topological closeness....

Miguel A.L. Paraz sez:

Hello,

Gopi K Garge wrote:
> IMHO, in the context of the AP region, I guess we are overlooking the
> user perspective - locally available "Internet" content. Barring
> .au, .sg, .kr, .hk (?), .jp and .tw, I do not see any major effort
> around to provide locally, content that is available in the US
> be it the GNU archive, the WU archive or one-of-those Beatles
> song and lyrics archive - result - good amount of traffic to the
> US.

With limited bandwidth, updating these archives would be slow,
and, you wouldn't know yet if there are enough people accessing
these to justify getting a mirror.

  Oh ... I have complete details on how many hits some of these
  servers get from my domain and who in my domain are originating
  requests. getting these details is a matter of some dedicated
  hardware and a one time programming effort - the rest is -
  thanks to ethernet technology.

Caching should help getting commonly requested information faster.

  Sure ... but you'd notice that these are mechanisms to control
  your traffic across a low bandwidth link, but that's not the
  issue. The issue is where will the link that we have terminate.

> When one sees such traffic trends, why would an ISP even think in
> terms of investing in a link to a place other than the US - the cost
> permitting ?

In the long term, as the Internet becomes more common, regional content
will become more important, IMHO. So develop the local content -
and the local infrastructure - and regional intranets, and virtual
private networks - will come in.

  When ?? I feel it is long overdue. If we are to "attract" intra
  AP region bandwidth investment - as in getting ISPs to interconnect
  within the region, there must be an effort to provide
  content. The ISPs may then have a case (not a strong one though)
  to interconnect locally. How do we do this ? I know that this is
  not a trivial question, but ......

--Gopi