disclaimer: I've been on the provider side for 25 years.
I really see all this hoopla about net neutrality as a non-argument. On the one hand, I can't see how legislation can effectively either impede it or enforce it, but on the other, I don't see why it should be prohibited either. Yes, as a quick knee-jerk argument for pro civil liberties evangelisation, claiming that all data should be treated equal and bla-bla-bla, sounds good... *HOWEVER* it's a waste of time/energy to somehow want to legislate it.
Unless I've got things wrong (don't just give the easy answer of "yes, you're wrong", give arguments that counter my long-winded discourse below), it's a question of economics/logic. Privately funded/owned network providers are NOT there to provide a charitable service, but to earn money. They will want to tap into as much money as possible for as little cost/hassle as possible. The same goes on the consumer side. They are not there to "charitably" fund the providers, but to obtain as good a service as they can get for as little money/hassle they can.
So we get to a supply & demand situation.
If we're in a monopolistic situation, then YES legislate until you go blue on what the quality of service should be, how the provider should treat your data streams, what's the minimum speed etc...
However, in a competitive environment, as a PROVIDER I *want* the other providers to start messing around and purposely slowing all traffic for all of their users for no apparent reason (unless they pay for the additional "upgraded bandwidth" option), because then that creates a lovely market opportunity for ME to provide faster service at cheaper rates.
Doing a non-neutrality action is basically applying QOS using whatever rules I wish to define. Applying QOS can be either for technical reasons or for commercial reasons.
Technical reasons are easy to understand: generally it's because there's not enough bandwidth available to meet the demand, hence I either to let it all just "battle it out", upgrade my bandwidth, or decide pro-actively to guarantee/throttle certain flows Let's have a look at the options: -let it all "battle it out" means that certain types of traffic will just be unusable (video, voip), that certain types of users who can play with their settings will gain an unfair upper hand over others, and I just can't guarantee service levels, meaning crappy for everyone, with NO option to get a better service by paying more. -upgrading my infrastructure bandwidth (which supposes that I've left it battling it out, and upgrade when the fighting starts), although nice, has a cost involved meaning I have to see if I can actually afford it and if it's worth it (should I leave them all at crappy service, and keep higher profit margins -caveat:see below -, or can I afford the bandwidth upgrades). -QOS: If we accept that I won't always have the economical possibility/justification to upgrade all the way to COMPLETELY decongest ALL of my infrastructure at ALL levels, then just letting all traffic fight it out is actually bad business practice. I *WANT* to make sure that VoIP and realtime video can get through with a guarantee and with as little latency/dropping as possible. If I have residential users with a FTTH 1Gbp link paying $50/month, with CONTRACTUALLY no (or small) bandwidth guarantees, and a series of professional (or residential) customers who want to subscribe to a GUARANTEED 100Mbps up/down service for (for example) $500/month, then I want to be able to provide "best effort" quality to my residential users and GUARANTEE the 100Mbps to the others. I want to be able as a provider to be able to provide different service levels. I can't do that if it's a "just fight it out" situation.
Being responsible, as my infrastructure starts to near capacity, I SHOULD have a good understanding of what it is that is "killing" my links, and it should be up to me to decide if I want to throttle it or not, based on both economic and commercial reasons. If I've seen tha
Could you clarify a little what is currently happening? Based on some of the comments it seems that everyone has a different idea of what is CURRENTLY going on: -The take I have is that you're saying that for now you've just been asked to EXPLORE POSSIBILITIES (ie, it's free unfestered access for now). -I'm also a little confused regarding the court order blockages at the request of various copyright holders. Can you give examples of what is being done, how, why, when...? (refrain from giving names to protect the guil^H^H^H^Hinnocent copyright holders for fear of backlash). -You indicate aprox 15k apartments across America. How are you giving access? Are these large residential complexes with a centralized large "pipe" to the 'net at each location and you have some sort of equivalent to a corporate campus-type distribution network? Do you have regular residential-grade ADSL modem things and they are individual apartments? A mixture of each? Can you give some insight?
As for the "lets charge the commercial service providers to access our network", it's very much the same argument that the larger ISPs want to use to justify elimination of net-neutrality, and giving better/speedier access to those providers that pay. From a PERSONAL view, I can't see why an ISP shouldn't have the RIGHT to decide which services it throttles or which it prioritizes, however I DO see it as an opportunity for ISP's to differentiate themselves from others "hey, come to us, we will make sure you have equal access to everything as opposed to ISP-non-neutral which makes it succky-slow for you to access google-youtube". Those ISP's wanting to throttle/speed up depending who pays them more are (in my view) shooting themselves in the foot if they actually do it. It would only really work if they ALL do it, but if it's ALL of them, then they could be collectively accused of collusion or market-fixing...
Even if your management "says" that they are trying to get some money for it because they are providing it for free, they currently are NOT. If they are charging a fixed price which includes rent, taxes, water, electricity, laundry-room facilities, pool, library, parking-lot etc.... then the rent is paying for the total of all of those services. Internet access is a small part of that, but it IS a part. Management should figure out what their cost is and factor that into their calculations. Trying to sell access to your students for internet service providers wouldn't get big bucks in any case... You may get a bigger chunk trying to sell (for junk snail-mail advertising) the whole list/address of students updated on a regular basis (more bang for your buck!) than actually having to implement the limitations that you seem to imply (hard to do a complete BLOCKAGE of places like amazon -as you say- without suffering severe backlash, and clients either getting alternative providers, or converting your service in irrelevant).
The problem we have is that "political correctness" is too entrenched in the Creationism vs Evolution battle, and that PC-ness dictates "everything/everyone should be treated equally and fairly". All fine for "fairness" (how to define it is another matter), but ideas/opinions are NOT people, and thus do not have some sort of right... Let me give an example which exagerates the point: Lets say that I have this belief that 2+2 = 5, and this differs from mainstream thought that 2+2=4 (except where pentium processors are involved where it is 3.9997, but that's a different matter). I start complaining that my opinion/theory/belief/religion (how you want to define the credence of 2+2=5 is perhaps the crux) is NOT being given equal time in maths classes across the country. Am I justified in demanding equal time? Perhaps it is justified to teach it as an alternative school of philosophy (supposing that philosophy classes typically talk about different schools of thought, and they will present those most widely seen -if of course my 2+2=5 gains traction), however, to teach it in a MATHS class where we are talking about mathematical proofs, or at most teaching theories that have not been MATHEMATICALLY deemed unlikely, would probably be.... crazy? In the same way, evolution is science. creationism is religion. Trying to push creationism into the realm of science, would demand applying the scientific method to it, the same as trying to push 2+2=5ism into maths would demand applying mathematical principals into it. We're talking about science. You may not like it, but the world works on science (as opposed to praying on religion). Equal time for kooky opinions vs science fact is not fair. Just in the same way that flat-earth believers should not be given same time as round-world (or irregular sphericalists if you prefer). Creationism is far-fetched and sustained by belief, which is very close to being the definition of religion. If you want to bring it into the realm of science, then we get to the point of extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof... Once we get that, then we can start talking about shifting mainstream. Meanwhile, keep it in literal-reading bible schools of thought, which is where it belongs. All the above is very opinionated. My opinion.
For what it's worth, Telefónica is notorious for doing LOTS of testing different ways of throttling, caching, blocking, accelerating etc... (and not being that "great" at it) The general INTENT is not "omg, they want to block me from doing things!!!", but rather they are trying to save/optimize on bandwidth. As far as I know, they have at times been known to block SOME traffic they consider "voice" as it comes in conflict with their main business line, but mostly this has been tried and then stopped as it generated more headaches than cash. With all the caching/accelerating, etc, a LOT of times they mess up with ICMP packs which handle testing MTU, in conjunction with changing the actual MTU of the links, the result of this is that your kit sends larger blocks than the links can handle and then they get mashed/munged during fragmentation/reassembly. And the consequence of that is that a lot of "real" packets don't get through (often the ones on or around the *perceived* MTU limit), so your data then behaves as if it was working on a VERY lossy link (imagine around 40%+ packet loss...). You won't see problems with a regular ping, but you may if you check with ping sizes around the MTU limit. At other times, as Telefónica is trying to optimize using DPI (deep packet inspection) to check what protocol is being used, they may not correctly recognize your traffic and thus munge it in someway. Effectively acting as a throttle, but not because they actually "want" to throttle. What can you do about it? Not much, because all of this is handled by the inner sanctum of the tech-priests and they don't communicate with mere mortals such as tech support of commercial reps, there's no way to get through... With a regular residential grade link, the attitude from Telefonica is "take it or leave it as-is, we don't care, this is what we give". In general they are valid for the purpose, but if you want business grade quality AND the possibility of complaining (and being heard), you need to get a business grade link (ie ditch Speedy and get info-internet at 5x the price with 1/4 the speed). It's nice to WANT to notch it up to "they are throttling me" or "NSA is spying on me" and any other conspiracy theory, but once you mention Telefonica it's more a case of "Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence". (and yes, NSA is probably spying on you ANYWAY...). The above come from a lot of experience with different telco's, a lot of contact with people inside telefonica and seeing how telefonica operates in quite a few countries (including Spain and Peru). Just take it as face value, I'm not trying to prove a point. If it helps great... if not, well, good luck with other venues... My $0.02
What exactly are you trying to achieve? Some scenarios: A) remote to central with 2 ISP's at remote with "cheap regular" DSL type connection going to central where there is a "big fat pipe" (multihomed?) A.1) a one of for a single remote.2) something repeatable for multiple remotes B) remote to central with 2 ISP's as A) and with (same?) 2 ISP's at central (also B.1 & B.2) as above).
