http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/business/30pipes.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
-Hank
I think it began a while ago, but I suspect it'll increase. There's now two trans-Russian terrestrial systems, and more investment in Asia - Europe cables. Initially the capacity will be used for redundancy and to shorten latencies (ie. just to go around the other way and because it's quicker than going US->Atlantic->Europe from Asia).
I don't think any of this will be because of sinister reasons, just for good engineering reasons and probably just to guarantee, without a doubt, that your circuit does NOT go through One Wilshire!
MMC
Hank Nussbacher wrote:
Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:
I don't think any of this will be because of sinister reasons, just for good engineering reasons and probably just to guarantee, without a doubt, that your circuit does NOT go through One Wilshire!
Just to ensure no confusion - this was just about redundancy and diversity to ensure that not all your circuits go through OW, which is a common US West Coast issue.
MMC
I don't think any of this will be because of sinister reasons, just for good engineering reasons and probably just to guarantee, without a doubt, that your circuit does NOT go through One Wilshire!
What exactly would be sinister about moving traffic through routes that didn't intersect the U.S. border?
-j
Hank Nussbacher wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/business/30pipes.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
Pardon my ignorance here, but isn't this more of a case of traffic
growing outside of the USA which means that traffic within the USA
represents a smaller share of the total internet traffic ?
Did western europe ever really have a primary route via the USA to reach
asia ? (I realise that during the cable cuts in middle east last year,
traffic might have been rerouted via USA but this would be a temporary
situation).
There may be political issues since the USA decided that there was to be
no privacy with regards to traffic flowing to/from non-USA countries (so
the 3 letter acronym orgs could spy/record that traffic without
warrant). However, I am not sure if other transit providers would have
built cables designed to avoid transit via the USA since then. It takes
time to build a cable.
Jamie A Lawrence wrote:
What exactly would be sinister about moving traffic through routes that didn't intersect the U.S. border?
Nothing if the reason isn't to avoid the US to prevent interception. ie. my point was the people are doing this for engineering reasons not political ones as was implied by that article.
We have connectivity to Japan to reduce latency to Asia from Australia (ie. remove the trombone via the US) - this is purely an engineering/commercial decision to improve latency.
MMC
Pardon my ignorance here, but isn't this more of a case of traffic
growing outside of the USA which means that traffic within the USA
represents a smaller share of the total internet traffic ?
I suspect so - especially with CDN/Content providers pushing traffic out to the edge it means that we (the rest of the world) don't pay so much to haul it back from Northern America! (Thanks to those who are doing it - you know who you are and we love you for it!).
Japan has 80% of it's internet traffic as domestic, as do a lot of Asian countries. As China, Korea and others grow their domestic volumes the %age coming from the USA is a lot less.
Did western europe ever really have a primary route via the USA to reach
asia ? (I realise that during the cable cuts in middle east last year,
traffic might have been rerouted via USA but this would be a temporary
situation).
Most Asian providers (at least Northern Asia) use USA, Atlantic path to get to Europe. The capacity going Westt isn't that high in comparision, so the extra latency hit is well offset by the much reduced cost. My point in my first post is that this is changing rapidly as people (eg Reliance/Flag) are building more capacity West to Europe plus the Trans-Russian terrestrial (eg. TEA) are going for fast (and expensive
For instance, out of Australia we have a single, old cable going West out of Perth to Singapore (SEA-ME-WE3) which allows only low speed circuits, but we've got almost 4 (as of next year) cables going North and East out of Sydney. So most Europe traffic to/from Australia is via the USA.
MMC
For instance, out of Australia we have a single, old cable going West out of
Perth to Singapore (SEA-ME-WE3) which allows only low speed circuits, but
we've got almost 4 (as of next year) cables going North and East out of
Sydney. So most Europe traffic to/from Australia is via the USA.
Which is not a political problem, as Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
Great Britain and the USA share Echelon and other intelligence
systems... Russia, France and Germain might have other feelings about
traffic going through the USA or UK when it is not directed to one of
above.
Rubens
Nothing if the reason isn't to avoid the US to prevent interception. ie.
my point was the people are doing this for engineering reasons not
political ones as was implied by that article.
I don't see it sinister even if someone wants to avoid US due to
interception. But, yes I agree people are doing for engineering reasons.
But, it still is impossible in many asses, as ISPs in many countries are
still not cooperating with each other.
But, it still is impossible in many asses, as ISPs in many countries are
still not cooperating with each other.
But, it still is impossible in many cases,
Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:
Most Asian providers (at least Northern Asia) use USA, Atlantic path to
get to Europe. The capacity going Westt isn't that high in comparision,
so the extra latency hit is well offset by the much reduced cost.
I take it voice would have priority for use of the existing europe-asian
links ?
