy 300 channels of cable, but only be allowed to watch 250 of them?

Buy a book, but aren't allowed to read the last chapter?

If there's a limit, then ISPs should be REQUIRED to tell us what the cap is. No guesswork, no B.S.
Bengie25
join:2010-04-22
Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Bengie25 to BlueC

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to BlueC
"Backbone costs are only a fraction of the total costs of delivering internet service to homes. Middle/last-mile is where the majority of costs come into play, and labor costs (ahem... fiber construction) will only go up each year (inflation)."

But with fiber, bandwidth is virtually an infinite resources on the last mile. Even my ISP says they designed their internal network to have no choke-points and could handle everyone running max speed at the same time.

What they can't handle is everyone hitting the Internet at the same time, but statics becomes your friend for large numbers.

The last-mile infrastructure is a sunk cost, and if done correctly, will not require any upgrades until they have reached the physical limit of the interfaces, which are 1gb for me.

As for the 50% year-over-year, I got that from an interview that Network World did with some large trans-oceanic internet company that said that is what they saw for whole-sale prices. Even they claimed to be increasing 50% year-over-year for the past decade, and back in 2010-ish, they added 19tb/s of bandwidth to one link, and were planning to add almost 30tb/s the next year.

Other market leaders, like Level 3, were saying they expected backbone transit prices to reach $0.40/mbit by 2016-ish.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError to Bengie25

Member

to Bengie25
said by Bengie25:

Bandwidth prices drop 50% year over year.

Internet backbone bandwidth is out-pacing Moore's law. It is actually outpacing demand.

Last I heard/read, bandwith demand was outpacing technological progress and major networks are growing concerned about how their networks' power requirements are increasing much faster than their transit capacity.

It isn't too hard to see why: if you want to double the traffic switching capacity of a monolithic switch IC, you need 4X as many transistors. If you want to stitch those chips together to double capacity in a non-blocking way again, you will need six of them. That's 24X as many transistors, 24X as much space, 24X as much cost and power to produce 4X as much bandwidth on a given process and technology.

Unless they find ways to make networks a lot more efficient before demand growth catches up with existing network and technology headroom, bandwidth will get a whole lot more expensive due to brute-forcing with a whole lot more hardware and power being the only solution.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

1 recommendation

iansltx to aaronwt

Member

to aaronwt
Are you using online backup services?

The one I use (Backblaze) diffs wherever it can. So incremental traffic is actually pretty low. Even with reseeding a backup a few months ago I didn't come close to 1TB.

This month, for example, I've used 119GB so far. I may hit 200GB by the end of the month due to some video uploads and downloads, but that'll be it.

I'm not going to say that 1TB is abuse. But it's not "extremely easy" to get there.
BlueC
join:2009-11-26
Minneapolis, MN

BlueC to Bengie25

Member

to Bengie25
said by Bengie25:

But with fiber, bandwidth is virtually an infinite resources on the last mile. Even my ISP says they designed their internal network to have no choke-points and could handle everyone running max speed at the same time.

What they can't handle is everyone hitting the Internet at the same time, but statics becomes your friend for large numbers.

The last-mile infrastructure is a sunk cost, and if done correctly, will not require any upgrades until they have reached the physical limit of the interfaces, which are 1gb for me.

As for the 50% year-over-year, I got that from an interview that Network World did with some large trans-oceanic internet company that said that is what they saw for whole-sale prices. Even they claimed to be increasing 50% year-over-year for the past decade, and back in 2010-ish, they added 19tb/s of bandwidth to one link, and were planning to add almost 30tb/s the next year.

Other market leaders, like Level 3, were saying they expected backbone transit prices to reach $0.40/mbit by 2016-ish.

You're way too generalized on these statements.

Fiber doesn't magically make bandwidth an infinite resource on the last mile. Equipment is required to light it and there are limitations on total aggregate capacity. Everything is oversubscribed to some extent. Residential obviously far more than other levels of service.

Fiber might make it possible to achieve higher speeds, sure, but there are not infinite fiber strands in the ground currently.

