> FWIW, I recently heard someone ask the question - "how do you go to your
> investors and tell them you need more money for more bandwidth because you
> don't want to efficiently manage your existing capacity?"
>
> This is the business case for QoS, IMHO.
>
> Irwin
Which costs more, wholesale, raw bitpipes or qualified
engineering talent to create/police the policies needed
to maintain QoS?
--bill
That's the $64k question.
>From what I've seen, there isn't a simple answer. In places where bandwidth
is exorbantantly expensive (such as outside the United States), simply over
provisioning isn't an acceptable answer.
It might make more sense to ask "Why is bandwidth so cheap (and getting cheaper so fast) in the US?" The simple answer is: Moore's law, competition (leading to a "fiber glut") and economies of scale.
If you're across an ocean from the US, you have to factor in the cost of running underwater cable.
Depends on the terrain, and the rights of way you might have to
purchase, but it's not uncommon for under-sea cable to be cheaper
km for km than terrestrial cable.
This is especially true in sparsely-populated island countries
where target markets are on the coast, and where you can drop
in for regen on land to avoid having to do it under the water [1].
I have heard of people ploughing fibre into riverbeds to extend
coastal under-sea networks inland, rather than doing conventional
in-ground builds.
Joe
[1] the expensive bits of under-sea deployment are at landing points,
and in the shallow waters approaching them. However, powering active
optics under the water involves dropping copper into the water to
carry DC, and upgrading regen equipment deployed at depth is far more
annoying than doing it on land.
Couldn't prove it by me... We were quoted $30,000/month for an E1 to Bonaire (Netherlands Antilles). Every part of Bonaire is on the coast (max distance on land is about 4km). Nice hunk of fiber running over to Curacao (30 miles) then on to Miami. Nobody seems to know how to quote a circuit over that fiber, though, other than the ISP on Curacao who quoted $30,000/month.
> If you're across an ocean from the US, you have to factor in the cost of
> running underwater cable.
If that is the case, why is it almost the same cost, if not more
expensive, to get a LA<>NY OC3 then a NY<>LND STM1?
Underwater cable isn't the only factor, and probably isn't the primary factor, but it is a factor. When you're across the ocean, other factors + UWCable > other factors alone.
