'Size' of Internet in NZ

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › 'Size' of Internet in NZ

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#73400 13-Dec-2010 20:05

I'm trying to figure out how "big" the Internet is in NZ. I've learnt quite a bit about the connectivity issues / options (* but what I've yet to figure out is the size, over the years bandwidth has grown for kbit/s to Mbit/s to Gbit/s and where exactly on this curve NZ is.

I started wondering about this last week when I spoke with a friend who was just configuring a new HA setup for one of the newspaper web sites and we chatted about the loads, bandwidth and other greasy details.

Where could I find information about the most popular web sites in NZ, estimated numbers of visitors and like? Basically the type of data that the advertisisers would use to decide where to put their ad's. More detailed information than one gets from e.g. Alexa. The links from e.g. InternetNZ seem to be more questionnaire-type of information.

Alexa lists TradeMe, NZ Herald and Stuff, followed by on-line banks, the largest local NZ sites. Take something like NZ Herald, what level of traffic do they generate? 1 Gbit/s at peaks?

How much traffic do the ISP's exchange, does any of the NZ IX's publish their statistics? APE, WIX, at what level are the traffic through them, 10 Gbit/s, 20 Gbit/s? Do the largest IX'es already do 10GE?

Take a random big NZ ISP, how much international capacity do they have in place? Multiple 10GE's? A smaller ISP, GE with a few hundred Mbit/s of CIR?

Any pointers would be appreciated, also happy to get confidential PM. I'm just trying to build some generic knowledge, rough figures are just fine.

PS. Why am I asking? I've been involved with the internet stuff since early 90's, we're working on to move to NZ and I hope to work with the internet down there as well, somehow, somewhere. An understanding of the bigger picture always helps.

*) I even started collecting netflow data for my home connection.. Doesn't look too good (50G over the last week, I don't do games nor any serious p2p) but quite a few services are in the cloud (sigh, hate that term..).

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#416746 13-Dec-2010 21:03

I'd be interested in this too. Do you want to post links to the stats you've been looking at?

D

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#416768 13-Dec-2010 21:45

DonGould: I'd be interested in this too. Do you want to post links to the stats you've been looking at?

I went through the resources at http://internetnz.net.nz/our-work/access/new-zealand-internet-statistics

Some new, some I've known about before, IAB NZ may have something for their members but I'd assume some of the results would be published to the public as well.

Alexa's NZ details are at http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/NZ

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79265 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#416788 13-Dec-2010 22:11

I wouldn't take Alexa, or Quantcast (non-verified) ever as a measure.

You can get some good data from Nielsen but they won't disclose it - I have access to it but obviously won't/can't disclose what I see there.

Even knowing the traffic parameters for a large site (number of visitors, number of visits, pages per visit) you would still have no way to directly compare bandwidth. Each site is different, pages are different, what one can do with one type of connection, another can't.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#416832 13-Dec-2010 23:07

Agreed, Alexa's information was good enough just to guess that NZ Herald, Trademe and Stuff are one of the biggest sites in the country. In quite a few countries there are local data available, semi-public, that is tailored to the local market and local advertising market. Most popular sites want to make their success public :D

Bandwidth was my primary interesting, the visitor statistics just add one dimension to the picture.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79265 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#416833 13-Dec-2010 23:11

Looking at Alexa you wouldn't say Geekzone is on the top 40 New Zealand-based websites...

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#416850 13-Dec-2010 23:49

freitasm: Looking at Alexa you wouldn't say Geekzone is on the top 40 New Zealand-based websites...

I wouldn't trust Alexa for that much detail.. so how much bandwidth does Geekzone require? :)

If NZ Herald is any reference, they seem to use Nielsen/NetRatings and Omniture so I probably won't find anything unless someone has published their ranking with details, like you did recently (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/7196).

Here TNS Metrix is the leader for web analytics and the customers have an option to publish the very basic numbers (unique visitors, visits, page views, spent time, ...). Most allow TNS to publish the data (weekly) so it's behind the "chicken and egg" phase. When the competition is out with the numbers, the customers (advertisers) can see the data, one just has to join as well. A small driving force to make your site better as well.

insane

3239 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#416863 14-Dec-2010 02:04

Sent you a PM to answer some of your questions. Nothing confidential or that you couldn't find by reading thousands of forum posts :)

AliExpress

Shop now on AliExpress (affiliate link).

webwat

2036 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#417121 14-Dec-2010 15:31

I would say alot of traffic is non-web stuff that gets from business to data centre one way or another. The peering exchanges aren't huge as far as I know because Telecom and TC don't do public peering, but they some may have been upgraded to include a few Gbps links if you are lucky. I think KAREN is mostly gigabit with a few 10G aggregation links.

Problem with planning web server bandwidth is that it can spike enough to crash your servers if something happens that sends everybody to your site. I think more important is how much bandwidth can you squeeze into your budget, but allow for potential upgrade. You could try saving bandwidth by keeping images etc on cheap overseas hosting to make your dynamic content more snappy and spread the loads.

Time to find a new industry!

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79265 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#417125 14-Dec-2010 15:44

webwat: ... Telecom and TC don't do public peering, but they some may have been upgraded to include a few Gbps links if you are lucky. I think KAREN is mostly gigabit with a few 10G aggregation links.

