Hi Adrian,
I've had a few ISPs out here in Australia indicate interest in a cache
that
could do the normal stuff (http, rtsp, wma) and some of the p2p stuff
(bittorrent
especially) with a smattering of QoS/shaping/control - but not cost
upwards of
USD$100,000 a box. Lots of interest, no commitment.
Here in central europe we had caching friendly environment from 1997 till
2001 due of transit lines pricing. Few yaers ago prices for upstream
connectivity fell and from this time there is no interest for caching. I've
discussed this with several nationwide ISPs in .cz and found these reasons:
a) caching systems are not easy to implement and maintain (another system
for configuration)
b) possible conflict with content owners
c) they want to sell as much as possible of bandwidth
d) they want to have their network fully transparent
I don't want to judge these answers, just FYI.
It doesn't help (at least in Australia) where the wholesale model of ADSL
isn't
content-replication-friendly: we have to buy ATM or ethernet pipes to
upstreams
and then receive each session via L2TP. Fine from an aggregation point of
view,
but missing the true usefuless of content replication and caching - right
at
the point where your customers connect in.
Same here.
(Disclaimer: I'm one of the Squid developers. I'm getting an increasing
amount
of interest from CDN/content origination players but none from ISPs. I'd
love
to know why ISPs don't view caching as a viable option in today's world
and
what we could to do make it easier for y'all.)
Please see points (a)-(d). I think there can be also point (e).
Some telcos want to play triple-play game (Internet, telephony and IPTV).
They want to move their users back from the Internet to relativelly safe
revenue area (television channel distribution via IPTV).
Regards
Michal Krsek