national's dark fibre plan: Will it be peered?

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richgamer

224 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#32019 8-Apr-2009 15:57

With national rolling out dark fibre soon and isps being able to purchase space on it, is the fibre going to peer so local data can stay in new zealand, so isps could offer free national data or large national data caps like 100GB/month national data cap/50GB international data cap?
Because currently i think telecom and others don't peer so to access data inside new zealand it travels overseas and comes back to new zealand. I don't know why new zealand isps don't peer because it would save them international bandwidth costs.

raytaylor

4014 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#206616 13-Apr-2009 01:08

I dont know the exact details but from how you are describing it:
If someone purchases a length of dark fibre, it simply runs from point A to point B.
To peer- the purchaser would then have to purchase a length of fibre from point A to Point C. All the other network operators would also have to purchase lengths of fibre running to point C

If I were in charge, it would be an open access fibre network run under a non-profit umbrella. Everyone who wants to connect simply pays a monthly connection charge to connect to the network. Network operators or ISP's can connect also and offer internet access through their gateways. That way anyone can peer with anyone else simply by having a connection into the network.
So if business A wanted to connect all their retail branches, they just purchase a connection for each branch into the national fibre network. If they want internet access, they pay an ISP who has a gateway for internet access and configure the branches to use ISP X as their gateway.
Kind of similar to how chorus operates but not owned by Telecom and its profit oriented shareholders.

Ray Taylor

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wired

187 posts

Master Geek

#207381 16-Apr-2009 20:45

The fibre network won't have the concept of peering because it connects things/people to their ISPs and it will be the ISPs that will decide to peer.

The proposal is to have up to 25 Local Fibre Companies covering the 75% of the population. These may have government shareholding (say up to 50%) but they may not be interconnected. For example if Vector Communications in Auckland is one company, it is unlikely to be connected to the Northpower fibre network in Whangarei as there is a big distance (called rural) between them and similarly to the Counties Power network in the Counties/Franklin area. However, an ISP who uses the Northpower Network may peer in Auckland at the Auckland Peering exchange (APE) with Vector Communications ISP.

Similarly Telecom Wholesale may use the Northpower Network to connect its customers rather than using its own ADSL network and it will only have the current private peering arrangements.

If you want to have a look at all the peering points and who is connected, you can view the Auckland epeering exchange at www.ape.net.nz and the ISPs do peer when it is cheaper to do so.

It is expected that many of these LFCs may be open access.

Another point is that two ISPs who are peering doesn't mean that the traffic is free and they can offer unlimited data usage to their customers. Peering just means that all the ISPs don't charge each other for traffic and they still have to lease circuits to get there.

For example, if you have just bought a 2 Mbps connection from your ISP and you want to use it to the max, then the ISP needs to buy a 2 Mbps bigger pipe between their data centre and the APE than they would otherwise.

If you are based in Auckland a 2 Mbps circuit within Auckland costs about $100 per month. Plus you need another 2 Mbps circuit to Wellington because sometimes you want to talk at full speed to someone in Wellington, which costs about $1200 per month from Auckland. So the decision is, do you want to pay $1300 per month for unlimited national bandwidth to Auckland and Wellington. I suspect not and that you don't mind sharing (its called oversupscription by the techies) so that your total bill is around $50/month. In order enforce this sharing they introduce a data cap etc.