Google wants to be your Internet
Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On 1/20/07, Mark Boolootian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html The following comment has to be one of the most important comments in the entire article and its a bit disturbing. Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. -- Rodrick R. Brown
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Jan 20, 2007, at 10:37 AM, Rodrick Brown wrote: On 1/20/07, Mark Boolootian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html The following comment has to be one of the most important comments in the entire article and its a bit disturbing. Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. I'm not sure why you find that disturbing. I can think of two reasons, and, they depend almost entirely on your perspective: If you are disturbed because you know that these users are early adopters and that eventually, a much wider audience will adopt this technology driving a need for much more bandwidth than is available today, then, the solution is obvious. As in the past, bandwidth will have to increase to meet increased demand. If you are disturbed by the inequity of it, then, little can be done. There will always be classes of consumers who use more than other classes of consumers of any resource. Frankly, looking from my corner of the internet, I don't think that statistic is entirely accurate. From my perspective, SPAM uses more bandwidth than BitTorrent. OTOH, another thing to consider is that if all those video downloads being handled by BitTorrent were migrated to HTTP connections instead the required amount of bandwidth would be substantially higher. Owen
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Rodrick Brown wrote: On 1/20/07, Mark Boolootian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html The following comment has to be one of the most important comments in the entire article and its a bit disturbing. Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. Moreover, those of you who were at NANOG in June will remember some of the numbers Colin gave about Youtube using 20gbps outbound. That number was still early in the exponential growth phase the site is (*still*) having. The 20gbps number would likely seem laughable now. -david
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
The Internet: the world's only industry that complains that people want its product. On 1/20/07, David Ulevitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rodrick Brown wrote: On 1/20/07, Mark Boolootian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html The following comment has to be one of the most important comments in the entire article and its a bit disturbing. Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. Moreover, those of you who were at NANOG in June will remember some of the numbers Colin gave about Youtube using 20gbps outbound. That number was still early in the exponential growth phase the site is (*still*) having. The 20gbps number would likely seem laughable now. -david
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
The following comment has to be one of the most important comments in the entire article and its a bit disturbing. Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. the heavy hitters are long known. get over it. i won't bother to cite cho et al. and similar actual measurement studies, as doing so seems not to cause people to read them, only to say they already did or say how unlike japan north america is. the phenomonon is part protocol and part social. the question to me is whether isps and end user borders (universities, large enterprises, ...) will learn to embrace this as opposed to fighting it; i.e. find a business model that embraces delivering what the customer wants as opposed to winging and warring against it. if we do, then the authors of the 2p2 protocols will feel safe in improving their customers' experience by taking advantage of localization and proximity, as opposed to focusing on subverting perceived fierce opposition by isps and end user border fascists. and then, guess what; the traffic will distribute more reasonably and not all sum up on the longer glass. randy randy
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
* Rodrick Brown: Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. s/BitTtorrent/porn, and we've been there all along. I think the real issue here is that Google's video traffic does *not* clog the network, but would be distributed through private networks (sometimes Google's own, or through another company's CDN) and injected into the Internet very close to the consumer. No one is able to charge for that traffic because if they did, Google would simply inject it someplace else. At best your, one of your peerings would go out of balance, or at worst, *you* would have to pay for Google's traffic.
