Hmm. It was interesting to read the various replies both on the list and
personal. A number of people pointed out, rightly, that I'm thinking of the
USA. That's true. They further gave examples of the exhorbitant costs that
people elsewhere in the world pay for connections. While I certainly
understand the desire to use some form of QoS to squeeze every bit of
capacity from expensive skinny pipes, I believe that it is wrong to try to
use a technological solution (usually poorly understood and implemented) to
solve what is primarily a political problem. There is absolutely no
technological reason why international rates are so much higher than
domestic US rates.
Regarding the idea of "free bandwidth," that's not what I said. I said that
bandwidth is "essentially free." Of course there will always be a cost for
bandwidth. But consider for a moment what's happened to disk storage. In
1990 I purchased my first PC. I paid $550 for an 80 MB hard drive -- that's
$6.875 per megabyte. Today you can purchase a 25 GB hard drive for $450 --
that's $0.018 per megabyte. That's a 31,250% increase in capacity
accompanied by a 99.73% reduction in price per megabyte. So you see, on a
per megabyte basis, storage is "essentially free." The same thing has
happened to CPU and memory. It will happen to bandwidth, too, and in many
cases already has.
For a time I worked in information technology architecture. One of the
tennents of that field is that it's always cheaper to trade capacity for
staff. You can overbuild now, while planning for growth, and save money over
the alternative of continually tweaking and making minor improvements and
upgrades which requires expensive time and personnel. QoS is an acceptable
idea which in certain specific situations might be suitable for solving an
existing problem. But since QoS is expensive to manage it simply is not
viable in the long term. We in the networking and telecommunications
industries need to redirect our energy away from bandages and instead toward
making abundant bandwidth readily available to everyone.
There is absolutely no technological reason why international rates are
so much higher than domestic US rates.
so, as a pragmatist, should i spend my time telling the world they're wrong
or getting my job of moving packets done?
Regarding the idea of "free bandwidth," that's not what I said. I said
that bandwidth is "essentially free." Of course there will always be a
cost for bandwidth.
what percentage of a stateside isp's p/l do you think circuit cost is?
what percentage of a european isp's p/l do you think circuit cost is?
what percentage of an african isp's p/l do you think circuit cost is?
hint: the numbers do not support your argument. some day they may. in the
meantime, do you mind if no one delivers packets to you until that day
comes?
randy
This conversation has been very useful, but gotten a little
bit away from what I was originally asking. Though it has
still been interesting.
Can I redirect the discussion back towards whether IP
QoS/CoS is capable of replacing ATM in a multi-service
network, limited to the boundaries of your own network?
If I were to put together a native-IP network (probably POS)
which was running high levels of traffic (at least DS-3 to
start and probably OC-3), and put services such as dial-up,
hosting/co-locate, DSL, and high-speed dedicated, and mix in
VoIP, is it feasible to use one IP pipe and logically
segment it with IP QoS/CoS features?
So far, it seems that the way to do this is to physically or
logically segment the network using separate circuits or
ATM. But it would make a lot of sense (in theory at least)
to use IP and bunch everything together.
Pete.
If I were to put together a native-IP network (probably POS)
which was running high levels of traffic (at least DS-3 to
start and probably OC-3), and put services such as dial-up,
hosting/co-locate, DSL, and high-speed dedicated, and mix in
VoIP, is it feasible to use one IP pipe and logically
segment it with IP QoS/CoS features?
You just described our network, and what several of our
customers are doing.
In other words, Yes.
Now, it's not for blue haired ladies or non-innovative
IT directors [translate to low risk tolerance]. But it
absolutely is done today.
So far, it seems that the way to do this is to physically or
logically segment the network using separate circuits or
ATM. But it would make a lot of sense (in theory at least)
to use IP and bunch everything together.
Bah. Keep listening to your ATM vendors...
-a
"Steve Riley (MCS)" wrote:
Regarding the idea of "free bandwidth," that's not what I said. I said that
bandwidth is "essentially free." Of course there will always be a cost for
bandwidth. But consider for a moment what's happened to disk storage. In
1990 I purchased my first PC. I paid $550 for an 80 MB hard drive -- that's
$6.875 per megabyte. Today you can purchase a 25 GB hard drive for $450 --
that's $0.018 per megabyte. That's a 31,250% increase in capacity
accompanied by a 99.73% reduction in price per megabyte. So you see, on a
per megabyte basis, storage is "essentially free." The same thing has
happened to CPU and memory. It will happen to bandwidth, too, and in many
cases already has.
I'll concede this point. However, it's worth pointing out that
megabytes of disk space can actually be 'had', while bandwidth doesn't
really exist. Most of us, at least, have to pay for bandwidth by the
month, while we only pay for the same piece of storage space once (and
then we actually posess it). This is important because it impacts how
far this cost model can be extended, and for how long.
Hmm.
Let me one more word. Very short. And I promise to be quiet anymore.
When I order bandwidth, I got BANDWIDTH. Just what I asked.
When I install RSVP and QoS software tricks, what will I have? Nothing
predictable - it can work, it can not work, it can work for months and
then destroy itself. The density of bugs increase every months (true for
CISCO, true for MS, I think it's true for other vendors).
Result? How can sales people use something mistical? They prefer to get
solid and simple way - order bandwidth.