Network peering policy in 2014?

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Network peering policy in 2014?

myfullflavour

896 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Full Flavour

#141128 2-Mar-2014 02:26

I know this is not a network operators forum but I'm also also aware we have reps from various ISPs here.

I'd like to know where Telecom and Telstra/Vodafone are in terms of peering.

I mention TelstraClear because they still appear on the Internet (to us as a content provider) as a standalone provider. Separate AS number and peering policy to Vodafone.

Are Vodafone any closer to amalgamating Telstra & Vodafone at a network level?

I.e. Will Telstra peer at exchanges such as APE or will Vodafone follow the Telstra policy and 'de-peer' ?

Recently a rep from Cloudflare was in NZ and he made it clear that he'd love to bring his cache servers to New Zealand, but Telstra/Telecom's peering positions made this business case not viable. If they both openly peered at APE it would be a different story. Because these two networks don't peer at APE, both ISPs have to pay for Cloudflare traffic to come from Sydney.

We're in the same boat.

Full Flavour is also a content provider and we're seeing a sharp increase in live video streaming. It seems unfortunate that we'll soon be forcing Telecom/Telstra to be picking up content from us (at over 1Gbps speeds to these two networks alone) from our Sydney relay network than locally from APE, WIX or CHIX - why? Because Telstra/Telecom don't peer at local exchanges and both buy paid capacity to our Sydney network and our cost of delivering from there is significantly lower than us purchasing transit locally into their networks.

Arguably Telecom is the lessor evil of the two where you can peer with Telecom at a local level, but from a content provider point of view, we're not going to buy transit to Invercargil just so we can hand traffic off to Telecom there settlement-free.

If Telecom/Telstra were interested in giving their customers the best experience on the Internet as possible, they'd be peering where the content providers are - predominantly APE.

Instead their policy costs them more as they have traffic running over their Sydney link needlessly. Same city peering (Auckland) is a lot cheaper than buying capacity to Sydney.

I welcome a response from both Telecom and Vodafone, as well as any other operator who wants to put in their 2c.

1 | 2 | 3

1948 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#997411 2-Mar-2014 07:32

Peering is a complex beast.. especially when traffic is predominantly in one direction servicing one subset of customers. Just look at what happened in the US with Netflix and comcast.

Talkiet

4793 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#997451 2-Mar-2014 09:37

Telecom (Sorry, I mean Spark - that'll take some getting used to!) is interested in giving our customers a great experience and we have significant (and increasing) investment in CDNs within our network.

I'm genuinely interested in the Cloudfare rep comments and would like to get in touch with him - can you send me contact details for the person in question? After the big 2 providers, the business case for local deployment of CDNs is marginal.

As for the specific policies about Telecom Peering - that's something I am not able to discuss (It's not my area, I don't know the current strategic thinking etc)

Regards
Neil G

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

myfullflavour

896 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Full Flavour

#997482 2-Mar-2014 10:40

Cloudflare rep spoke recently at NZNog where he mentioned Telecom/Telstra. My ipad doesn't want to load the video URLs but you'll find them on the NZNog website.

Investing in CDN caches hosted in-house is great for the Akamais & Googles, but not every content provider has the business case to provide a cache to each telco.

If there is someone at Telecom I should be talking to, send me a PM with the details. We are interested in providing your end-users with the best experience, but the $$ have to make sense.

Zeon

3916 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#997484 2-Mar-2014 10:47

I wholeheartedly agree. The reality in NZ is that there aren't really any large content provider networks and we don't have separation between "tier-1" carriers and end user ISPs. So the US Netflix/Comcast situation can't really happen here.

The best model is for everyone to peer at major peering points which would encourage the content providers to peer there also (and pay for the backhaul or infrastructure).

I think even the Spark guys can figure out that it is cheaper for someone else to build a CDN for you than do it yourselves....

Perhaps if Telecom/Vodafone don't play ball then everyone else can create a cartel and force all their traffic via Sydney to Telecom/Vodafone. If I were running an ISP that's what I would do TBH - I don't like the idea of a larger ISP flexing its muscles to extort money from smaller ISPs when both are neither major content providers.

Speedtest 2019-10-14

myfullflavour

896 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Full Flavour

#997488 2-Mar-2014 11:08

Zeon: berhaps if Telecom/Vodafone don't play ball then everyone else can create a cartel and force all their traffic via Sydney to Telecom/Vodafone. If I were running an ISP that's what I would do TBH - I don't like the idea of a larger ISP flexing its muscles to extort money from smaller ISPs when both are neither major content providers.

It costs us $1400 to deliver 20 hours of live streaming to 1000 Telecom viewers from Sydney at present and we can scale capacity up and down very rapidly.

To deliver this same content to Telecom via APE (Auckland Peering Exchange), the price halves. To deliver this same content to Telecom via paid transit, the price goes up by 5x.

If Telecom wanted to peer with us privately at Sky Tower, we'd do this.

LennonNZ

2459 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#997489 2-Mar-2014 11:25

Telecom will peer with you for their DSL customers but you just have to get to the Major Telecom Peering Points (Exchanges). Some ISPs already do this.

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

Uber Geek

#997508 2-Mar-2014 12:05

What content do full flavour provide?