Do we have any fixed public IP addresses anywhere in the equation (or is this out of budget too)? In all cases in which direction is the data flowing mainly? Also, what is the purpose mainly here? Getting higher speed? Higher redundancy? Less latency (hah!) ? > The hardware solutions I've found are expensive for a small business Can you define expensive, what type of price is out of it (both for hardware and for links)?
I would GUESS that the end result needed is to connect LAN-1 to LAN-2 , so it doesn't HAVE to "look" as a single channel for the routers involved, just that the paths aggregate and are redundant... But a bit more information would be appreciated!
All the East coast of Africa has up to now been severeley lacking in possibilities of connectivity, and has had to make do with satellite links which are high latency and expensive (a DEDICATED satlink of 1Mb up and 1Mb down is in the ballpark range of around $10,000 per month, yes ten-THOUSAND per MONTH). The West coast has had the SAT-3 cable for a while (2001), with a total capacity of 120Gbit/s (according to Wikipedia). Most of that lands and gets used up in SouthAfrica and in Nigeria. South Africa is in a decent situation because they have a country-wide distribution network that lets them hand off the network to most places. In Nigeria, however, try getting a connection on the SAT-3 outside of Lagos... The problem throughout Africa is not only that of lack of backbone country-to-internet connectivity, but actually that of a decent distribution network within the country itself. It's of little use to land a multi-gig cable at a certain place if then you don't have the infrastructure to re-distribute it. Maybe a chicken and egg situation... No backbone, so no point in building local distribution. No local distribution, so no point in building a backbone... Nigeria is arguably the 2nd most developed country in Africa (After S.A.), and if you want a link outside of Lagos, your best bet is to go for a satlink. In fact, even INSIDE of Lagos, ISP's use sat-link bandwidth because of the instabilities of using Nitel to get to the SAT-3 landing station. So, if the 2nd most developed country has had a sub-link for 8 yrs and can't get the signal distributed, how long do you think it's going to take for this new cable to actually start making waves? I'm betting it's mainly going to be used in the short term for South Africa (will drop prices for them!), and for the rest of the countries will serve to carry voice from the main hubs of the cellphone operators... So to give an idea of how things happen in lesser developed countries: -In Congo Democratic Republic, cellphone coverage is getting to be quite extensive (at least in the population centers), but if you make a phone call from Goma (eastern border) to the capital Kinshassa, your call goes over a satlink (no city to city connection). Even worse, if you call a friend/colleague also in Goma, but who happens to use a different operator, your call may actually make TWO hops: first sat-hop back to Kinshassa, then handed from one operator to the other, and then back over another sat-hop to Goma... Think about it.
There is no automatic "yeah this is great" or "nah, this is crap" answer. All those advising one way or another directly are jumping the gun like crazy. Your big question 'should I stay or should I go now?' only has one answer: 'it depends'. I've been in similar situations before and in some cases taken shares, in others preferred to take more wages, in others left. From what you state, the company is "a small IT consulting firm" and you are "a key resource". I think the important information that you're telling us is that the company is SMALL (5-10 people tops?) and that you are one of the key guys. If taking 10% is equivalent to now considering you as a partner with a say, then now you have "clout" and will be regarded maybe in a different way. Obviously you want to place a "value" on these shares. Does the company make a profit each year that they turn around and share with the partners? If so, how much has that been... If instead, all they do is adjust top salaries to what company makes (as happens with a lot of companies), then no dividends are paid out. In this case, does your also get adjuested? At what level? If you are made an equal partner on consideration (even if not on shares), will your salary now be on equal par to the others?. Being a "small company" probably means that it will stay privately owned, and never be sold, as such, your 10% probably won't ever have a decent "sale" value, so that part will not be worth much (if anything), unless the company has a declared monetary value, and thus the 10% can actually be redeemed for something... but for that you'd want guarantees in writing that it would be possible to sell at some point in the future. A downside to "being a partner" is also that often now your guarantee of salary goes to the pits. I'll explain. As a "grunt" worker, you expect your salary as the company isn't yours. The owners generally (if they care at all about their employees), will first pay employee salaries before paying themselves. As an "owner", if hard times hit, you may find yourself with a salary that although on paper your still getting it, in reality you get what is left over... (anything missing considered to be "owed" to you by company, to be paid when [if?] things improve... after all, it "doesn't matter as it's your company after all!!!"]. You also mention that "I was ready to quit for consulting". So, you want to quit this small consulting company and go set up one yourself of your own? Well, if you are one of the key resources, maybe you are better off with your own company than having 10% of one shared with another 90%... As mentioned above, it all depends... Conditions being special to your particular company, what the outlook is, what consideration you get for your shares, how that affects salary, if the value of shares is actually tangible down the road, etc. Impossible to tell without knowing more, but at least those are the things you should be factoring in to see if you want it or not. Oh, and of course, the first question of all "are you comfortable with the company?" If not, then your choice is clear in any case. $0.02
The Miami "Nap of the Americas" is a rather large building in downtown Miami which houses a LOT of interconnects which are quite important for global connectivity (netwrok, internet, telephony). It also houses one of the root servers. One of the floors belongs in its entirety to some combination of NSA/CIA/FBI and is offlimits unless you have some high authorization clearance. The whole building is rather impressive in its capabilities, redundancy, etc... Of visual interest, perfectly visible from the ground (though you have to be a distance away), are three very large "ping pong balls" each of somewhere between 8-15m in diameter which house three large parabolica antennas (sat-dishes), lovingly referred to as the BFD's (Big F Dishes). Out of curiosity, from a few years back, I thought I'd use GMaps and/or GEarth to see what they looked at from above, as the Miami area was quite high-res. I was surprised to find that they were not there... In fact, I thought that I had the wrong address and spent a long while searching. When I finally came to the conculsion that it was the CORRECT place, and had a more detailed look at it, it was clear that the whole roof had been "cut 'n paste" from a boring part of it. It wasn't due to an old image which had been taken prior to the dishes, as there was no AC equipment either, and it was quite obvious that certain features were repeating (from the cut'n paste), in addition to lacks of continuity. Every now and then I'd go back to the image with a smile on my face to confirm it was blanked out. At the same time, I think it was the competing imagery system from Microsoft was showing the balls. Seeing this article, I thought "aha", clear proof, so I pulled it up again... However, now the balls show completely, and the roof is no longer "faked". So, what's up then? Change of heart at Google? The decided that censorship was no longer the thing to do? Found that some requirements were ridiculous? This one certainly was, because with the NAP itself showing a lovely sky image of itself on its homepage: http://www.terremark.com/technology-platform/nap-of-the-americas.aspx it's a bit silly to blank out a less revealing sat-image... To find it on GMaps/Earth, just type in "Nap of the Americas" and you'll get it. Thoughts?
My question directly addresses the internal software/hardware combo. Eve-online decided from the beginning to be a single instance game, ie EVERYONE is in the same "universe" and/or cluster of servers. As the userbase increases (and it has been doing so steadily), so do the sizes of some of the alliances, generally those that control a part of "0.0" space (the dangerous lawless areas). This means also, that when wanting to attack an alliance controlled area, the defence they will amount means you will also have to send in a sizeable force to deal with them. Eve-online now regularly gets 30-35,000 simultaneous players online. Only last week, a "battle" where the defender "dug in" with aproximately 300-350 players with a very well fortified position, had an attacker of 800-1000 players. When the attacking force tried to enter the defended system, the server running this system crashed. And did so again a few times (they are VERY stressed when they have more than 500 players on the same node, let alone 1100 - 1450, all in the same space). With an arithmetical growth of the size of the battles, comes an geometrical growth of the traffic that single server has to generate. Lets imagine for a moment that in a fighting situation each player generates a single byte of traffic that has to be fed to all the other players per second (forget about packets, headers etc... which will of course only worsen the problem). With 10 players, each of those players will have to be updated with 1 byte for each of the other 9 players, so each one will get 9bytes/sec, total load on the server is 90bytes/sec (9 bytes/sec x 10 players). With 100 players, each of those will have to be updated with info from 99 players, so 99bytes/sec per player, Total load on the server is 9900bytes/sec (99 bytes/sec x 100 players). With 1000 players, each recieves 999bytes/sec, total load on the server is 999000 bytes/sec As you can see, if you multiply players by 10, you multiply traffic by 100... This also means (and it seems that nobody at CCP has realized this), that if your servers are running at full capacity (process-wise) with 20000 players online, and you want to now be able to handle 40000 players (double), you won't have enough process-power if you just double the power of your server cluster. You have in fact to multiply it by 4. The more people you get in your single instance, the worse it scales. They desperately need somebody who can stand back and take a look at the big picture, and somehow realistically design a system that will handle the load gracefully. Either limit the amount of accounts you will have, or limit the simultaneous players on the system/node/etc, or (shock/horror!!!) maybe have to think about creating another instance (or more of them). Single instance space is NOT infinitely scalable the way things are currently done. So, the question. What are you going to do about scalability in the current system?
I think we'll be seeing more bandwidth limits imposed. Maybe even some sort of telephone rate system where you pay per byte. Everyone understands that a local 2Mb loop is way cheaper that a 2Mb link across the country. When people are using their links for"normal" residential/business use (ie, email, browsing, some up/downloading, etc), you can "serve" many 2Mb customers with a single 2Mb line, hence you can share out the cost amongst your customers.