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Alexander Harrowell wrote: The Internet: the world's only industry that complains that people want its product. The quote sounds good, but nobody in this thread is complaining. There have always been top-talkers on networks and there always will be. The current top-talkers are the joe and jane users of tomorrow. That is what is important. BitTorrent-like technology might start showing up in your media center, your access point, etc. The Venice Project (Joost) and a number of other new startups are also built around this model of distribution. Maybe a more symmetric load on the network (at least on the edge) will improve economic models or maybe we'll see eyeball networks start to peer with each other as they start sourcing more and more of the bits. Maybe that's already happening. -david On 1/20/07, *David Ulevitch* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rodrick Brown wrote: On 1/20/07, Mark Boolootian [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html The following comment has to be one of the most important comments in the entire article and its a bit disturbing. Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. Moreover, those of you who were at NANOG in June will remember some of the numbers Colin gave about Youtube using 20gbps outbound. That number was still early in the exponential growth phase the site is (*still*) having. The 20gbps number would likely seem laughable now. -david
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Hello; On Jan 20, 2007, at 1:37 PM, Rodrick Brown wrote: On 1/20/07, Mark Boolootian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html The following comment has to be one of the most important comments in the entire article and its a bit disturbing. Right now somewhat more than half of all Internet bandwidth is being used for BitTorrent traffic, which is mainly video. Yet if you surveyed your neighbors you'd find that few of them are BitTorrent users. Less than 5 percent of all Internet users are presently consuming more than 50 percent of all bandwidth. Those sorts of percentages are common in Pareto distributions (AKA Zipf's law AKA the 80-20 rule). With the Zipf's exponent typical of web usage and video watching, I would predict something closer to 10% of the users consuming 50% of the usage, but this estimate is not that unrealistic. I would predict that these sorts of distributions will continue as long as humans are the primary consumers of bandwidth. Regards Marshall -- Rodrick R. Brown
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Marshall wrote: Those sorts of percentages are common in Pareto distributions (AKA Zipf's law AKA the 80-20 rule). With the Zipf's exponent typical of web usage and video watching, I would predict something closer to 10% of the users consuming 50% of the usage, but this estimate is not that unrealistic. I would predict that these sorts of distributions will continue as long as humans are the primary consumers of bandwidth. Regards Marshall That's until the spambots inherit the world, right?
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 10:12 -0800, Mark Boolootian wrote: Cringley has a theory and it involves Google, video, and oversubscribed backbones: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html Aren't there some Telco laws wrt cross-state, but still interlata, calls not being able to be charged as interstate? Perhaps Google wants to avoid any future federal/state regulations by providing in-state (i.e. local) access. Additionally, it makes it easier to do state and local govt business when the data is in the same state (it's not out-sourcing if it's just nextdoor...). And then there is the lobbying issue, what better way to lobby multiple states than do do significant business their in? Or perhaps I'm just daydreaming too much today ;-) -Jim P. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
ISIS SNMP monitoring help
Hello, I am posting here because I haven't been able to find what I need despite much searching and a previous unanswered post to cisco-nsp and I'm hoping someone here will have the answer. I need to find the SNMP OID for monitoring ISIS / CLNS neighbors: I tried walking: 1.3.6.1.3.37. and 1.3.6.1.3.37.1.5. and 1.3.6.1.3.37.1.5.1.1.2. and 1.3.6.1.3.37 which is the only OID I have found for ISIS seem to be invalid. I tried on a 7206 running 12.3(19) and a 6506 Sup720-3BXL running 12.2(18)SXF7 both of which are running ISIS and have many neighbors. I am looking for the ISIS roughly equivalent command to the BGP OID which we use to monitor BGP peers, but instead to monitor ISIS neighbor adjacencies: For BGP: 1.3.6.1.2.1.15.3.1.2.a.b.c.d For ISIS: Thanks, Robert btw- For those who helped with my Foundry questions and those who wanted a summary, I am working on the summary now and we are also wrapping up our testing of the MLX/XMR boxes. Tellurian Networks - Global Hosting Solutions Since 1995 http://www.tellurian.com | 888-TELLURIAN | 973-300-9211 Well done is better than well said. - Benjamin Franklin
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Alexander Harrowell wrote: Marshall wrote: Those sorts of percentages are common in Pareto distributions (AKA Zipf's law AKA the 80-20 rule). With the Zipf's exponent typical of web usage and video watching, I would predict something closer to 10% of the users consuming 50% of the usage, but this estimate is not that unrealistic. I would predict that these sorts of distributions will continue as long as humans are the primary consumers of bandwidth. Regards Marshall That's until the spambots inherit the world, right? That is if you see a distinction, metaphorical or physical, between spambots and real users.