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

myfullflavour

896 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Full Flavour

#997593 2-Mar-2014 15:39

LennonNZ: Telecom will peer with you for their DSL customers but you just have to get to the Major Telecom Peering Points (Exchanges). Some ISPs already do this.

This is why I wrote that they are a lessor evil than the Telstra setup. That said, there are over 20 POIs and there is no business case for doing this especially where we don't have existing backhaul.

NonprayingMantis: What content do full flavour provide?

On top of hosting a lot of websites, we do:

- live audio streaming for NZ On Air funded community radio
- live audio streaming for one of the major commercial radio networks
- live video streaming on an event-by-event basis. Varies from a funeral one day to a major speedway event the next.

nedkelly

659 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#997715 2-Mar-2014 18:55

For those that cant find video Full Flavour was talking about.

http://www.r2.co.nz/20140130/tom-p.htm

Zeon

3916 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#997721 2-Mar-2014 19:10

LennonNZ: Telecom will peer with you for their DSL customers but you just have to get to the Major Telecom Peering Points (Exchanges). Some ISPs already do this.

Paying for Telecom's backhaul to 20 points of interconnect is not really "peering"

Speedtest 2019-10-14

LennonNZ

2459 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#997747 2-Mar-2014 19:48

Zeon:
LennonNZ: Telecom will peer with you for their DSL customers but you just have to get to the Major Telecom Peering Points (Exchanges). Some ISPs already do this.

Paying for Telecom's backhaul to 20 points of interconnect is not really "peering"

A lot of ISPs already have equipment in various exchanges already for such things as Handovers for UFB/BUBA/EUBA/Voice Handovers etc there isn't as much cost in Peering for these ISPs. Peering (usually) means swapping routes between 2 networks at little/no cost. Getting to the places can cost money yes but there are number of choices for ISPs those days.

raytaylor

4017 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#997893 3-Mar-2014 00:55

Okay so the way I understand it is

If you want to peer with telecom, you must do it at one of the 20 points around the country.
Eg. If a endpoint telecom subscriber is in christchurch, and you are in auckland, you must get your data to the christchurch peering point, and then pay telecom to deliver it to their customer. (correct me if i am wrong)

However, Telecom happen to peer at a point in sydney without charging anyone, because they have to otherwise they wouldnt get any content at all for their customers, and it is cheaper for you just to get the data to sydney, only for telecom to bring it back again and backhaul it themselves down to christchurch to their broadband subscriber.

This seems absolutley stupid.

It would be costing telecom more because they are bringing the data from sydney, over a longer and slower route, giving their customer a worse expierence. Yet telecom could get the data at the sky tower for less than it costs them to get it from sydney, and it wouldnt cost you as much to deliver it to the sky tower.
So its a win-win for both of you.

What a daft policy.

If you are a content provider, telecom should be knocking on your door trying to improve the experience for their customers.

In the mean time, do Akamai or another CDN network that already has a node in the telecom network have cheaper rates? Could it be sort of multicast into the telecom network in one stream to the CDN box and then telecom's subscribers recieve a stream from said box? Kind of a way of sneaking data in I guess.

On the other hand, FX are positioning themselves as a major content provider (eg. geonet website) and they are begging us smaller ISP's to peer with them - they will almost bring the data right to our door to deliver to our customers, so FX's customers such as geonet and (i think they do tv3 or tvnz ondemand i forget which) can give a better experience to our subscribers when using the content providers services.

Ray Taylor

There is no place like localhost

Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here

Sounddude

I fix stuff!
1928 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

2degrees

Lifetime subscriber

#997924 3-Mar-2014 07:29

raytaylor: Okay so the way I understand it is

If you want to peer with telecom, you must do it at one of the 20 points around the country.
Eg. If a endpoint telecom subscriber is in christchurch, and you are in auckland, you must get your data to the christchurch peering point, and then pay telecom to deliver it to their customer. (correct me if i am wrong)

If you deliver the content to the Peering handover, then you don't pay for the delivery from there. You just pay a handover port cost which is minimal.

You only pay if you deliver say Invercagill traffic to a christchurch handover. Bascially a Step Cost.
This model only really works for the bigger guys. It makes is very hard for the little guys to host content.

Orcon has most of the peering points now, but only because of UFB/LLU as we are in those exchanges already. If we wernt I don't think we would have bothered.

Sounddude

I fix stuff!
1928 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

2degrees

Lifetime subscriber

#997925 3-Mar-2014 07:31

Will also be very interesting to see what Peering policy comes out of the VF/TCL merger, as they have very different ideas on peering.

Sounddude

I fix stuff!
1928 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

2degrees

Lifetime subscriber

#997928 3-Mar-2014 07:35

In the mean time, do Akamai or another CDN network that already has a node in the telecom network have cheaper rates? Could it be sort of multicast into the telecom network in one stream to the CDN box and then telecom's subscribers recieve a stream from said box? Kind of a way of sneaking data in I guess.
.

Yup

Akamai have been around for ages and got into most ISP's networks well before ISPs even thought about charging for peering etc. Most ISPs were paying around $300per mbit so any savings in traffic was easy to justify.

If Akamai turned up today it would be a different story.

But yes Akamai is hard now to compete with in this country. But at the same time Akamai have major headaches trying to manage all the hardware, as each ISP has aleast half a rack if not more of hardware. (at the ISP's expense).

1 | 2 | 3