However, if the customers have f.e. file sharing programs running on their computers 24/24, then each customer is going to need and require from the ISP a dedicated 2Mb link, so the economies of "sharing" are no longer there. Why do you think that so many universities/colleges are filtering things like kazaa? Not so much for legal reasons, but actually to avoid having their bandwidth swamped. Enough bandwidth to support way more than normal useage, but no way near enough to support a bunch of file-swapping stations.
Exactly the same type of predicament that the ISP is in, except it can't filter traffic, so the only recourse is to try and chop the heads off from that 1% of users that is using 95% of the bandwidth. Having been in the ISP business, I can understand it completely.
Doesn't it strike you guys that $15.3million these days is a very low amount? If their claims WERE valid, then they would have many MANY millions rolling in, not just 15.3 The fact that they only expect 15.3 in my eyes says that they themselves don't rate their chances too high anyway...
Hmmm, talk about exageration. How about: -I have no confirmation that Microsoft is divested from Tarentella, other than a declaration from Microsoft of their INTENTIONS to divest. Erm, you believe face up from an intention stated by MS that they will do something, that they actually followed through and did it? -From what it seems, Tarentella still has their hand firmly attached to SCO/Caldera's "strings" -as in how to pull strings- (I have no information regarding any undoing of those messy knots between Tarentella & SCO/Caldera). Yes, one thing we can agree on is foolish lawsuits from Caldera. From the above, the question I ask openly is "Does MS have anything to do with this latest anti-Unix thing from SCO/Caldera?" And no, I don't see the question as being carefree MS-bashing.
Sorry about the way I phrased the first thing. Nobody is confusing Xenix the OS (hey, I learnt the basics of UNIX with it back in late 80's or very early 90's!) with a company. What I meant to say is that just because a product gets sold off, it doesn't stop being a product. Same with a company, just because it gets sold off... What is clear is that the Tarentella/Caldera deal was very messy indeed leaving both companies very much tied together in an ugly knot. I was not aware of the INTENTIONS of MS to sell its stake in SCO. However, -just as the article says-, the SEC filing was for an INTENTION to sell. Just to close the chapter completely, do we have confirmation that those intentions materialized? Now, in my first post I said: "Could it not be that MS saw the "disruption" potential back then and tried to put some ground between them and SCO?" Putting some ground from a VISUAL point of view would involve making it look as if they are getting away... Then having Tarentella sell to a linux company while still pulling the strings (somehow) would be interesting. In January 2000, Linux was already percieved as a major threat by MS. Is there any way we can get full disclosure on ownership of SCO-Caldera & Tarentella and REALLY know who is pulling the strings? The fact that a company that was controlled in no small part by MS 3 years ago is suddenly trying to throw mud all over the Linux world (and using VERY silly arguments) really stinks all over as a MS tactic. No, I'm *NOT* a conspiracist, no I don't particularly like MS, yes I do think linux is neat. Can't you somehow see that there are flashing red lights over this? This doesn't mean that MS *IS* behind this, but it wouldn't be that difficult for them to have pulled this off either. Seeing that it wouldn't be difficult, that it *is* their style, and that ANY mud over unix in general helps them out...
-sigh- Great, so now we're getting academic. When is a company not a company... MS sold Xenix to SCO. Does that mean it was no longer Xenix? Nope, still Xenix, but with a different owner. SCO bought up Xenix, and later merged with Caldera. You have an interesting timeline on the Caldera site at: http://www.caldera.com/company/history.html where you can see the nimble name-dancing at Caldera. However it is apparent that the current SCO *is* the heir to all the original SCO history/material/company (more so if you care to realize that their suit is because they say that OLD IP propety of theirs is being trodden on -though they don't state what-). It *IS* SCO that is suing IBM, it just so happens that it's also Caldera (or was befor they decided to dump the Caldera name). No, it isn't Doug & Larry Michaels suing, but then again the company being sued is not Dr. Herman Holleriths CTR... Time moves on, companies evolve. Checking up on the SCO/Tarentella/Caldera split, there's a nice quote: "The deal that SCO struck with Caldera is as complex as they come. SCO sold the server software and professional services division to Caldera, but retained the intellectual property rights to the software." http://www.dqindia.com/content/special /100092201.a sp Now, they also talk about it being quite convoluted as to share exchanges, members on boards of directors etc... So, the Tarentella & the current SCO seem to be VERY intertwined. As we all know, the previous SCO was strongly linked to MS, so if SCO(caldera) has its strings pulled by Tarentella(ex-SCO?), and Tarentella has its strings pulled by Microsoft, and now Microsoft "settles" with SCO(Caldera), is it THAT difficult to wonder if there is more than meets the eye?
I hate it when I actually have to search to check for what I write (grin). Ok, Microsoft sold Xenix to SCO (from what I'm findin on the 'net in '95, but that probably is a type, I THINK it was '85) apparently to fund Windows development and get out of that crappy unix market. At the same time they took a largish stake in SCO. So the Microsoft-SCO link is clearly there. It would be interesting to get full disclosure on current share-holders of SCO to see if what I am hinting at is actually the basis of that happy way that MS decided to pay SCO. More info, is that when MS divested themselves of Xenix to SCO there were clauses that stated what technology they were getting rid of. As some of that probably carried over into NT (despite it owing a lot to VMS), there are possibly portions in there that could be argued have IP that belongs to SCO (because of the sale...). So, either because they want to make SCO look right and go unix/linux-bashing, or because they have a stake, or because SCO actually "owns" part of NT... there's a nasty mess. Wonder what the bottom line is... John.
Maybe I'm paranoid, or maybe I've got things mixed up, so could someone correct me if I have it wrong? Some years back, when it was clear that SCO-Unix/Xenix was on the way out, weren't they bought up by MicroSoft? At the time I found that strange, and even stranger yet when it was "sold on" when all it really was was a name and some dubious IP (hell, probably as useful as a shell company containing all the IP related to OS2). Could it not be that MS saw the "disruption" potential back then and tried to put some ground between them and SCO? Doesn't it seem *too* convenient that they are the first ones "bowing" their heads to the FUD claims of SCO? Hmmm...
>How can I tell for certain that I'm getting a full T1? What would an oversold T1 read out to be as compared to a true T1?"
The question should not be stated as above, but as "when? and to where?". You most certainly have a full T1 between you and your provider, so that means that if you place a machine at the providers location, and you shunt data back and forth between those machines, they will go at full T1 speeds. What is oversubscription? If a provider has a DS3 (which is 28xT1) worth of bandwidth to the 'net, and sells 29 T1's, then TECHNICALLY he has oversold his bandwidth. Does this scenario REALLY kick in and mess anyone up (ie 29 in a 28 pipe)? Probably not, because the only time that anyone would notice someting is if ALL 29 customers are at a given moment ALL trying to suck in data at a T1 bit-rate, and then, they would find that they would have aproximately 1 in every 29 packets dropped (an aprox 3% packet loss rate). Statistically, to have ALL of those 29 customers that have T1 links ALL sucking in at MAX at the same time just won't happen. In reality, each customer will always think that he's getting a full T1 from his upstream provider. So, when does oversubscription kick in? The ISP should monitor his traffic on his lines (I'm not talking about the lines to his customers, which should also be monitored, but just for service to each customer), and he will notice usage patterns. With enough customers, the average usage on each line will follow a nice series of peaks and troughs. Peaks probably during the day (either business hours, or evening hours depending if his customers are mainly residential or business), and troughs generally during the night. Now, the peaks will NOT be equal in bandwidth to the sum of bandwidths of the customers, but equal to the sum of USAGE of the customers. So, if he has 10 customers on T1's, they will NOT be using 15Mb of bandwidth (how much will in reality depend on his target customers). The provider will see that as he adds customers, the peaks will become more regular (a question of numbers, the more users you have, the more regular the averages), and obviously will start getting higher. If he just carries on selling, and doesn't do anything else, at a given time, the "peakest" will hit the available bandwidth he has. At that exact moment, he will be overselling beyond his capacity. If he continues to add customers, then when he hits peak, it can't go higher (as there is no more available bandwidth), but it will flatten out at the max of his incoming links. All EXTRA people trying to suck in data, will at that point be fighting for whatever is there. If he had 100 customers when he hit peak (and at that moment was EXACTLY maxed, but with no adverse effects), then when he doubles his customers (goes to 200 customers), they will all have a transfer experience of around 1/2 the speed they had when they were only 100, and get worse as more customers are added. Of course, what people want to know, is "will I be screwed by signing up with this provider?". And that is hard to answer just point blank. A provider who sells T1's to ISPs who are in turn trying to max out their links by reselling to customers, will probably find that each T1 of his customers will be near saturation at peak times, so by having 10 customers, he will probably be needing to have just under 15Mb of available incoming bandwidth. Another provider who sells T1's to small/medium businesses, and sells 100 T1's, may find himself with peaks of aound 10Mbs instead (business users won't be bandwidth hogs, unles there are geeks working and sucking down MP3's, p0rn, software, etc...). Also note that a provider typically will not have just ONE link, but a multitude of them, which if he knows his beans) he will try to load balance so as not to get any bottlenecks. If however he is maxing out one (or more) of those links and doesn't do something to solve it (increase that link, or move traffic away), then every time your data goes through that link, you will be in a bad position.