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Randy Bush wrote: the heavy hitters are long known. get over it. i won't bother to cite cho et al. and similar actual measurement studies, as doing so seems not to cause people to read them, only to say they already did or say how unlike japan north america is. the phenomonon is part protocol and part social. the question to me is whether isps and end user borders (universities, large enterprises, ...) will learn to embrace this as opposed to fighting it; i.e. find a business model that embraces delivering what the customer wants as opposed to winging and warring against it. if we do, then the authors of the 2p2 protocols will feel safe in improving their customers' experience by taking advantage of localization and proximity, as opposed to focusing on subverting perceived fierce opposition by isps and end user border fascists. and then, guess what; the traffic will distribute more reasonably and not all sum up on the longer glass. randy It has been a long time since I bowed before Mr. Bush's wisdom, but indeed, I bow now in a very humble fashion. Thing is though, it is quivalent to one or all of the following: -. EFF-like thinking (moral high-ground or impractical at times, yet correct and to live by). -. (very) Forward thinking (yet not possible for people to get behind - by people I mean those who do this daily), likely to encounter much resistence until it becomes mainstream a few years down the road. -. Not connected with what can currently happen to affect change, but rather how things really are which people can not yet accept. As Randy is obviously not much affected when people disagree with him, nor should he, I am sure he will preach this until it becomes real. With that in mind, if many of us believe this is a philosophical as well as a technological truth -- what can be done today to affect this change? Some examples may be: -. Working with network gear vendors to create better equipment built to handle this and lighten the load. -. Working on establishing new standards and topologies to enable both vendors and providers to adopt them. -. Presenting case studies after putting our money where our mouth is, and showing how we made it work in a live network. Staying in the philosophical realm is more than respectable, but waiting for FUSSP-like wide-addoption or for sheep to fly is not going to change the world, much. For now, the P2P folks who are not in most cases eveel Internet Pirates are mostly allied, whether in name or in practice with illegal activities. The technology isn't illegal and can be quite good for all of us to save quite a bit of bandwidth rather than waste it (quite a bit of redudndancy there!). So, instead of fighting it and seeing it left in the hands of the pirates and the privacy folks trying to bypass the Firewall of [insert evil regime here], why not utilize it? How can service providers make use of all this redudndancy among their top talkers and remove the privacy advocates and warez freaks from the picture, leaving that front with less technology and legitimacy while helping themselves? This is a pure example of a problem from the operational front which can be floated to research and the industry, with smarter solutions than port blocking and QoS. Gadi.
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:55:49 -0600 (CST), Gadi Evron wrote: On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Randy Bush wrote: the question to me is whether isps and end user borders (universities, large enterprises, ...) will learn to embrace this as opposed to fighting it; i.e. find a business model that embraces delivering what the customer wants as opposed to winging and warring against it. interesting.. i was about to say.. I am involved in London, in building an ISP that encourages users of p2p with respect from major and independent record labels. it makes sense that the film industry will (and is?) moving towards some kind of acceptance as well. Thing is though, it is quivalent to one or all of the following: -. EFF-like thinking (moral high-ground or impractical at times, yet correct and to live by). -. (very) Forward thinking (yet not possible for people to get behind - by people I mean those who do this daily), likely to encounter much resistence until it becomes mainstream a few years down the road. -. Not connected with what can currently happen to affect change, but rather how things really are which people can not yet accept. well, a little dash of all thinking makes for a healthy environment doesn't it? This is a pure example of a problem from the operational front which can be floated to research and the industry, with smarter solutions than port blocking and QoS. This is what I am interested/scared by. C. -- hail eris http://rubberduck.com/
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007, Charlie Allom wrote: This is a pure example of a problem from the operational front which can be floated to research and the industry, with smarter solutions than port blocking and QoS. This is what I am interested/scared by. Its not that hard a problem to get on top of. Caching, unfortunately, continues to be viewed as anaethma by ISP network operators in the US. Strangely enough the caching technologies aren't a problem with the content -delivery- people. 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. 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. (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.) Adrian
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Jan 20, 2007, at 4:36 PM, Alexander Harrowell wrote: Marshall wrote: Those sorts of percentages are common in Pareto distributions (AKA Zipf's law AKA the 80-20 rule). With the Zipf's exponent typical of web usage and video watching, I would predict something closer to 10% of the users consuming 50% of the usage, but this estimate is not that unrealistic. I would predict that these sorts of distributions will continue as long as humans are the primary consumers of bandwidth. Regards Marshall That's until the spambots inherit the world, right? I tend to take the long view.
