connectivity outside the US

[Miguel_A.L_Paraz1]

Sean M. Doran wrote:

Trans-oceanic botlenecks are a real issue, however, and with
the current ICM award about to wind down, the question arises
about who pays for poor connectivity to where.

Yes, the demand far outstrips the supply of bandwidth, we
are having that problem right now. Never mind that the we
can afford the > $60,000/month for a measly T1 to the US -
we are currently back-ordered as there is not enough available
channels across the Pacific.

Assuming that capacity bottlenecks between North America and Asia
becomes an operational issue to North American network operators
(could be), they would obviously be able to adopt one of three
approaches:

There can be two ways of looking at it, from the WWW/content point of
view:

* "They're unlucky enough to be outside North America, but they want
   American content anyway. So they have to suffer with poor
   performance and high prices."
* "These folks outside America don't get to appreciate our content.
   Their numbers are growing. Thus we have to invest in the delivery
   infrastructure."

  -- hide head in sand, hope that other people (namely
     non-Americans) pick up the cost of the no-longer-subsidized
     U.S. half-circuits, and continue increasing their own
     capacity at their own cost.

Our bandwidth here in the Philippines was never subsidized. Still,
we have a good growth rate in terms of ISPs, but not so much in users.

  -- purchase their own connectivity to exchange points
     in Europe (such as KTH in Stockholm and LINX in London --
     note that each of these two exchange points has a root
     nameserver in the same facility)

Many Asian countries have yet to build their own IXPs. We have one
here, but only 5 providers with IPLs are connected. Our company is
working on getting peering agreements with some other local providers
since the IXP is fraught by politics

Assuming that all ISPs here connect at an IX, will a provider buy a
pipe from the US to the Philippines to carry their customer's traffic
faster? How will that be justified?

  -- cut a deal with someone like BT/MCI, UUNET or the like
     to use their trans-oceanic capacity

The third approach is straightforward -- become a customer of
a big global network and trust that customer and other market
pressures will keep them expanding globally such that capacity
issues don't become overwhelming.

The only global network that has a POP here is CWIX. If you
sign up for a CWIX connection from Manila it will not go straight
to the US, but pass through HK. This can be seen as a disadvantage,
though it is cheaper.

The second approach is straightforward too, and is I imagine
what people clamouring for peerings at U.S.-based exhcange points
so that they can be Independent Big Networks should begin planning for.
That is, if you don't want to become a customer of, say, BT/MCI
or UUNET or the like and you don't want to find yourself being
able to reach fewer and fewer locations or more and more likely
to face settlement charges from those big providers, acquiring
independent capacity to remote exchange points is a good idea.

But, the Independent Big Network people will still have to get
their own IPLs - which may end up with BT/MCI, Sprint/Global One,
or AT&T? What's the difference between becoming an IP customer
and just a leased line customer?

Examining this a bit more closely, since undersea capacity is
terribly expensive, when there is adequate capacity available
to a large aggregate of sites people want to get to, there will
be an obvious market for access to that capacity.

You can argue that the undersea capacity pricing model is
vastly different (and I don't know its dynamics, either) -
and it's like investing in real estate properties. For example,
Global One cannot give us a T1 until after our endpoint of the APCN
cable is activated.

Finally, there's the third approach. It might be workable,
but at some point Europeans and Asians will tire of always increasing
the amount of money they put into transoceanic circuits and start
becoming either customers of bigger, cheaper providers (or members
of consortia or associations which accomplish similar cost-savings)

Several companies, including ourselves, are doing just this.

or start coming to the same understanding: access to trans-oceanic
capacity while it continues to be hiddeously expensive should be
paid for at both ends, since both sides benefit.

How do we come up with a settlement model?

Right now the end-user result is that if the US unlimited dial-up user
is accessing a site outside the US, they are actually being subsidized
by the guy on the other side of the ocean who has to pay big bucks for
her/his data pipe. It depends on who "benefits" more - the guy in the
US who is viewing European/Asian content, or the other guy who gets
her/his content published, seen and heard?

So, the answer to the question is, yes, you should be concerned
about performance issues, and yes, you should be working on a tractable
scalable engineering plan for both North American and intercontinental
connectivity, and this should take into account other people's
real and perceived costs.

And more providers should be hauling in their own high-capacity pipes and
putting up their own overseas POPs instead of having the local folks
drag their lines to the US, and charge a lot for slow connections.

[Sean_M_Doran]

"Miguel A.L. Paraz" <map@iphil.net> writes:

There can be two ways of looking at it, from the WWW/content point of
view:

* "They're unlucky enough to be outside North America, but they want
   American content anyway. So they have to suffer with poor
   performance and high prices."
* "These folks outside America don't get to appreciate our content.
   Their numbers are growing. Thus we have to invest in the delivery
   infrastructure."

Of course that leads to:

* We have to worry about international copyright issues as
  overseas ISPs begin duplicating our content to save on
  IPL bandwidth

* We should deploy duplicate servers in other parts of the
  world so that we don't have to deal with the problems of
  shortages of IPL bandwidth

On the other hand I argue that the fundamentally
interesting thing about the Internet is that traffic
patterns shift substantially at little notice through the
development and deployment of new technology. Moreover,
in in Internet whose origins were "every client is also a
server" and where, with proxying and the like, that is
still essentially practical, a strict content:consumer
mindset is a very short-sighted business approach.

But, the Independent Big Network people will still have to get
their own IPLs - which may end up with BT/MCI, Sprint/Global One,
or AT&T? What's the difference between becoming an IP customer
and just a leased line customer?

Independent Big Network people are working on a simple
risk statement: traditional bandwidth-owning telcos are
too slow to keep up in the Internet marketplace,
particularly when they're distracted by what various bits
of deregulation are doing to their traditional income,
creating an opportunity for the Independents either to
thrive on their own or to be strong acquisition targets.

Moreover, one might bet on partnerships with organizations
competing with established telcos on other fronts which
are becoming more like commodity products (most notably
raw bandwidth).

How do we come up with a settlement model?

Ultimately this depends on what everyone's real costs are.
Alot of what is perceived as "cost" is due to
misapplication of technology. A settlement model that
encourages all parties to do the right thing to sustain
the industry's growth is really what's needed.

The problem is getting such a model agreed to and put into
effect other than bilaterally among clever operators.
Hahaha, good luck if there are American lawyers involved.

And more providers should be hauling in their own high-capacity pipes and
putting up their own overseas POPs instead of having the local folks
drag their lines to the US, and charge a lot for slow
connections.

It's coming. The problem is that the people most likely
able to do this are also the people earning half-circuit
revenues from the large numbers of IPLs that would get
aggregated into an IPL where both half-circuits would be
paid by the provider entity. This is especially touchy
when money for one of the half circuits is paid to another
telco.

In this way large capacity-owning telcos are in a bind
about competing with a lucrative revenue stream (IPLs)
whenever they do this and also when they compete against
non-telco Independent Big Networks who might buy IPLs at
market value. To make up for lost revenue (and maybe real
cost) from the internally-deployed IPL, lots of traffic
would have to be aggregated. This kind of massive
overselling of capacity is still somewhat alien to the
managed services mindset and even if it didn't it doesn't
make it all that much easier for them to compete on
"quality of service" profitably just now without some
magic extra-high-quality pricing bullet.

  Sean.