So what does it boil down to then? -note down CLEARLY what you want to do with your bandwidth (just surf? download stuff now and then? Have a quality link to a distant point so that you can send VoIP between here and there?) -do tests and try to pinpoint where the bottlenecks are -pray...;-)
cable co: just single household and no public viewing allowed
phone co: just a single call allowed (from whatevre phone you want, but just a single call). Even more, your single call is metered (in most countries even for local calls). Please make LOTS of calls and we bill you like crazy.
electric co: metered on usage, please go ahead and connect LOADS of stuff please, and we bill you like crazy
water co: metered on usage, please flush a lot of toilets and open all those spigots, and we bill you like crazy.
What is MY point? Their billing structure works. The ISP world is stuck where the more the customer uses the service, the more it costs the ISP (has to have more b/w available), but it doesn't manage to bill the customer more (most ISPs bill flat-rates or get bad PR), so they find someway to protect themselves. In the end they just can't win. With sensible per usage billing, us geeks would be cut-off the net for all practical uses, and apart from that they would be killed by bad PR, with flat-rate they are in a bad situation.
John.
I am a strong believer that charging per bandwidth usage is how it would be fair. However I am a realist. I think that there's no way the industry will be able to go back to a bandwidth-usage model for residential customers.
Reality somehow has to be addressed. If one cable company started charging REALISTICALLY on bandwidth, then a lot of users would start jumping ship. I estimate that around 2% of my users (ISP of around 5000 users) make up for around 50% of my residential bandwidth consumption. If I started charging based on consumption, that 2% would straight away jump, and they would probably be a noisy lot (hey it's the geek bunch, of which I'm a member), and get the message out that this is one ISP NOT to be with. Lots of negative PR, and it would probably be a landslide. WAY too risky for any ISP to do.
Lets face it, although most of the people posting are saying things like "I'd be willing to pay a 10-20% increase for guaranteed quality service", if us geeks we to be charged relative to bandiwdth consumption, on an even scale, then we'd probably be in a bad situation as far as net usage (couldn't get our daily high).
Even so, with the flat rate, the ISP knows that some users are going to be on the high end of the scale, but what they dont want is users that go completely wacko. They can't COMMERCIALLY go along the route of limited bandwidth unless ALL of them do (and I can't see that happening), so the idea is to somehow protect themselves against the village geek who wants to hook up half of America on one IP and pay just a monthly DSL...
At my ISP, (we're in the Caribbean, and no high bandwidth through us, mainly dialup), our TOS for the standard dialup account is single user on a directly connected computer acceptable to us (very fuzzy, and wouldn't stand up in courts probably, but we're looking to be able somehow to catch NAT routers).
About once a month, I do a check on the # of connections per user, and cream off the top 10 of them individually to find out whats going on. They are generally "users" with something like 500 connections each. Now, that on a dialup link in one month is suspicious to say the least. Nearly all of them turn out to be companies with a LAN and 5+ users using the system for corporate business and sharing the connection. Seeing that on the one hand they are directly in breach of my contract, on the other I have a guaranteed port service available for them, and that they would be better off with a leased line (due to local calls not being free), I push them into the other type of service. Some of them prefer to cancel their contract, which suits me, as they are costing me more than they are worth (practically taking up a line to themselves, and the monthly fee for a dialup is 40ff -around $8-).
John.
I have a lot of sympathy for the ISP (hell, I am one, about to go under...). The problem is that the industry still hasn't figured out how to charge its users in a fair way AND make a buck. Is it REALLY fair to charge a flat fee, which means divide total cost usage by total users and then charge that to each user (plus a markup -don't forget that this is NOT a charity, but a business-)? If so, then what happens is that those that hardly use it are heavily subsidizing the big users.
If there are no limits, what stops you from getting yourself a cable/DSL access and then wiring up your whole neighbourhood through you? Hand them out instructions on how to create a hotmail-type email, and off you go. For those that say "sure, but then you are lowering the experience of each one", they should actually look at average usage, and you would see that up to around 50 users or so, you are unlikely to step on each others toes except under exceptional circumstances (not more than 4 or 5 are likely to be on at the same time, and of them, they are statistically going to have more unused b/w during their usage than used).
Unfortunately, during the dot-com boom pricing and billing of ISP service went nuts (along with the rest of the industry), and we still have to recover from this idea that b/w should be somehow GIVEN by the ISP at no charge to EVERYONE. Sure, I love universal service as everyone else, but the big question that we should all be asking ourselves: "for internet service, WHO should pay?" Please note, that links, routers, equipment, staff, electricity, etc... are NOT free.
If an ISP has unlimited access which it is calculating on the basis of an average SINGLE user with a SINGLE machine, and it states it clearly in its contract that you are paying for a single-user/single-machine, then anyone putting more than that on their link is in breach of their contract. They have calculated their prices based on their assumption. Of course you may think -and might even be right- that their prices are too high, but does that morally allow you to be in breach of contract? In the same way, we all feel that MS-whatever licenses are way too high, but are we morally allowed therefore to install each program on 10 machines (certainly not legally).
I'm Tech Director for a Caribbean ISP, so I know the problems in getting bandwidth AND multihoming.
To be multihomed correctly you will generally need:
-a decent router that can do BGP.
-more than one connection to providers who will talk BGP with you.
-your own AS number and an allocated block of IP addresses
The expensive part is not really "paying the fees" of (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC), or complying with their conditions, but in fact having someone tech enough that also understands the POLITICS (yes POLITICS) involved in running BGP, and the ongoing cost of keeping your network in fact running in this type of situation.
You are just looking at the tip of the iceberg and saying "wow that's expensive JUST for a block of IP's", which on the surface might look correct, however:
-just about anyone can say "gimme a block please" (cheap).
-checking on who can actually utilise them or not is expensive.
Memory in routers is easily scalable (it isn't but lets pretend it is), but the problem is not lack of memory, but actually wading through all those blocks of IP addresses.
Most of the main tier 1 providers have serious filters in place to avoid filling their routing tables up with junk due to mistakes or due to people who just haven't made a transit deal with them, so even if you were "given" a block of addresses, it wouldn't always be that easy for you to get it routed.
My advice: as you are "small" (compared to a Tier 1 provider), my guess is that there are ISPs down there that will do a better job than you for getting redundancy. Spend a bit more money on linking up to one of these, and backup your link to them somehow, and trust THEM for your link instead of trying to do it yourself. It will probably cost you just about the same, but your uptime will probably be HIGHER, because when you do BGP yourself, you are adding in extra weak spots that you may at this moment not be thinking of (your internal routing policies and how they get propagated, the people you will need to make sure this runs, etc...).
As tech director for an ISP, yes keeping up with currently used standards is part of my job. The currently used STANDARD for dialup modems is V.90 all over.
V.92 is a pretty hack. If you have to setup from scratch today, you would obviously be looking for something that does V.92, but if upgrading V.90->V.92 means loads of cash or change of equipment then it is just not worth the hassle.
Let's face is, the average dialup user is mainly a downloader, not an uploader, the V.92 standard slightly increases the THEORETICAL speed, but the practical speed will probably move (on the uploads) around 5-10%, with the download staying where it is.
In nearly all areas where V.90 is available from the provider, ISDN is available to the subscriber. If uploading is such a biggie with the end user, he would not be bitching for a 5-10% increase at best, but would be upgrading HIMSELF to an ISDN line, which will not change his running costs, and will get him a nearly 100% speed increase in uploads.
Throughout most of Europe, users pay for their calls on a per-minute basis. No difference paying (on time) for an analog call than for paying for an ISDN call, hence the end user would want an ISDN link.
We have around 5000 dialup users (we're small), and I really don't think that it would merit us an expenditure of around $50-100K for *this* upgrade.
Not a good investment for maybe 50 users to notice. As CTO, I have better ways to spend that cash, even if it was available (which it isn't).
With analog calls the buck stops at V.90 for us.
Want something fast? Go to ISDN. Even faster? ADSL/cable/...
I'm CTO for an ISP in the Caribbean, and the combination of distance/high speed/low price is something that I have to rattle my brains every day to solve.
With $80K, you can NOT lay 45miles of fibre & maintain them (maybe between 2 points in the desert, but here we're coming out of a city, so probability is near 0). And you have to add in the equipment to light up the fibre, plus maintenance, etc...
I presume your local telco doesn't do ADSL, or else you wouldn't be asking.
Option "A" would be getting from your telco a point to point leased circuit. Setup fees for a T1 (1.5Mb) would probably be in the US$5K range, with a monthly of probably around US$2K. You would also have to add in a router on your end (just about ANY serial router can do T1 speeds, second hand on ebay a cisco 25xx series goes for around $300. New you should be able to find around $1K).
Option "B" would be wireless. Problem is that a microwave link (which does need line of sight -LOS-) covering 45miles reliably is going to cost quite a bit more than your $80K, then again it would be high speed...
If you need a few Mb of bandwith (something in the 1-5Mb range), maybe you should look at setting up a couple of intermediate hops (every 15 miles or so), which would mean you would have 3 legs, or 6 transmitter/receivers. Latency is practically nonexistant (it's not the medium that introduces generally the latency, but the distance, which is why GEO sat-links are high latency), but this would have extra complications in that you need to find a couple of intermediate hops, then again equipment is much cheaper for the 15 miles range, and the masts you have to set up would be much smaller.
My.02Euro.
Slashdot Mirror
disclaimer: I've been on the provider side for 25 years.
I really see all this hoopla about net neutrality as a non-argument.
On the one hand, I can't see how legislation can effectively either impede it or enforce it, but on the other, I don't see why it should be prohibited either.