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, Jan 20, 2007 at 05:55:49PM -0600, Gadi Evron wrote: Some examples may be: -. Working on establishing new standards and topologies to enable both vendors and providers to adopt them. Keep this point in mind while reading my below comment. For now, the P2P folks who are not in most cases eveel Internet Pirates are mostly allied, whether in name or in practice with illegal activities. The technology isn't illegal and can be quite good for all of us to save quite a bit of bandwidth rather than waste it (quite a bit of redudndancy there!). A paper put together by the authors of a download-only free riding BitTorrent client, called BitThief. The paper is worth reading: http://dcg.ethz.ch/publications/hotnets06.pdf http://dcg.ethz.ch/projects/bitthief/ (client is here) The part that saddens me the most about this project isn't the complete disregard for the give back what you take moral (though that part does sadden me personally) , but what this is going to do to the protocol and the clients. Chances are that other torrent client authors are going to see the project as major defiance and start implementing things like filtering what client can connect to who based on the client name/ID string (ex. uTorrent, Azureus, MainLine), which as we all know, is going to last maybe 3 weeks. This in turn will solicit the BitThief authors implementing a feature that allows the client to either spoof its client name or use randomly- generated ones. Rinse lather repeat, until everyone is fighting rather than cooperating. Will the BT protocol be reformed to address this? 50/50 chance. So, instead of fighting it and seeing it left in the hands of the pirates and the privacy folks trying to bypass the Firewall of [insert evil regime here], why not utilize it? I think Adrian Chadd's mail addresses this indirectly: it's not being utilised because of the bandwidth requirements. ISPs probably don't have an interest in BT caching because of 1) cost of ownership, 2) legal concerns (if an ISP cached a publicly distributed copy of some pirated software, who's then responsible?), and most of all, 3) it's easier to buy a content-sniffing device that rate-limits, or just start hard-limiting users who use too much bandwidth (a phrase ISPs use as justification for shutting off customers' connections, but never provide numbers of just what's too much). The result of these items already been shown: BT encryption. I personally know of 3 individuals who have their client to use en- cryption only (disabling non-encrypted connection support). For security? Nope -- solely because their ISP uses a rate limiting device. Bram Cohen's official statement is that using encryption to get around this is silly because not many ISPs are implementing such devices (maybe not *right now*, Bram, but in the next year or two, they likely will): http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/29886.html ISPs will go with implementing the above device *before* implementing something like a BT caching box. Adrian probably knows this too, and chances are it's probably because of the 3 above items I listed. So my question is this: how exactly do we (as administrators of systems or networks) get companies, managers, and even other administrators, to think differently about solving this? -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networkinghttp://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: snip ISPs probably don't have an interest in BT caching because of 1) cost of ownership, 2) legal concerns (if an ISP cached a publicly distributed copy of some pirated software, who's then responsible?), They cache the web, which has the same chance of being illegal content. snip The result of these items already been shown: BT encryption. I personally know of 3 individuals who have their client to use en- cryption only (disabling non-encrypted connection support). For security? Nope -- solely because their ISP uses a rate limiting device. Yep. Users will find a way to maintain functionality. Bram Cohen's official statement is that using encryption to get around this is silly because not many ISPs are implementing such devices (maybe not *right now*, Bram, but in the next year or two, they likely will): http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/29886.html I don't know of many user ISPs which don't implement them, you kidding?:) snip So my question is this: how exactly do we (as administrators of systems or networks) get companies, managers, and even other administrators, to think differently about solving this? -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networkinghttp://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 08:33:26 +0800 Adrian Chadd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Jan 21, 2007, Charlie Allom wrote: This is a pure example of a problem from the operational front which can be floated to research and the industry, with smarter solutions than port blocking and QoS. This is what I am interested/scared by. Its not that hard a problem to get on top of. Caching, unfortunately, continues to be viewed as anaethma by ISP network operators in the US. Strangely enough the caching technologies aren't a problem with the content -delivery- people. 