It ain't cheap laying new fiber, that's for sure.
quote:
Other market leaders, like Level 3, were saying they expected backbone transit prices to reach $0.40/mbit by 2016-ish.
Based on what commitment level and which carrier? That's like saying a bottle of wine will cost $20 in 5 years. There are many flavors of transit in the marketplace.
Bengie25
join:2010-04-22
Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Bengie25 to iansltx

Member

to iansltx
"I'd draw the line at 10TB, for now, even on gigabit fiber"

What does that even mean? Data is not the same as bandwidth. 1mbit of bandwidth is equal to 350GB of data, so 10TB is like 30mbit of bandwidth.

Anyway, it sound similar to "My wife watched Twilight 3 times, but 10 time is out-right". Fiber doesn't wear out because you "use it too much".

In fact, infrastructure ages at almost the exact same rate whether it's used or not.

If you're going to watch Twilight 10 times, you're going to have to purchase a movie theatre. Sounds like a good analogy.
Bengie25

Bengie25 to InvalidError

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to InvalidError
said by InvalidError:

said by Bengie25:

Bandwidth prices drop 50% year over year.

Internet backbone bandwidth is out-pacing Moore's law. It is actually outpacing demand.

Last I heard/read, bandwith demand was outpacing technological progress and major networks are growing concerned about how their networks' power requirements are increasing much faster than their transit capacity.

Power is/isn't an issue but that will be part of the next response.

Newer core routers can handle up to 37terabit/s of non-blocking Layer 3 routing. The Internet's peak bandwidth is 100Tb right now. 3 router can currently handle all of the Internet.. this year.

The next thing is that, I general, there have been many break-throughs in just the past 1-3 years. Many of those things have been drastically increased speeds for drastically reduced power.

What was true just a few months ago "power consumption is scaling more linearly per mbit but mbits are scalping exponentially" is no longer true.

Now we got "we can push 8tb/s over long distance for dirt cheap and lower power."

Just a few months back I read about researchers moving 800gb/s over a single fiber using sophisticated equipment, but now someone is selling 8tb/s with an easy to setup design. All in a few months time.

Network tech is moving at a really fast pace.

Even Intel said that 10gb will be integrated into low-end laptops and netbooks because once transistors hit 22nm in chipsets, 10gb becomes very low power and effortless to implement.

For the past 50 years, computers have been outpacing people's wildest dreams and every few years, someone claims gloom-and-doom because of some wall. Every wall has been knocked down thus far.

SSDs will die faster as the transistors become smaller! zomg!.. wait, someone figured out the way around that a few months later.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx to Bengie25

Member

to Bengie25
You made it, not me.

The fact of the matter is that on a less expensive connection like that, there's some oversubscription built in all the way up the line. If you don't have that, you can't turn a profit, and your infrastructure ends up sitting near idle.

I'll give you an analogy back: Wisc. Rapids should build eight-lane roads everywhere because that would allow everyone to go as fast as they want during all hours of the day. And they should keep local taxes the same when doing this. And the state shouldn't increase the gas tax to deal with the cost of building these roads.
88615298 (banned)
join:2004-07-28
West Tenness

88615298 (banned) to rebus9

Member

to rebus9
Seriously you're posting this?

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

rebus9

Member

said by 88615298:

Seriously you're posting this?

Nope.

rchandra
Stargate Universe fan
Premium Member
join:2000-11-09
14225-2105

rchandra to Bengie25

Premium Member

to Bengie25
HAH! Please tell that to Time Warner. They just raised their monthly rates for their Standard service $5. Of course, I'm just being facetious.

ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium Member
join:2005-03-14
Woodstock, CT

ptrowski to rebus9

Premium Member

to rebus9
Those were some of the worst analogies you could have chosen.

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

rebus9

Member

said by ptrowski:

Those were some of the worst analogies you could have chosen.

Then do better.

ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium Member
join:2005-03-14
Woodstock, CT

ptrowski

Premium Member

said by rebus9:

said by ptrowski:

Those were some of the worst analogies you could have chosen.

Then do better.

No because typically analogies suck. The reason your apologies were poor is because you mentioned buying set amounts of product. You are buying a gallon of milk, not a ever flowing stream of milk. Same thing with the book and the x amounts of gallons of gas.

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

rebus9

Member

said by ptrowski:

No because typically analogies suck. The reason your apologies were poor is because you mentioned buying set amounts of product. You are buying a gallon of milk, not a ever flowing stream of milk. Same thing with the book and the x amounts of gallons of gas.

Ok, I can see your point.