Yes, as a quick knee-jerk argument for pro civil liberties evangelisation, claiming that all data should be treated equal and bla-bla-bla, sounds good...
*HOWEVER* it's a waste of time/energy to somehow want to legislate it.
Unless I've got things wrong (don't just give the easy answer of "yes, you're wrong", give arguments that counter my long-winded discourse below), it's a question of economics/logic. Privately funded/owned network providers are NOT there to provide a charitable service, but to earn money. They will want to tap into as much money as possible for as little cost/hassle as possible. The same goes on the consumer side. They are not there to "charitably" fund the providers, but to obtain as good a service as they can get for as little money/hassle they can.
So we get to a supply & demand situation.
If we're in a monopolistic situation, then YES legislate until you go blue on what the quality of service should be, how the provider should treat your data streams, what's the minimum speed etc...
However, in a competitive environment, as a PROVIDER I *want* the other providers to start messing around and purposely slowing all traffic for all of their users for no apparent reason (unless they pay for the additional "upgraded bandwidth" option), because then that creates a lovely market opportunity for ME to provide faster service at cheaper rates.
Doing a non-neutrality action is basically applying QOS using whatever rules I wish to define. Applying QOS can be either for technical reasons or for commercial reasons.
Technical reasons are easy to understand: generally it's because there's not enough bandwidth available to meet the demand, hence I either to let it all just "battle it out", upgrade my bandwidth, or decide pro-actively to guarantee/throttle certain flows
Let's have a look at the options:
-let it all "battle it out" means that certain types of traffic will just be unusable (video, voip), that certain types of users who can play with their settings will gain an unfair upper hand over others, and I just can't guarantee service levels, meaning crappy for everyone, with NO option to get a better service by paying more.
-upgrading my infrastructure bandwidth (which supposes that I've left it battling it out, and upgrade when the fighting starts), although nice, has a cost involved meaning I have to see if I can actually afford it and if it's worth it (should I leave them all at crappy service, and keep higher profit margins -caveat:see below -, or can I afford the bandwidth upgrades).
-QOS: If we accept that I won't always have the economical possibility/justification to upgrade all the way to COMPLETELY decongest ALL of my infrastructure at ALL levels, then just letting all traffic fight it out is actually bad business practice. I *WANT* to make sure that VoIP and realtime video can get through with a guarantee and with as little latency/dropping as possible. If I have residential users with a FTTH 1Gbp link paying $50/month, with CONTRACTUALLY no (or small) bandwidth guarantees, and a series of professional (or residential) customers who want to subscribe to a GUARANTEED 100Mbps up/down service for (for example) $500/month, then I want to be able to provide "best effort" quality to my residential users and GUARANTEE the 100Mbps to the others. I want to be able as a provider to be able to provide different service levels. I can't do that if it's a "just fight it out" situation.
Being responsible, as my infrastructure starts to near capacity, I SHOULD have a good understanding of what it is that is "killing" my links, and it should be up to me to decide if I want to throttle it or not, based on both economic and commercial reasons.
If I've seen tha
Could you clarify a little what is currently happening? Based on some of the comments it seems that everyone has a different idea of what is CURRENTLY going on:
-The take I have is that you're saying that for now you've just been asked to EXPLORE POSSIBILITIES (ie, it's free unfestered access for now).
-I'm also a little confused regarding the court order blockages at the request of various copyright holders. Can you give examples of what is being done, how, why, when...? (refrain from giving names to protect the guil^H^H^H^Hinnocent copyright holders for fear of backlash).
-You indicate aprox 15k apartments across America. How are you giving access? Are these large residential complexes with a centralized large "pipe" to the 'net at each location and you have some sort of equivalent to a corporate campus-type distribution network? Do you have regular residential-grade ADSL modem things and they are individual apartments? A mixture of each? Can you give some insight?
As for the "lets charge the commercial service providers to access our network", it's very much the same argument that the larger ISPs want to use to justify elimination of net-neutrality, and giving better/speedier access to those providers that pay. From a PERSONAL view, I can't see why an ISP shouldn't have the RIGHT to decide which services it throttles or which it prioritizes, however I DO see it as an opportunity for ISP's to differentiate themselves from others "hey, come to us, we will make sure you have equal access to everything as opposed to ISP-non-neutral which makes it succky-slow for you to access google-youtube".
Those ISP's wanting to throttle/speed up depending who pays them more are (in my view) shooting themselves in the foot if they actually do it. It would only really work if they ALL do it, but if it's ALL of them, then they could be collectively accused of collusion or market-fixing...
Even if your management "says" that they are trying to get some money for it because they are providing it for free, they currently are NOT. If they are charging a fixed price which includes rent, taxes, water, electricity, laundry-room facilities, pool, library, parking-lot etc.... then the rent is paying for the total of all of those services. Internet access is a small part of that, but it IS a part. Management should figure out what their cost is and factor that into their calculations. Trying to sell access to your students for internet service providers wouldn't get big bucks in any case... You may get a bigger chunk trying to sell (for junk snail-mail advertising) the whole list/address of students updated on a regular basis (more bang for your buck!) than actually having to implement the limitations that you seem to imply (hard to do a complete BLOCKAGE of places like amazon -as you say- without suffering severe backlash, and clients either getting alternative providers, or converting your service in irrelevant).
The problem we have is that "political correctness" is too entrenched in the Creationism vs Evolution battle, and that PC-ness dictates "everything/everyone should be treated equally and fairly". All fine for "fairness" (how to define it is another matter), but ideas/opinions are NOT people, and thus do not have some sort of right... .... crazy?
Let me give an example which exagerates the point:
Lets say that I have this belief that 2+2 = 5, and this differs from mainstream thought that 2+2=4 (except where pentium processors are involved where it is 3.9997, but that's a different matter).
I start complaining that my opinion/theory/belief/religion (how you want to define the credence of 2+2=5 is perhaps the crux) is NOT being given equal time in maths classes across the country.
Am I justified in demanding equal time?
Perhaps it is justified to teach it as an alternative school of philosophy (supposing that philosophy classes typically talk about different schools of thought, and they will present those most widely seen -if of course my 2+2=5 gains traction), however, to teach it in a MATHS class where we are talking about mathematical proofs, or at most teaching theories that have not been MATHEMATICALLY deemed unlikely, would probably be
In the same way, evolution is science. creationism is religion. Trying to push creationism into the realm of science, would demand applying the scientific method to it, the same as trying to push 2+2=5ism into maths would demand applying mathematical principals into it.
We're talking about science. You may not like it, but the world works on science (as opposed to praying on religion).
Equal time for kooky opinions vs science fact is not fair. Just in the same way that flat-earth believers should not be given same time as round-world (or irregular sphericalists if you prefer).
Creationism is far-fetched and sustained by belief, which is very close to being the definition of religion. If you want to bring it into the realm of science, then we get to the point of extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof... Once we get that, then we can start talking about shifting mainstream. Meanwhile, keep it in literal-reading bible schools of thought, which is where it belongs.
All the above is very opinionated. My opinion.
For what it's worth, Telefónica is notorious for doing LOTS of testing different ways of throttling, caching, blocking, accelerating etc... (and not being that "great" at it)
The general INTENT is not "omg, they want to block me from doing things!!!", but rather they are trying to save/optimize on bandwidth. As far as I know, they have at times been known to block SOME traffic they consider "voice" as it comes in conflict with their main business line, but mostly this has been tried and then stopped as it generated more headaches than cash.
With all the caching/accelerating, etc, a LOT of times they mess up with ICMP packs which handle testing MTU, in conjunction with changing the actual MTU of the links, the result of this is that your kit sends larger blocks than the links can handle and then they get mashed/munged during fragmentation/reassembly. And the consequence of that is that a lot of "real" packets don't get through (often the ones on or around the *perceived* MTU limit), so your data then behaves as if it was working on a VERY lossy link (imagine around 40%+ packet loss...). You won't see problems with a regular ping, but you may if you check with ping sizes around the MTU limit.
At other times, as Telefónica is trying to optimize using DPI (deep packet inspection) to check what protocol is being used, they may not correctly recognize your traffic and thus munge it in someway. Effectively acting as a throttle, but not because they actually "want" to throttle.
What can you do about it? Not much, because all of this is handled by the inner sanctum of the tech-priests and they don't communicate with mere mortals such as tech support of commercial reps, there's no way to get through...
With a regular residential grade link, the attitude from Telefonica is "take it or leave it as-is, we don't care, this is what we give". In general they are valid for the purpose, but if you want business grade quality AND the possibility of complaining (and being heard), you need to get a business grade link (ie ditch Speedy and get info-internet at 5x the price with 1/4 the speed).
It's nice to WANT to notch it up to "they are throttling me" or "NSA is spying on me" and any other conspiracy theory, but once you mention Telefonica it's more a case of "Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence".
(and yes, NSA is probably spying on you ANYWAY...).
The above come from a lot of experience with different telco's, a lot of contact with people inside telefonica and seeing how telefonica operates in quite a few countries (including Spain and Peru). Just take it as face value, I'm not trying to prove a point. If it helps great... if not, well, good luck with other venues...
My $0.02
What exactly are you trying to achieve? .2) something repeatable for multiple remotes
Some scenarios:
A) remote to central with 2 ISP's at remote with "cheap regular" DSL type connection going to central where there is a "big fat pipe" (multihomed?)
A.1) a one of for a single remote
B) remote to central with 2 ISP's as A) and with (same?) 2 ISP's at central (also B.1 & B.2) as above).