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. I think it is probably because to build caching infrastructure that is high performance and has enough high availability to make a difference is either non-trivial or non-cheap. If it comes down to introducing something new (new software / hardware, new concepts, new complexity, new support skills, another thing that can break etc.) verses just growing something you already have, already manage and have since day one as an ISP - additional routers and/or higher capacity links - then growing the network wins when the $ amount is the same because it is simpler and easier. 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. I think if even pure networking people (i.e. those that just focus on shifting IP packets around) are accepting of that situation, when they also believe in keeping traffic local, indicates that it is probably more of an economic rather than a technical reason why that is still happening. Inter-ISP peering at the exchange (C.O) would be the ideal, however it seems that there isn't enough inter-customer (per-ISP or between ISP) bandwidth consumption at each exchange to justify the additional financial and complexity costs to do it. Inter-customer traffic forwarding is usually happening at the next level up in the hierarchy - at the regional / city level, which is probably at this time the most economic level to do it. (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.) Maybe that really means your customers (i.e. people who most benefit from your software) are really the content distributors not ISPs anymore. While the distinction might seem somewhat minor, I think ISPs generally tend to have more of a view point of where is this traffic wanting or probably going to go, and how to do we build infrastructure to get it there, and less of a what is this traffic view. In other words, ISPs tend to be more focused on trying to optimise for all types of traffic rather than one or a select few particular types, because what the customer does with the bandwidth they purchase is up to the customer themselves. If you spend time optimising for one type of traffic you're either neglecting or negatively impacting another type. Spending time on general optimisations that benefit all types of traffic is usually the better way to spend time. I think one of the reasons for ISP interest in the p2p problem could be because it is reducing the normal benefit-to-cost ratio of general traffic optimsation. Restoring the regular benefit-to-cost ratio of general traffic optimsation is probably the fundamental goal of solving the p2p problem. My suggestion to you as a squid developer would be focus on caching, or more generally, localising of P2P traffic. It doesn't seem that the P2P application developers are doing it, maybe because they don't care because it doesn't directly impact them, or maybe because they don't know how to. If squid could provide a traffic localising solution which is just another traffic sink or source (e.g. a server) to an ISP, rather than something that requires enabling knobs on the network infrastructure for special handling or requires special traffic engineering for it to work, I'd think you'd get quite a bit of interest. Just my 2c. Regards, Mark. -- Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly alert. - Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Roland Dobbins wrote: On Jan 20, 2007, at 11:55 AM, Randy Bush wrote: the question to me is whether isps and end user borders (universities, large enterprises, ...) will learn to embrace this as opposed to fighting it; i.e. find a business model that embraces delivering what the customer wants as opposed to winging and warring against it. I believe that it will end up becoming the norm, as it's a form of cost-shifting from content providers to NSPs and end-users - but for it to really take off, the tension between content-providers and their customers (i.e., crippling DRM) needs to be resolved. There have been some experiments in U.S. universities over the last couple of years in which private music-sharing services have been run by the universities themselves, and the students pay a fee for access to said music. I haven't seen any studies which provide a clue as to whether or not these experiments have been successful (for some value of 'successful'); my suspicion is that crippling DRM combined with a lack of variety may have been 'features' of these systems, which is not a good test. OTOH, emusic.com seem to be going great guns with non-DRMed .mp3s and a subscription model; perhaps (an official) P2P distribution might be a logical next step for a service of this type. I think it would be a very interesting experiment. Won't really happen as long as they stick to a business model which is over a hundred years old. I would strongly suggest people with interest in this area watch Lawrence Lessig's lecture from CCC: http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/23C3/video/23C3-1760-en-on_free.m4v But I would like to stay on-track and discuss how we can help ISPs change from their end, considering both operational and business needs. Do you believe making such a case study public will help? Do you believe it is the ISP itself which should become the content provider rather than a bandwidth service? Gadi.