So I'll ask it in another way-- what else do we buy where we don't know the actual quantity (or limit) to expect in advance?

Since Verizon isn't publicly declaring a "cap" I won't use that term. (and houkouonchi is almost surely violating the ToS based on what's he's posted at DSLR, so I'm not defending him)

When there are undisclosed (soft) caps, the telco is telling us to take what we want and they'll put the brakes on when they think we've had enough. But we never know when that will be, so we can't budget our usage. My household does a LOT of Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming, most of it in HD, so in the back of my mind I wonder if I'll get the dreaded "abusive user" letter one of these days-- not from Netflix or Amazon, but from Verizon.

I don't have any personal gripe with FIOS, and am very satisfied with the service. But in the back of my mind is always that nagging doubt. It's the uncertainty that I don't like.

ptrowski
Got Helix?
Premium Member
join:2005-03-14
Woodstock, CT

ptrowski

Premium Member

Because then people complain there is a cap. When Comcast had a soft cap people were up in arms. They defined it at 250 GB and people were up in arms as well.
No gripes here about Fios, would love to be able to get it. I am not a fan of caps at all, but I think his set up with what he has explained is borderline pushing it for a residential line.
Bengie25
join:2010-04-22
Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Bengie25 to BlueC

Member

to BlueC
"Fiber doesn't magically make bandwidth an infinite resource on the last mile."

No, but think of this setup

500 port chassis with 5 100gb uplinks, that plug into a non-blocking router that has 36tb/s of full-duplex routing speed. Yes, these are real things.

With this setup, you can give 36,000 people full-speed non-blocking 1gb fiber connections.

I don't think 36,000 people could make use of that much bandwidth, but there you have it.

But now you need a trunk?! No worries, you can get some stuff that will take 100gb ports and super-channel multiplex them over a single fiber for an aggregate bandwidth of 8tb/s over 800km.

I think 8tb/s is plenty fast for 36,000 people.

But really, most of their links are idle most of the time. A small city of 36k probably could only use 100gb right now.

Last mile is crazy easy to get full speed. My ISP claims full non-blocking internal network, they just don't offer 1gb speeds right now. We have dedicated 1gb infrastructure, as in I have a strand of fiber that goes from my house back to my CO and no one else makes use of that fiber in any way.

It can be done and is practical with current 100mb speeds, and even slightly higher. In a few years, probably 1gb speeds to.
BlueC
join:2009-11-26
Minneapolis, MN

BlueC

Member

I see you're not much of a finance guy...

The technology might exist, but that doesn't mean it's cost-effective.
Bengie25
join:2010-04-22
Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Bengie25

Member

Selective reading much? That's why I said " small city of 36k probably could only use 100gb right now."

100gb is quite easily mutiplexed with 10x10gb. That also means your average per chassis uplink consumption is only about 1.3gb/s for 500 1gb ports.

No matter how you try to roll it, my ISP sells dedicated non-blocking bandwidth to their trunk for all connections, and they do not have congestion issues on their trunk. Speeds up to 200mb.

It can be done and is being done, just not at 1gb speeds. Yes, 200mb will cost me $300/m, but that's because it's a local privately owned ISP that turned down the broadband stimulus.

And no matter what we argue right now, bandwidth costs are approaching 0 really fast. In 5-8 years, any arguments about bandwidth costs will be moot.
BlueC
join:2009-11-26
Minneapolis, MN

BlueC

Member

said by Bengie25:

And no matter what we argue right now, bandwidth costs are approaching 0 really fast. In 5-8 years, any arguments about bandwidth costs will be moot.

Yet, you base this all off of an article from a few years ago. Regardless of what your ISP tells you, it's helpful to understand what actually is going on in the industry, rather than make assumptions. Unless your ISP is disclosing specific details of their operation (which is unlikely), I wouldn't use them as an example. You'd be surprised how much oversubscription takes place, even with commercial services.

Transit costs have leveled out with a number of carriers, meaning they're not dropping much more. The consolidation of the market in general (Level 3 and GBLX comes to mind) means there will be less competition down the road, which is not necessarily a good thing.

I don't see how you justify the statement of bandwidth costs approaching zero. Are you suggesting that Tier 1 networks will start providing transit services at no cost? No port charge? No cross connect fees from the DC? Is equipment going to be free now?

Everything comes at a cost. Engineering labor is not cheap, that will only increase over time.