When there were a number of cable cuts in middle east last year, I
remember BBC mentioning that internet access to asia was much slowed due
(this was significant to those companies who had outsourced a lot of
stuff from europe to India). I guess this would have been more of media
hype than reality ?
For instance, out of Australia we have a single, old cable going West
out of Perth to Singapore (SEA-ME-WE3) which allows only low speed
circuits,
Was there any thought about building cables to singapore from darwin now
that it has had fibre links to the rest of australia for over a decade ?
Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:
Most Asian providers (at least Northern Asia) use USA, Atlantic path to
get to Europe. The capacity going Westt isn't that high in comparision,
so the extra latency hit is well offset by the much reduced cost.I take it voice would have priority for use of the existing europe-asian
links ?
Probably - voice is pretty small in the scheme of things (my estimate is less than 1% of used capacity out of Australia (used not lit)).
But, from Australia to Europe the difference in latency East vs West may not make a LOT of difference to voice where 150ms-200ms one way isn't too bad.
When there were a number of cable cuts in middle east last year, I
remember BBC mentioning that internet access to asia was much slowed due
(this was significant to those companies who had outsourced a lot of
stuff from europe to India). I guess this would have been more of media
hype than reality ?
I suspect it did slow it down - I was talking more Northern Asia (China, Japan, Korea) than India.
Companies who relied on purchasing, corporate links between India and Europe (for example) would probably be happy to pay the premium for low latency path direct, whereas IP transit providers want cheap, bulk capacity that the Northern Pacific routers offer.
For instance, out of Australia we have a single, old cable going West
out of Perth to Singapore (SEA-ME-WE3) which allows only low speed
circuits,Was there any thought about building cables to singapore from darwin now
that it has had fibre links to the rest of australia for over a decade ?
Ha! Darwin has the incumbent only. It's cheaper to go around the world than from Australia to Darwin.
Perth will be the place again as there is a reasonable amount of trans-Australian capacity across the Nullabour. Although a Darwin break out from such a cable would be welcome, but the small population in the Northern Territory maybe doesn't make it viable unless a big mining /oil drilling/gas firm wants a lot of capacity.
Hopefully the extension of the Singapore->Indonesia cable Matrix have/are building to Perth will happen in 2010/11.
Although, personally, I'd love to see a Perth-Chennai cable given what's going on in India.
MMC
Yes, I think so. If I remember correctly, before FLAG started laying cables, there was no terrestrial route to Asia from Europe that didn't involve North America.
Joe
Other cable systems predated FLAG (at least for voice).
SEA-ME-WE predates FLAG by almost a decade. I'm sure some digging would reveal a bit more on that path either submarine or terrestrial.
MMC
speaking from the middle east, i have been advising my clients against
co-location/hosting in the US due to potential political issues.
the current US policy of "detain first, question later" has the potential for
serious customer relations issues, should one of the TLAs become interested
in your data.
oddly enough, the ISP's in the region have not caught on to the potential
winfall of providing cost effective hosting locally, so therefore, the bulk
of the hosting for companies in the region is primarily done in the US, then
in EU, then, maybe locally.
if you drive down Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, and check where the hosting is
for 90% of the URL's on the billboards (even those with .ae domains), you will
find that they follow the above pattern.
a primary example is that of du.ae, one of the only two incumbent/dual-opoly
providers for the UAE, hosts its own website and customer portal in Canada,
even though it has a perfectly fine data center (if not more than one) in Dubai.
UAE/Dubai is a major landing point for many asian/indian ocean fibers, but
there is no equivilent of One Wilshire/60 Hudson/etc.
so, as the data finds more and better direct routes to the end user, reducing
the need to route through the US, there is still a penchant for hosting the
primary data there.
The political implications are interesting; the UAE has been more than keen
to attract fibreoptic infrastructure, but setting up an IX would encourage
local networks to interconnect without going via either Etisalat or Du,
which has consequences both for their quasi-official monopoly and for the
government's mass Internet filtering policy.
There are (as you know Bob) already office developments that are allowed to
have their own access to $World, and presumably there are networks in them;
if they were allowed to interconnect with each other and with other
networks, who knows? anarchy, cats and dogs making love in the streets, etc.
Interestingly, other emerging markets did it the opposite way round. Kenya,
frex, established an IX long before it had even the hope of submarine cable
access. Now, with the new East African projects, there is talk of an
Indian-style call centre/backoffice boom.
* Jean-François Mezei:
Did western europe ever really have a primary route via the USA to reach
asia ?
It depends where you buy transit from. For instance, I see Baidu
through AT&T, and the traffic is routed through the U.S. Some
Singaporean banks and a few Koran government sites are routed through
Level3, also via the U.S West coast. For sites in Thailand and Vietnam,
the picture is a bit unclear (no visible IP hop in the U.S.).