Do we have any fixed public IP addresses anywhere in the equation (or is this out of budget too)?
In all cases in which direction is the data flowing mainly?
Also, what is the purpose mainly here? Getting higher speed? Higher redundancy? Less latency (hah!) ?
> The hardware solutions I've found are expensive for a small business
Can you define expensive, what type of price is out of it (both for hardware and for links)?
I would GUESS that the end result needed is to connect LAN-1 to LAN-2 , so it doesn't HAVE to "look" as a single channel for the routers involved, just that the paths
aggregate and are redundant... But a bit more information would be appreciated!
All the East coast of Africa has up to now been severeley lacking in possibilities of connectivity, and has had to make do with satellite links which are high latency and expensive (a DEDICATED satlink of 1Mb up and 1Mb down is in the ballpark range of around $10,000 per month, yes ten-THOUSAND per MONTH).
The West coast has had the SAT-3 cable for a while (2001), with a total capacity of 120Gbit/s (according to Wikipedia). Most of that lands and gets used up in SouthAfrica and in Nigeria. South Africa is in a decent situation because they have a country-wide distribution network that lets them hand off the network to most places. In Nigeria, however, try getting a connection on the SAT-3 outside of Lagos...
The problem throughout Africa is not only that of lack of backbone country-to-internet connectivity, but actually that of a decent distribution network within the country itself.
It's of little use to land a multi-gig cable at a certain place if then you don't have the infrastructure to re-distribute it. Maybe a chicken and egg situation... No backbone, so no point in building local distribution. No local distribution, so no point in building a backbone...
Nigeria is arguably the 2nd most developed country in Africa (After S.A.), and if you want a link outside of Lagos, your best bet is to go for a satlink. In fact, even INSIDE of Lagos, ISP's use sat-link bandwidth because of the instabilities of using Nitel to get to the SAT-3 landing station. So, if the 2nd most developed country has had a sub-link for 8 yrs and can't get the signal distributed, how long do you think it's going to take for this new cable to actually start making waves?
I'm betting it's mainly going to be used in the short term for South Africa (will drop prices for them!), and for the rest of the countries will serve to carry voice from the main hubs of the cellphone operators...
So to give an idea of how things happen in lesser developed countries:
-In Congo Democratic Republic, cellphone coverage is getting to be quite extensive (at least in the population centers), but if you make a phone call from Goma (eastern border) to the capital Kinshassa, your call goes over a satlink (no city to city connection). Even worse, if you call a friend/colleague also in Goma, but who happens to use a different operator, your call may actually make TWO hops: first sat-hop back to Kinshassa, then handed from one operator to the other, and then back over another sat-hop to Goma...
Think about it.
There is no automatic "yeah this is great" or "nah, this is crap" answer. All those advising one way or another directly are jumping the gun like crazy.
Your big question 'should I stay or should I go now?' only has one answer: 'it depends'.
I've been in similar situations before and in some cases taken shares, in others preferred to take more wages, in others left.
From what you state, the company is "a small IT consulting firm" and you are "a key resource". I think the important information that you're telling us is that the company is SMALL (5-10 people tops?) and that you are one of the key guys.
If taking 10% is equivalent to now considering you as a partner with a say, then now you have "clout" and will be regarded maybe in a different way.
Obviously you want to place a "value" on these shares. Does the company make a profit each year that they turn around and share with the partners? If so, how much has that been... If instead, all they do is adjust top salaries to what company makes (as happens with a lot of companies), then no dividends are paid out. In this case, does your also get adjuested? At what level? If you are made an equal partner on consideration (even if not on shares), will your salary now be on equal par to the others?. Being a "small company" probably means that it will stay privately owned, and never be sold, as such, your 10% probably won't ever have a decent "sale" value, so that part will not be worth much (if anything), unless the company has a declared monetary value, and thus the 10% can actually be redeemed for something... but for that you'd want guarantees in writing that it would be possible to sell at some point in the future.
A downside to "being a partner" is also that often now your guarantee of salary goes to the pits. I'll explain. As a "grunt" worker, you expect your salary as the company isn't yours. The owners generally (if they care at all about their employees), will first pay employee salaries before paying themselves. As an "owner", if hard times hit, you may find yourself with a salary that although on paper your still getting it, in reality you get what is left over... (anything missing considered to be "owed" to you by company, to be paid when [if?] things improve... after all, it "doesn't matter as it's your company after all!!!"].
You also mention that "I was ready to quit for consulting". So, you want to quit this small consulting company and go set up one yourself of your own? Well, if you are one of the key resources, maybe you are better off with your own company than having 10% of one shared with another 90%...
As mentioned above, it all depends... Conditions being special to your particular company, what the outlook is, what consideration you get for your shares, how that affects salary, if the value of shares is actually tangible down the road, etc. Impossible to tell without knowing more, but at least those are the things you should be factoring in to see if you want it or not.
Oh, and of course, the first question of all "are you comfortable with the company?" If not, then your choice is clear in any case.
$0.02
The Miami "Nap of the Americas" is a rather large building in downtown Miami which houses a LOT of interconnects which are quite important for global connectivity (netwrok, internet, telephony). It also houses one of the root servers. One of the floors belongs in its entirety to some combination of NSA/CIA/FBI and is offlimits unless you have some high authorization clearance.
The whole building is rather impressive in its capabilities, redundancy, etc...
Of visual interest, perfectly visible from the ground (though you have to be a distance away), are three very large "ping pong balls" each of somewhere between 8-15m in diameter which house three large parabolica antennas (sat-dishes), lovingly referred to as the BFD's (Big F Dishes).
Out of curiosity, from a few years back, I thought I'd use GMaps and/or GEarth to see what they looked at from above, as the Miami area was quite high-res. I was surprised to find that they were not there... In fact, I thought that I had the wrong address and spent a long while searching. When I finally came to the conculsion that it was the CORRECT place, and had a more detailed look at it, it was clear that the whole roof had been "cut 'n paste" from a boring part of it. It wasn't due to an old image which had been taken prior to the dishes, as there was no AC equipment either, and it was quite obvious that certain features were repeating (from the cut'n paste), in addition to lacks of continuity.
Every now and then I'd go back to the image with a smile on my face to confirm it was blanked out. At the same time, I think it was the competing imagery system from Microsoft was showing the balls.
Seeing this article, I thought "aha", clear proof, so I pulled it up again... However, now the balls show completely, and the roof is no longer "faked".
So, what's up then? Change of heart at Google? The decided that censorship was no longer the thing to do? Found that some requirements were ridiculous?
This one certainly was, because with the NAP itself showing a lovely sky image of itself on its homepage:
http://www.terremark.com/technology-platform/nap-of-the-americas.aspx
it's a bit silly to blank out a less revealing sat-image...
To find it on GMaps/Earth, just type in "Nap of the Americas" and you'll get it.
Thoughts?
IAALS: I am a Lawyer Scumbag.
It's actually redundant, as they are synonyms...
My question directly addresses the internal software/hardware combo. Eve-online decided from the beginning to be a single instance game, ie EVERYONE is in the same "universe" and/or cluster of servers. As the userbase increases (and it has been doing so steadily), so do the sizes of some of the alliances, generally those that control a part of "0.0" space (the dangerous lawless areas). This means also, that when wanting to attack an alliance controlled area, the defence they will amount means you will also have to send in a sizeable force to deal with them.
Eve-online now regularly gets 30-35,000 simultaneous players online. Only last week, a "battle" where the defender "dug in" with aproximately 300-350 players with a very well fortified position, had an attacker of 800-1000 players. When the attacking force tried to enter the defended system, the server running this system crashed. And did so again a few times (they are VERY stressed when they have more than 500 players on the same node, let alone 1100 - 1450, all in the same space).
With an arithmetical growth of the size of the battles, comes an geometrical growth of the traffic that single server has to generate.
Lets imagine for a moment that in a fighting situation each player generates a single byte of traffic that has to be fed to all the other players per second (forget about packets, headers etc... which will of course only worsen the problem).
With 10 players, each of those players will have to be updated with 1 byte for each of the other 9 players, so each one will get 9bytes/sec, total load on the server is 90bytes/sec (9 bytes/sec x 10 players).
With 100 players, each of those will have to be updated with info from 99 players, so 99bytes/sec per player,
Total load on the server is 9900bytes/sec (99 bytes/sec x 100 players).
With 1000 players, each recieves 999bytes/sec, total load on the server is 999000 bytes/sec
As you can see, if you multiply players by 10, you multiply traffic by 100... This also means (and it seems that nobody
at CCP has realized this), that if your servers are running at full capacity (process-wise) with 20000 players online,
and you want to now be able to handle 40000 players (double), you won't have enough process-power if you just double
the power of your server cluster. You have in fact to multiply it by 4.
The more people you get in your single instance, the worse it scales.
They desperately need somebody who can stand back and take a look at the big picture, and somehow realistically design
a system that will handle the load gracefully. Either limit the amount of accounts you will have, or limit the
simultaneous players on the system/node/etc, or (shock/horror!!!) maybe have to think about creating another instance (or
more of them).
Single instance space is NOT infinitely scalable the way things are currently done.
So, the question. What are you going to do about scalability in the current system?
I think we'll be seeing more bandwidth limits imposed. Maybe even some sort of telephone rate system where you pay per byte. Everyone understands that a local 2Mb loop is way cheaper that a 2Mb link across the country. When people are using their links for"normal" residential/business use (ie, email, browsing, some up/downloading, etc), you can "serve" many 2Mb customers with a single 2Mb line, hence you can share out the cost amongst your customers.
