Why does NZ have bandwidth caps?

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Lobit

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#29743 17-Jan-2009 13:26

I know the US and China don't. Is it because of the small population here so everything is more expensive.

Thanks for the replies guys, so do those cables actually lead all the way around the world with no breaks? Or are there just certain points where the cables are laid?

freitasm

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#190178 17-Jan-2009 13:51

Or perhaps because most of the content consumed by Chinese users comes from China itself, and most of the content in the U.S. comes from U.S. itself - unlike content we New Zealanders read, which comes (a good chunk) from overseas over very expensive cables?

wellygary

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#190179 17-Jan-2009 13:54

Lobit:
I know the US and China don't. Is it because of the small population here so everything is more expensive.

Because in China most of the traffic is local language domestic traffic (within country), The same holds in the US, most of the traffic is sourced from in country,

In NZ ( and Australia) most traffic is from international ( mainly US based) websites and has to travel over expensive undersea cables to reach us, these pipes are small in number and levy a significant cost on the bits that pass across them.

It is not the size of the country, but the distance from most of the internet sites used by customers,

freitasm

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#190180 17-Jan-2009 13:58

It doesn't help that large ISPs such as Xtra and TelstraClear don't peer with other PIX, meaning a lot of local traffic also goes overseas and back.

Ragnor

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#190183 17-Jan-2009 14:51

1: There is no real competition to the southern cross cable for international bandwidth meaning ISP's have to buy bandwidth from them or someone who is reselling capacity.

2: ISP's are small in NZ and don't have the economies of scale to invest heavily in the carrier grade traffic management equipment needed to do comprehensive traffic management, Data caps are just an artificial way to ensure users don't download at max speed 24x7.

3: As mentioned most of the content we access comes from the US rather than NZ.

michaeln

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#190186 17-Jan-2009 14:58

And the US does, increasingly, have bandwidth caps. Cox, Comcast, Time-Warner, AT&T. ...

sbiddle

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#190187 17-Jan-2009 14:59

The USA isn't without caps either. Traffic shaping is now very common and ISP's such as Comcast have introduced 250GB monthly caps on their cable plans.

freitasm

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#190194 17-Jan-2009 16:38

Have a look at this picture to have an idea...

And when replying please do not edit your original post - click the REPLY button so people are notified of replies and the discussion continues in a thread.

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michaeln

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#190222 17-Jan-2009 19:23

This link http://visualthinkmap.blogspot.com/2008/05/internet-undersea-map.html is pretty good too. From it you can discern not only that we are a very long way away from anywhere else, but also that our particular piece of wet string is somewhat lonely compared to say, North America <-> Europe.

LennonNZ

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#190237 17-Jan-2009 20:56

freitasm: It doesn't help that large ISPs such as Xtra and TelstraClear don't peer with other PIX, meaning a lot of local traffic also goes overseas and back.

Umm.. can you give examples of this happening? (citylink is a different story as they only advertise some of their networks to private/public peering exchanges)

Thanks

freitasm

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#190238 17-Jan-2009 21:00

LennonNZ:
freitasm: It doesn't help that large ISPs such as Xtra and TelstraClear don't peer with other PIX, meaning a lot of local traffic also goes overseas and back.

Umm.. can you give examples of this happening? (citylink is a different story as they only advertise some of their networks to private/public peering exchanges)

Thanks

From our interview with Dr Allan Freeth:

12.It was a huge shame when TelstraClear de-peered from WIX/Citylink. This has huge ramifications for people wanting to use services that are connected to Citylink, although they live 1km away from the server they want to connect to, yet the traffic is routed via LA. How does that in the interests of the customers? The only option is to use an ISP like Xtreme or someone else who on-sells TCL Cable Services that do peer with Citylink.
Peering has become an extremely emotional issue, as noted in the recent Internet NZ report, which also noted there was no evidence of market failure.

Our decision was a commercial one – we need to earn a return for the use of our assets. While some people believe the Internet is ‘free’, I can assure you my shareholder doesn’t see it that way. Organisations that have content they want to supply to end users can buy a service from us, which is tied in with the cost of national carriage. This is still more cost effective than international bandwidth.

From CW:

Peering used to take place freely through specially built exchanges in Auckland and Wellington but, in 2004, first TelstraClear and then Telecom withdrew their participation in the peering agreement.

This has forced local traffic to take long routes to its destination, often via Australia or the US, and some major content providers have found it cheaper to site their servers overseas than in New Zealand.

LennonNZ

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#190239 17-Jan-2009 21:07

I think some services supplied via citylink where affected (as they where only advertised to their commercial "peering exchanges" and not to the internet fully , but I think the "going overseas and back" was never the case on purpose.

Thanks