On another network, I reach Baidu through Telia, and it's still routed
through the U.S. West coast.
Both networks appear to see IIJ through a peering in San Jose.
Anyway, at times, the more apt question would have been: Is Europe
reachable from Europe without crossing the U.S.?
I can't read the NYT story, but it seems highly unlikely to me that risk
of eavesdropping on behalf of democratically elected governments is a
factor in public Internet routing decisions.
> oddly enough, the ISP's in the region have not caught on to the potential
> winfall of providing cost effective hosting locally, so therefore, the bulk
> of the hosting for companies in the region is primarily done in the US,
> then in EU, then, maybe locally.The political implications are interesting; the UAE has been more than keen
to attract fibreoptic infrastructure, but setting up an IX would encourage
local networks to interconnect without going via either Etisalat or Du,
which has consequences both for their quasi-official monopoly and for the
government's mass Internet filtering policy.
there is an exchange http://emix.ae, however, when i last interacted with
them several years ago, it was a relatively closed club. that, and the actual
exchange is located in Dubai (i think), which will require the arrangement of
transit from the fiber drops (in Fujerah) to Dubai, at whatever rates etisalat
(maybe du) decide to charge.
the government filtering is not out of line with others in the region, and
for the most part, doesn't hit political or religious sites, mostly porn,
or sites that are reported to have porn (facebook/myspace/etc have all had
their turn at being blocked, and then unblocked).
There are (as you know Bob) already office developments that are allowed to
have their own access to $World, and presumably there are networks in them;
if they were allowed to interconnect with each other and with other
networks, who knows? anarchy, cats and dogs making love in the streets, etc.
nah, the perception that it is some kinda quasi-moral, quasi-authoratarian
issue is wrong. its about money, period. they currently actively block
anything VoIP related, and at points in the past, i ran into etisalat blocking
access to sites containing voip-related forums/etc.
generally the blockage is either for preserving their cash-flow (ie, no VoIP),
or reactions to local-culture complaints about content, which allows them
to maintain the high-moral ground with the local population, as "outsiders"
wouldn't defend the local-culture.
Interestingly, other emerging markets did it the opposite way round. Kenya,
frex, established an IX long before it had even the hope of submarine cable
access. Now, with the new East African projects, there is talk of an
Indian-style call centre/backoffice boom.
yep. as i was saying, the middle east region, with all of its potential
capital, is overly protective of its incumbents to allow any kind of real
competition.
having lived here for some time, this tends to be true in alot of other market
segments as well.
if anyone from du or etisalat wishes to speak up and correct my impressions,
please do.
Fiber opic capacity from to Europe to Asia via the African cost has always been quite slim by TransAtlantic standards. As I recollect, you have FLAG, SWM3, and SWM4. Those systems can push multi-terabits. Capacity is not fundamentally the problem, but rather the lack of competition.
Also you need a vibrantly competitive local loop market in these countries to drive undersea capacity demand. You don't have that yet, although it is emerging in countries like India.
Regards,
Roderick S. Beck
Director of European Sales
Hibernia Atlantic
Other cable systems predated FLAG (at least for voice).
The qualifier might be important.
As should have been obvious from all the IIRCs and related qualifiers in my note, I wasn't in Europe at the time I started paying attention to these things. However, in other parts of the world, circuits provisioned and planned for voice traffic growth started to become effectively full as soon as there was demand for circuits much bigger than an E1.
As an example, PacRimEast still had capacity in the late 90s, strictly speaking. But given the difficulty in ordering anything other than E1s on it at that time, did it really exist as a terrestrial option for New Zealand ISPs trying to send packets to the US? There was a lot of satellite transmission sold around that time on PanAmSat, IntelSat and Loral transponders, and it's not as if anybody was really using satellite out of choice. There are only so many discrete E1s you can comfortably inverse-mux together before it's really not worth bothering.
The timelines are no doubt different, since Europe experienced a giant boom in Internet demand and infrastructure while smaller markets like New Zealand were still preoccupied with X.25. However, the original question was whether there had ever been a time during which Europe had no option but to cross oceans to get to Asia, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case.
Perhaps someone who actually knows this stuff can throw some facts into the thread and put a stop to my wild speculation.
SEA-ME-WE predates FLAG by almost a decade. I'm sure some digging would reveal a bit more on that path either submarine or terrestrial.
The contract to build SEA-ME-WE-4 was signed in March 2004, according to their web page.
SEA-ME-WE-3 was commissioned in March 2000 in India, according to Wikipedia.
The Europe-Asia segment of FLAG was lit in the mid-1990s.
Joe