However, if the customers have f.e. file sharing programs running on their computers 24/24, then each customer is going to need and require from the ISP a dedicated 2Mb link, so the economies of "sharing" are no longer there. Why do you think that so many universities/colleges are filtering things like kazaa? Not so much for legal reasons, but actually to avoid having their bandwidth swamped. Enough bandwidth to support way more than normal useage, but no way near enough to support a bunch of file-swapping stations.
Exactly the same type of predicament that the ISP is in, except it can't filter traffic, so the only recourse is to try and chop the heads off from that 1% of users that is using 95% of the bandwidth. Having been in the ISP business, I can understand it completely.
Doesn't it strike you guys that $15.3million these days is a very low amount? If their claims WERE valid, then they would have many MANY millions rolling in, not just 15.3
The fact that they only expect 15.3 in my eyes says that they themselves don't rate their chances too high anyway...
---
;-)
At my organization we use it to relay around half a million messages per day
---
You really should consider installing some spam filters...
Hmmm, talk about exageration. How about:
-I have no confirmation that Microsoft is divested from Tarentella, other than a declaration from Microsoft of their INTENTIONS to divest. Erm, you believe face up from an intention stated by MS that they will do something, that they actually followed through and did it?
-From what it seems, Tarentella still has their hand firmly attached to SCO/Caldera's "strings" -as in how to pull strings- (I have no information regarding any undoing of those messy knots between Tarentella & SCO/Caldera).
Yes, one thing we can agree on is foolish lawsuits from Caldera.
From the above, the question I ask openly is "Does MS have anything to do with this latest anti-Unix thing from SCO/Caldera?"
And no, I don't see the question as being carefree MS-bashing.
Sorry about the way I phrased the first thing. Nobody is confusing Xenix the OS (hey, I learnt the basics of UNIX with it back in late 80's or very early 90's!) with a company. What I meant to say is that just because a product gets sold off, it doesn't stop being a product. Same with a company, just because it gets sold off...
What is clear is that the Tarentella/Caldera deal was very messy indeed leaving both companies very much tied together in an ugly knot.
I was not aware of the INTENTIONS of MS to sell its stake in SCO. However, -just as the article says-, the SEC filing was for an INTENTION to sell. Just to close the chapter completely, do we have confirmation that those intentions materialized?
Now, in my first post I said:
"Could it not be that MS saw the "disruption" potential back then and tried to put some ground between them and SCO?"
Putting some ground from a VISUAL point of view would involve making it look as if they are getting away... Then having Tarentella sell to a linux company while still pulling the strings (somehow) would be interesting.
In January 2000, Linux was already percieved as a major threat by MS.
Is there any way we can get full disclosure on ownership of SCO-Caldera & Tarentella and REALLY know who is pulling the strings?
The fact that a company that was controlled in no small part by MS 3 years ago is suddenly trying to throw mud all over the Linux world (and using VERY silly arguments) really stinks all over as a MS tactic.
No, I'm *NOT* a conspiracist, no I don't particularly like MS, yes I do think linux is neat. Can't you somehow see that there are flashing red lights over this? This doesn't mean that MS *IS* behind this, but it wouldn't be that difficult for them to have pulled this off either. Seeing that it wouldn't be difficult, that it *is* their style, and that ANY mud over unix in general helps them out...
-sigh- Great, so now we're getting academic. When is a company not a company... MS sold Xenix to SCO. Does that mean it was no longer Xenix? Nope, still Xenix, but with a different owner. SCO bought up Xenix, and later merged with Caldera. You have an interesting timeline on the Caldera site at:
where you can see the nimble name-dancing at Caldera. However it is apparent that the current SCO *is* the heir to all the original SCO history/material/company (more so if you care to realize that their suit is because they say that OLD IP propety of theirs is being trodden on -though they don't state what-). It *IS* SCO that is suing IBM, it just so happens that it's also Caldera (or was befor they decided to dump the Caldera name). No, it isn't Doug & Larry Michaels suing, but then again the company being sued is not Dr. Herman Holleriths CTR... Time moves on, companies evolve. Checking up on the SCO/Tarentella/Caldera split, there's a nice quote:l /100092201.a sp
http://www.caldera.com/company/history.html
"The deal that SCO struck with Caldera is as complex as they come. SCO sold the server software and professional services division to Caldera, but retained the intellectual property rights to the software."
http://www.dqindia.com/content/specia
Now, they also talk about it being quite convoluted as to share exchanges, members on boards of directors etc...
So, the Tarentella & the current SCO seem to be VERY intertwined. As we all know, the previous SCO was strongly linked to MS, so if SCO(caldera) has its strings pulled by Tarentella(ex-SCO?), and Tarentella has its strings pulled by Microsoft, and now Microsoft "settles" with SCO(Caldera), is it THAT difficult to wonder if there is more than meets the eye?
I hate it when I actually have to search to check for what I write (grin).
Ok, Microsoft sold Xenix to SCO (from what I'm findin on the 'net in '95, but that probably is a type, I THINK it was '85) apparently to fund Windows development and get out of that crappy unix market. At the same time they took a largish stake in SCO.
So the Microsoft-SCO link is clearly there. It would be interesting to get full disclosure on current share-holders of SCO to see if what I am hinting at is actually the basis of that happy way that MS decided to pay SCO.
More info, is that when MS divested themselves of Xenix to SCO there were clauses that stated what technology they were getting rid of. As some of that probably carried over into NT (despite it owing a lot to VMS), there are possibly portions in there that could be argued have IP that belongs to SCO (because of the sale...).
So, either because they want to make SCO look right and go unix/linux-bashing, or because they have a stake, or because SCO actually "owns" part of NT... there's a nasty mess.
Wonder what the bottom line is...
John.
Maybe I'm paranoid, or maybe I've got things mixed up, so could someone correct me if I have it wrong?
Some years back, when it was clear that SCO-Unix/Xenix was on the way out, weren't they bought up by MicroSoft? At the time I found that strange, and even stranger yet when it was "sold on" when all it really was was a name and some dubious IP (hell, probably as useful as a shell company containing all the IP related to OS2). Could it not be that MS saw the "disruption" potential back then and tried to put some ground between them and SCO? Doesn't it seem *too* convenient that they are the first ones "bowing" their heads to the FUD claims of SCO?
Hmmm...
>How can I tell for certain that I'm getting a full T1? What would an oversold T1 read out to be as compared to a true T1?"
;-)
The question should not be stated as above, but as "when? and to where?". You most certainly have a full T1 between you and your provider, so that means that if you place a machine at the providers location, and you shunt data back and forth between those machines, they will go at full T1 speeds.
What is oversubscription? If a provider has a DS3 (which is 28xT1) worth of bandwidth to the 'net, and sells 29 T1's, then TECHNICALLY he has oversold his bandwidth. Does this scenario REALLY kick in and mess anyone up (ie 29 in a 28 pipe)? Probably not, because the only time that anyone would notice someting is if ALL 29 customers are at a given moment ALL trying to suck in data at a T1 bit-rate, and then, they would find that they would have aproximately 1 in every 29 packets dropped (an aprox 3% packet loss rate). Statistically, to have ALL of those 29 customers that have T1 links ALL sucking in at MAX at the same time just won't happen. In reality, each customer will always think that he's getting a full T1 from his upstream provider. So, when does oversubscription kick in? The ISP should monitor his traffic on his lines (I'm not talking about the lines to his customers, which should also be monitored, but just for service to each customer), and he will notice usage patterns. With enough customers, the average usage on each line will follow a nice series of peaks and troughs. Peaks probably during the day (either business hours, or evening hours depending if his customers are mainly residential or business), and troughs generally during the night. Now, the peaks will NOT be equal in bandwidth to the sum of bandwidths of the customers, but equal to the sum of USAGE of the customers. So, if he has 10 customers on T1's, they will NOT be using 15Mb of bandwidth (how much will in reality depend on his target customers). The provider will see that as he adds customers, the peaks will become more regular (a question of numbers, the more users you have, the more regular the averages), and obviously will start getting higher. If he just carries on selling, and doesn't do anything else, at a given time, the "peakest" will hit the available bandwidth he has. At that exact moment, he will be overselling beyond his capacity. If he continues to add customers, then when he hits peak, it can't go higher (as there is no more available bandwidth), but it will flatten out at the max of his incoming links. All EXTRA people trying to suck in data, will at that point be fighting for whatever is there. If he had 100 customers when he hit peak (and at that moment was EXACTLY maxed, but with no adverse effects), then when he doubles his customers (goes to 200 customers), they will all have a transfer experience of around 1/2 the speed they had when they were only 100, and get worse as more customers are added.
Of course, what people want to know, is "will I be screwed by signing up with this provider?". And that is hard to answer just point blank. A provider who sells T1's to ISPs who are in turn trying to max out their links by reselling to customers, will probably find that each T1 of his customers will be near saturation at peak times, so by having 10 customers, he will probably be needing to have just under 15Mb of available incoming bandwidth. Another provider who sells T1's to small/medium businesses, and sells 100 T1's, may find himself with peaks of aound 10Mbs instead (business users won't be bandwidth hogs, unles there are geeks working and sucking down MP3's, p0rn, software, etc...).
Also note that a provider typically will not have just ONE link, but a multitude of them, which if he knows his beans) he will try to load balance so as not to get any bottlenecks. If however he is maxing out one (or more) of those links and doesn't do something to solve it (increase that link, or move traffic away), then every time your data goes through that link, you will be in a bad position.