They peer, it's just not free.

ptinson

677 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#417131 14-Dec-2010 15:53

A KAREN resource that is visually pleasing and somewhat informative of what they do.

http://weathermap.karen.net.nz/

Paul

meat popsicle

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#417303 14-Dec-2010 21:54

webwat: ... cheap overseas hosting ...

:-)

A typical construction here (similar market to NZ but domestic bandwidth is not an issue and the carriers don't play too hard) is somewhat similar but instead of global CDN's, there are several companies that offer similar service for the domestic market, often a result of media company that have spin off or sold their ICT units. For the static content they build a server farm (nginx & co if they're smart) and add GE/10GE's to a few ISP's to balance the load and give redundancy. Relatively basic stuff.

ptinson: A KAREN resource that is visually pleasing and somewhat informative of what they do.

Yep, I like the academic openness. I worked at FUNET (Finnish University and Research Network) before the commercial internet started taking all my time. They run dark fiber across the country with universities connecting at multiple GE or 10GE (40-channel hiT7300 DWDM, MX960 routers). FUNET is part of NORDUnet and the international connectivity is through their core (10GE's and 40GE's, http://stats.nordu.net/connections.html).

FUNET is also relatively open to the students, for example in one Hamilton sized city the local student organizations have built a network that connects ~6000 students around the city. They run a 10GE core in the city, GE uplinks in the student houses, and they recently upgraded their uplink to FUNET from GE to 10GE (http://netstat.tontut.fi/stats/showgraph.cgi?s=uplink_funet), the p2p traffic was suffering with the GE ;-)

Sometimes there is some historic openness left in the commercial field as well, e.g. my home ISP shows their details quite openly http://www.elisaip.net/network.shtml & http://www.elisaip.net/utilization.shtml

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79265 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#417307 14-Dec-2010 22:01

ojala:
webwat: ... cheap overseas hosting ...

A typical construction here (similar market to NZ but domestic bandwidth is not an issue and the carriers don't play too hard) is somewhat similar but instead of global CDN's, there are several companies that offer similar service for the domestic market, often a result of media company that have spin off or sold their ICT units. For the static content they build a server farm (nginx & co if they're smart) and add GE/10GE's to a few ISP's to balance the load and give redundancy. Relatively basic stuff.

While this is going off topic, I will post something here. "Cheap overseas hosting" is only good if you have a good balance.

We ran Geekzone since the start on New Zealand-based servers. For the last two years I have been working continuously on reducing page size and increasing performance on our servers. Database optimisation, scripts checking, adding software.

In the last few months we reduced average page load time from ten seconds to 6.9 seconds - and still counting.

We moved hosting providers, and decided to stay in Auckland because 40% of our traffic is New Zealand-based, and 65% of it is from Auckland. Auckland is a good hosting place - close to the majority of our local users, and close to the cable taking us to our second largest market, the United States.

My point is that you have to think a lot before moving away from your reader - added latency will decrease satisfaction.

As part of our work I started using a CDN. I couldn't find anything locally, I guess because a New Zealand CDN would only be viable if a large provider could peer with Telecom, Vodafone and TelstraClear in each of the major locations (WLG, AKL, CHC, DUD), but seriously I don't think it would affect speed that much.

At the end we use a CDN with edge servers around the world - we serve about 3 GB a day from their servers, mainly resources (images, CSS). The busiest points are Los Angeles (serving New Zealand and part of US west coast), and Amsterdam (serving Europe).

"Cheap overseas hosting" is a fallacy. It's like saying you could host a million unique visitors website from a $20 shared server. It ain't gonna happen...

Shameless plug: we have a great service from Datacom Albany DC as our hosting provider.

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#417310 14-Dec-2010 22:04

ptinson: A KAREN resource that is visually pleasing and somewhat informative of what they do.

http://weathermap.karen.net.nz/

Paul

Nice! :)

That's an insanely cool thing!

Wonder if I can make one for my home network ;)

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#417377 15-Dec-2010 00:22

DonGould:

Wonder if I can make one for my home network ;)

I guess one could do it with snmp-capable switches around the house ;-) But would it be anything but green?

This is OT but what I did with my home network is that I've got a Mikrotik box between the home network and ADSL box (I like to keep things separate, one box does what it's good at). I enabled netflow on the Mikrotik and use NFSen to process the data. I've been collecting netflow data for ages but I haven't really used it.

I'm trying to figure out how much traffic our household is actually generating, and with the different profiles and other tools in NFSen I can dig a bit deeper in the traffic, like the PVR we have in the cloud, my desktop vs. OH's laptop, etc. Perhaps I'll see how well will our uncontrolled very net-oriented usage fit the NZ data caps.

Zeon

3916 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#417386 15-Dec-2010 00:48

There was a site that was posted on GPforums which had some info about various AS (autonomous system numbers, ISPs usually would have one for their BGP peering). Ran a few ISPs. Not sure how accurate but:

Orcon: 1-5gbps
Telecom: 40-50gbps

With the peering exchanges the amount of traffic they pass could be fairly high e.g. we have Orcon at work for internet and send 1TB+ per month to servers colocated @ ICONZ via APE. the APE definitely has 1gbps ports (and bonded too I believe) available. Smaller players probably have 100mbps though.

As others have said, intra ISP bandwidth is something difficult to measure and probably very significant. UFB will change the game in this and the overall picture though.

Speedtest 2019-10-14

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5