International Bandwidth

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mattbush

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#80864 5-Apr-2011 13:15

Hi all

Just a question, as I believe a lot of New Zealand's broadband problems are with the international bandwidth limits. Not sure if the issue is with the total availability of bandwidth or the IPS's refuse to purchase enough.

I am noticing a lot lately that in the mornings and early afternoons i can get great international bandwidth but in the evenings up to at least 1-2am it is hopeless on some sites. I am a TCL cable user.

I also recall sometime ago that there was a proposal for another undersea cable to compete with Southern Cross...I havnt heard progress on this for a long time.

Maybe I am all wrong here, but every household having UFB and International traffic being squeezed does seem a waste of money.

Look forward to comments.

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119 posts

Master Geek

#455524 5-Apr-2011 13:46

Yep, international connectivity is the bottleneck here. I dont reckon faster access to the herald website/geekzone or trademe is really going to do much for me.

muppet

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#455535 5-Apr-2011 14:11

The "problem" is complex.

It costs a certain amount to buy "Per Meg" bandwidth from Wholesale providers. If you have 2000 users, you might buy 50Mb of International capacity. Say $150 per month per meg. So you're buying 50Mb you need $7,500 a month. For International. Let's say domestic (Telecom/Telstra) is the same. Another $7,500 a month. You get APE or WIX "for free", though you're still paying a port-cost to connect.

Then you've got to pay to join up your different POPs, to backhaul connections from the end-DSL-users to your central POP. You're paying for routers, for maintence on those routers, the salary of the techies who maintain your UNIX servers for mail/dns/webhosting.

I was going to cost all that out, but that'll take me a bit more time than I have for this post.

For what it's worth, International Traffic prices have been fairly steadily dropping over the last year, but I don't see my bill going down by much. Maybe that's because people are locked into 12/24 month contracts at the old prices.

The providers that try to be cheap (for example: Slingshot) do by by cutting corners on all the above listed things. And thus look at the customer complaints they get. Slowness (not buying enough traffic maybe, or old/slow/underpowered routers), bad customer service (not paying much for good people) and generally a bad experience. Hell even the expensive ones can't get customer service right (glaring at you, TelstraClear)

If a serious Southern Cross competitor stepped up, we might see slightly cheaper prices or relaxed usage caps. But I don't think the price will plummet overnight.

(This post is my own opinion blah blah etc)

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

muppet

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#455539 5-Apr-2011 14:18

mattbush: I also recall sometime ago that there was a proposal for another undersea cable to compete with Southern Cross...I havnt heard progress on this for a long time.

http://www.pacificfibre.net/ has all the details you want.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

Ragnor

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#455540 5-Apr-2011 14:25

mattbush:

Just a question, as I believe a lot of New Zealand's broadband problems are with the international bandwidth limits. Not sure if the issue is with the total availability of bandwidth or the IPS's refuse to purchase enough.

Yes currently international bandwidth/tranist out of NZ to the US is a scarce expensive resource.

mattbush:

I am noticing a lot lately that in the mornings and early afternoons i can get great international bandwidth but in the evenings up to at least 1-2am it is hopeless on some sites. I am a TCL cable user.

Which sites specifically?

Somes ISP's run a much worse ratio between their number of users and total bandwidth available than others.

mattbush:

I also recall sometime ago that there was a proposal for another undersea cable to compete with Southern Cross...I havnt heard progress on this for a long time.

http://www.pacificfibre.net/
http://blog.pacificfibre.net/

mattbush:

Maybe I am all wrong here, but every household having UFB and International traffic being squeezed does seem a waste of money.

Look forward to comments.

Actually national transit is currently very expensive, almost on par with international.. this is because the two largest ISP's which acount of 80%+ of the market ie; Telecom and Telstraclear don't peer openly at national peering exchanges. Any ISP or hosting providers usually has to buy interconnection with them.

Replacing the last of our 50+ year old copper network with fibre optics is a once in a generation type of infrastructure change.

Getting rid of the near monopoly Telecom wholesale still have to providing major parts of internet services (the phsyical lines, backhaul, handover links) will get rid of a bunch of scarcity based constraints (eg: handover link limits on UBS/UBA were outrageous).

Fast cheap national transit will enable a lot of interesting locally operated services (online backup, video streaming, voip etc and other things we haven't thought of yet).

I think it's worth it.

mattbush

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#455648 5-Apr-2011 20:46

Awesome answers..thanks

Its not really a cost issue to me, but one of speed on international. It could and should be much better for the price we pay and I never see much about this bottleneck in general media reports. Everyone seems to think that UFB will on its own be magic to everyone, but i suspect NZ's use of International traffic is probably over 50% of the total usage (a guess here).

muppet

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#455653 5-Apr-2011 20:51

mattbush: Awesome answers..thanks

Its not really a cost issue to me, but one of speed on international. It could and should be much better for the price we pay and I never see much about this bottleneck in general media reports. Everyone seems to think that UFB will on its own be magic to everyone, but i suspect NZ's use of International traffic is probably over 50% of the total usage (a guess here).

You're pretty close in your guessing. The traffic stats I see are about 50% Intl and 50% Domestic and Peering.

That's from a wholesale perspective though, probably not reflective of a true end-user ISP.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

webnation

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#455671 5-Apr-2011 21:23

if you search UFB here, you will find alot discussion on this already.
it is sad when you start to realise the bottleneck of Int bandwidth and ratio, the more you just want to give up hopping for better broadband here in NZ...