So what does it boil down to then?
-note down CLEARLY what you want to do with your bandwidth (just surf? download stuff now and then? Have a quality link to a distant point so that you can send VoIP between here and there?)
-do tests and try to pinpoint where the bottlenecks are
-pray...
My bag of cents...
cable co: just single household and no public viewing allowed
phone co: just a single call allowed (from whatevre phone you want, but just a single call). Even more, your single call is metered (in most countries even for local calls). Please make LOTS of calls and we bill you like crazy.
electric co: metered on usage, please go ahead and connect LOADS of stuff please, and we bill you like crazy
water co: metered on usage, please flush a lot of toilets and open all those spigots, and we bill you like crazy.
What is MY point? Their billing structure works. The ISP world is stuck where the more the customer uses the service, the more it costs the ISP (has to have more b/w available), but it doesn't manage to bill the customer more (most ISPs bill flat-rates or get bad PR), so they find someway to protect themselves. In the end they just can't win. With sensible per usage billing, us geeks would be cut-off the net for all practical uses, and apart from that they would be killed by bad PR, with flat-rate they are in a bad situation.
John.
I am a strong believer that charging per bandwidth usage is how it would be fair. However I am a realist. I think that there's no way the industry will be able to go back to a bandwidth-usage model for residential customers.
Reality somehow has to be addressed. If one cable company started charging REALISTICALLY on bandwidth, then a lot of users would start jumping ship. I estimate that around 2% of my users (ISP of around 5000 users) make up for around 50% of my residential bandwidth consumption. If I started charging based on consumption, that 2% would straight away jump, and they would probably be a noisy lot (hey it's the geek bunch, of which I'm a member), and get the message out that this is one ISP NOT to be with. Lots of negative PR, and it would probably be a landslide. WAY too risky for any ISP to do.
Lets face it, although most of the people posting are saying things like "I'd be willing to pay a 10-20% increase for guaranteed quality service", if us geeks we to be charged relative to bandiwdth consumption, on an even scale, then we'd probably be in a bad situation as far as net usage (couldn't get our daily high).
Even so, with the flat rate, the ISP knows that some users are going to be on the high end of the scale, but what they dont want is users that go completely wacko. They can't COMMERCIALLY go along the route of limited bandwidth unless ALL of them do (and I can't see that happening), so the idea is to somehow protect themselves against the village geek who wants to hook up half of America on one IP and pay just a monthly DSL...
At my ISP, (we're in the Caribbean, and no high bandwidth through us, mainly dialup), our TOS for the standard dialup account is single user on a directly connected computer acceptable to us (very fuzzy, and wouldn't stand up in courts probably, but we're looking to be able somehow to catch NAT routers).
About once a month, I do a check on the # of connections per user, and cream off the top 10 of them individually to find out whats going on. They are generally "users" with something like 500 connections each. Now, that on a dialup link in one month is suspicious to say the least. Nearly all of them turn out to be companies with a LAN and 5+ users using the system for corporate business and sharing the connection. Seeing that on the one hand they are directly in breach of my contract, on the other I have a guaranteed port service available for them, and that they would be better off with a leased line (due to local calls not being free), I push them into the other type of service. Some of them prefer to cancel their contract, which suits me, as they are costing me more than they are worth (practically taking up a line to themselves, and the monthly fee for a dialup is 40ff -around $8-).
John.
I have a lot of sympathy for the ISP (hell, I am one, about to go under...). The problem is that the industry still hasn't figured out how to charge its users in a fair way AND make a buck. Is it REALLY fair to charge a flat fee, which means divide total cost usage by total users and then charge that to each user (plus a markup -don't forget that this is NOT a charity, but a business-)? If so, then what happens is that those that hardly use it are heavily subsidizing the big users.
If there are no limits, what stops you from getting yourself a cable/DSL access and then wiring up your whole neighbourhood through you? Hand them out instructions on how to create a hotmail-type email, and off you go. For those that say "sure, but then you are lowering the experience of each one", they should actually look at average usage, and you would see that up to around 50 users or so, you are unlikely to step on each others toes except under exceptional circumstances (not more than 4 or 5 are likely to be on at the same time, and of them, they are statistically going to have more unused b/w during their usage than used).
Unfortunately, during the dot-com boom pricing and billing of ISP service went nuts (along with the rest of the industry), and we still have to recover from this idea that b/w should be somehow GIVEN by the ISP at no charge to EVERYONE. Sure, I love universal service as everyone else, but the big question that we should all be asking ourselves: "for internet service, WHO should pay?" Please note, that links, routers, equipment, staff, electricity, etc... are NOT free.
If an ISP has unlimited access which it is calculating on the basis of an average SINGLE user with a SINGLE machine, and it states it clearly in its contract that you are paying for a single-user/single-machine, then anyone putting more than that on their link is in breach of their contract. They have calculated their prices based on their assumption. Of course you may think -and might even be right- that their prices are too high, but does that morally allow you to be in breach of contract? In the same way, we all feel that MS-whatever licenses are way too high, but are we morally allowed therefore to install each program on 10 machines (certainly not legally).
John.
I'm Tech Director for a Caribbean ISP, so I know the problems in getting bandwidth AND multihoming.
To be multihomed correctly you will generally need:
-a decent router that can do BGP.
-more than one connection to providers who will talk BGP with you.
-your own AS number and an allocated block of IP addresses
The expensive part is not really "paying the fees" of (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC), or complying with their conditions, but in fact having someone tech enough that also understands the POLITICS (yes POLITICS) involved in running BGP, and the ongoing cost of keeping your network in fact running in this type of situation.
You are just looking at the tip of the iceberg and saying "wow that's expensive JUST for a block of IP's", which on the surface might look correct, however:
-just about anyone can say "gimme a block please" (cheap).
-checking on who can actually utilise them or not is expensive.
Memory in routers is easily scalable (it isn't but lets pretend it is), but the problem is not lack of memory, but actually wading through all those blocks of IP addresses.
Most of the main tier 1 providers have serious filters in place to avoid filling their routing tables up with junk due to mistakes or due to people who just haven't made a transit deal with them, so even if you were "given" a block of addresses, it wouldn't always be that easy for you to get it routed.
My advice: as you are "small" (compared to a Tier 1 provider), my guess is that there are ISPs down there that will do a better job than you for getting redundancy. Spend a bit more money on linking up to one of these, and backup your link to them somehow, and trust THEM for your link instead of trying to do it yourself. It will probably cost you just about the same, but your uptime will probably be HIGHER, because when you do BGP yourself, you are adding in extra weak spots that you may at this moment not be thinking of (your internal routing policies and how they get propagated, the people you will need to make sure this runs, etc...).
Just my own opinion. Add salt.
As tech director for an ISP, yes keeping up with currently used standards is part of my job. The currently used STANDARD for dialup modems is V.90 all over.
V.92 is a pretty hack. If you have to setup from scratch today, you would obviously be looking for something that does V.92, but if upgrading V.90->V.92 means loads of cash or change of equipment then it is just not worth the hassle.
Let's face is, the average dialup user is mainly a downloader, not an uploader, the V.92 standard slightly increases the THEORETICAL speed, but the practical speed will probably move (on the uploads) around 5-10%, with the download staying where it is.
In nearly all areas where V.90 is available from the provider, ISDN is available to the subscriber. If uploading is such a biggie with the end user, he would not be bitching for a 5-10% increase at best, but would be upgrading HIMSELF to an ISDN line, which will not change his running costs, and will get him a nearly 100% speed increase in uploads.
Throughout most of Europe, users pay for their calls on a per-minute basis. No difference paying (on time) for an analog call than for paying for an ISDN call, hence the end user would want an ISDN link.
We have around 5000 dialup users (we're small), and I really don't think that it would merit us an expenditure of around $50-100K for *this* upgrade.
Not a good investment for maybe 50 users to notice. As CTO, I have better ways to spend that cash, even if it was available (which it isn't).
With analog calls the buck stops at V.90 for us.
Want something fast? Go to ISDN. Even faster? ADSL/cable/...
I'm CTO for an ISP in the Caribbean, and the combination of distance/high speed/low price is something that I have to rattle my brains every day to solve.
.02Euro.
With $80K, you can NOT lay 45miles of fibre & maintain them (maybe between 2 points in the desert, but here we're coming out of a city, so probability is near 0). And you have to add in the equipment to light up the fibre, plus maintenance, etc...
I presume your local telco doesn't do ADSL, or else you wouldn't be asking.
Option "A" would be getting from your telco a point to point leased circuit. Setup fees for a T1 (1.5Mb) would probably be in the US$5K range, with a monthly of probably around US$2K. You would also have to add in a router on your end (just about ANY serial router can do T1 speeds, second hand on ebay a cisco 25xx series goes for around $300. New you should be able to find around $1K).
Option "B" would be wireless. Problem is that a microwave link (which does need line of sight -LOS-) covering 45miles reliably is going to cost quite a bit more than your $80K, then again it would be high speed...
If you need a few Mb of bandwith (something in the 1-5Mb range), maybe you should look at setting up a couple of intermediate hops (every 15 miles or so), which would mean you would have 3 legs, or 6 transmitter/receivers. Latency is practically nonexistant (it's not the medium that introduces generally the latency, but the distance, which is why GEO sat-links are high latency), but this would have extra complications in that you need to find a couple of intermediate hops, then again equipment is much cheaper for the 15 miles range, and the masts you have to set up would be much smaller.
My