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

muppet

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#455674 5-Apr-2011 21:29

webnation: if you search UFB here, you will find alot discussion on this already.
it is sad when you start to realise the bottleneck of Int bandwidth and ratio, the more you just want to give up hopping for better broadband here in NZ...

You think? I think UFB will help point out what people don't realise at the moment, where the major congestion points are. Fibre to the curb/home is a good thing. It'll help make large bandwidths available to people and it'll force ISPs to buy more bandwidth from their upstreams. This, in turn, will push the overall price (for bandwidth to the ISPs) down. This might not make the price for end-users much cheaper, but it should help to increase line speeds and quotas.

So it's a step in the right direction. It sure isn't the OH MY GOD IT'LL FIX EVERYTHING that some people would have you believe, but it's not all doom and gloom either.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

Beccara

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#455688 5-Apr-2011 21:56

Just how cheap does everyone really think international bandwidth can become? $10/bit delivered in Auckland?

Run the math guys,

Pacific Fibre is booked to have 5.2TBit/sec of capacity and cost $400mill NZD to build, SCC is esimated to have cost $1.2billion USD and has 640gbit lit with upto 2.4TBit/sec capacity with expansion.

SCC has a lifespan till 2025 meaning unless it's extended again it will have been live for 25 years, assuming the same 25 year life on Pacific Fibre. Assuming these guys want to make NO money on it and have ZERO operational cost and sell every last mbit of capacity then Pacific Fibre's cost is $3 per mbit per year, SCC capacity with upgrades to 2.4TBit/sec puts that at $19 per mbit per year and thats just to get your data to LA.

CFH is saying $~37 for 30mbit by 10mbit, Based on Pacific Fibre's cost and STILL assuming no running costs, no maintaince costs on the cable and no interest on the borrowed money to build it and no delivery costs from Auckland to your home or from LA to the server you want to goto and no support costs from your ISP or any number of other costs misses to give you 30mbit of uncongested bandwidth is $44 per month

I know for a fact that under 2gbit/sec transit from Auckland to Whangarei (Current active UFB network) you can expect to pay around $10 per mbit which pushes your $44/month connection upto a whopping $344 per month and thats still assuming NOBODY in the loop is making money.

This isn't going to change anytime soon but ma and pa really dont care, The general public still uses the net for some new, grab some itunes for their IPod and watch some funny youtube they got linked to. They may watch some TVNZondemand, Tv3ondemand,ISky or a itunes rental but thats all stuff that can come locally (and by this I mean locally in the same city)

When you take the torrent leeches out the mix getting the content users want as fast as the UFB wants to is alot easier, Caching/CDN nodes around the country with more local peering exchanges. This is what the UFB will show, ISP's aren't going to dump money on huge bandwidth buys Internationally and locally when they can be smart about it and deploy infrastructure around the country and keep bandwidth demands to outside the city low.

I think some people also overestimate the willingness of the general public to learn about a complex subject like this, All they care about is that their net is stable and it's snappy to the things they want

Most problems are the result of previous solutions...

All comment's I make are my own personal opinion and do not in any way, shape or form reflect the views of current or former employers unless specifically stated

LennonNZ

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#455700 5-Apr-2011 22:20

I hope all the players in the market in Whangarei will peer at WHIX (Pronounced "fix") . (WHIX doesn't exist at the moment - I made it up) but I am sure Citylink or alike will be doing something.

Beccara

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#455701 5-Apr-2011 22:24

There already is a Northland IX called NIX :P Operated by my employer in the same style of APE/WIX/Others around the country, Setup and running right now

Regs

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Snowflake

#455707 5-Apr-2011 22:46

Beccara: There already is a Northland IX called NIX :P

isnt NIX "nothing" by definition? does it really exist? :p

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Beccara

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#455710 5-Apr-2011 22:52

:P It does, WHIX is too close to WIX and we didn't want to lead to confusion

insane

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#455734 5-Apr-2011 23:34

Beccara: Just how cheap does everyone really think international bandwidth can become? $10/bit delivered in Auckland?

Run the math guys,...

CFH is saying $~37 for 30mbit by 10mbit, Based on Pacific Fibre's cost and STILL assuming no running costs, no maintaince costs on the cable and no interest on the borrowed money to build it and no delivery costs from Auckland to your home or from LA to the server you want to goto and no support costs from your ISP or any number of other costs misses to give you 30mbit of uncongested bandwidth is $44 per month

When you take the torrent leeches out the mix getting the content users want as fast as the UFB wants to is alot easier, Caching/CDN nodes around the country with more local peering exchanges. This is what the UFB will show, ISP's aren't going to dump money on huge bandwidth buys Internationally and locally when they can be smart about it and deploy infrastructure around the country and keep bandwidth demands to outside the city low.

Well the truth is that depending on how much bandwidth you are buying ,and who from National has become more expensive than international. If that trend continues then maybe we will see $10/mbps INT bandwidth in three years.

I believe the 30/10mbps that CFH are talking about is access speed to the ISPs,certainly not to international destinations. No network provider can guarantee speeds outside of their edge network, not even to national destinations.

You're right about backhaul costs though, they will start to show up more and more, which is probably why the likes of Webdrive, Iconz and Orcon are so keen to get their CDN's up and working,

Fun times lie ahead, the playing field will be very different by the time the dust has settled and everything is sorted out.... in court.

mattbush

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#455781 6-Apr-2011 08:22

If I recall correctly Southern Cross capacity was nowhere near 100%.

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