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:38:06 -0600 (CST) Gadi Evron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Alexander Harrowell wrote: Marshall wrote: Those sorts of percentages are common in Pareto distributions (AKA Zipf's law AKA the 80-20 rule). With the Zipf's exponent typical of web usage and video watching, I would predict something closer to 10% of the users consuming 50% of the usage, but this estimate is not that unrealistic. I would predict that these sorts of distributions will continue as long as humans are the primary consumers of bandwidth. Regards Marshall That's until the spambots inherit the world, right? That is if you see a distinction, metaphorical or physical, between spambots and real users. On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog (Peter Steiner, The New Yorker) Woof woof, Mark. -- Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly alert. - Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Jan 20, 2007, at 1:02 PM, Marshall Eubanks wrote: as long as humans are the primary consumers of bandwidth. This is an interesting phrase. Did you mean it T-I-C, or are you speculating that M2M (machine-to-machine) communications will at some point rival/overtake bandwidth consumption which is interactively triggered by human actions? Right now TiVo will record television programs it thinks you might like; what effect will this type of technology have on IPTV, more mature P2P systems, etc.? It would be very interesting to try and determine how much automated bandwdith consumption is taking place now and try to extrapolate some trends; a good topic for a PhD dissertation, IMHO. ; --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Technology is legislation. -- Karl Schroeder
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Jan 20, 2007, at 6:14 PM, Mark Smith wrote: It doesn't seem that the P2P application developers are doing it, maybe because they don't care because it doesn't directly impact them, or maybe because they don't know how to. If squid could provide a traffic localising solution which is just another traffic sink or source (e.g. a server) to an ISP, rather than something that requires enabling knobs on the network infrastructure for special handling or requires special traffic engineering for it to work, I'd think you'd get quite a bit of interest. I think there's interest from the consumer level, already: http://torrentfreak.com/review-the-wireless-BitTorrent-router/ It's early days, but if this becomes the norm, then the end-users themselves will end up doing the caching. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Technology is legislation. -- Karl Schroeder
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Gadi Evron wrote: On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: snip ISPs probably don't have an interest in BT caching because of 1) cost of ownership, 2) legal concerns (if an ISP cached a publicly distributed copy of some pirated software, who's then responsible?), They cache the web, which has the same chance of being illegal content. [..] They do have NNTP Caches though with several Terabytes of storage space and obvious newsgroups like alt.binaries.dvd-r and similar names. The reason why they don't run BT Caches is because the protocol is not made for it. NNTP is made for distribution (albeit not really for 8bit files ;), the Cache (more a wrongly implemented auto-replicating FTP server) is local to the ISP and serves their local users. As such that is only gain. Instead of having their clients use their transits, the data only gets pulled over ones and all their clients get it. For BT though, you either have to do tricks at L7 involving sniffing the lines and thus breaking end-to-end; or you end up setting up a huge BT client which automatically mirrors all the torrents on the planet and hope that only your local users use it, which most likely is not the case as most BT clients don't do network-close downloading. As such NNTP is profit, BT is not. Also, NNTP access is a service which you can sell. There exist a large number of NNTP-only services and even ISP's that have as a major selling point: access to their newsserver. Fun detail about NNTP: most companies publish how much traffic they do and even in which alt.binaries.* group the most crap is flowing. Still it seems totally legal to have those several Terabytes of data and make them available, even with the obvious names that the messages carry. The most named reason: It is a Cache and we don't put the data on it, it is automatic... yup alt.binaries.dvd.movies whatever is really not so obvious ;) Of course replace BT with most kinds of P2P network in the above of course. There are some P2P nets that try to induce some network topology though, so that you will be downloading from that person next door instead of that guy on a 56k in Timbuktoe while you are sitting on a 1Gbit NREN connect ;) But anyway what I am wondering is why ISP folks are thinking so bad about this, do you guys want: a) customers that do not use your network b) customers that do use the network Probably it is a) because of the cash. But that is strange, why sell people an 'unlimited' account when you don't want them to use it in the first place? Also if your network is not made to handle customers of type b) then upgrade your network. Clearly your customers love using it, thus more customers will follow if you keep it up and running. No better advertisement than the neighbor saying that it is great ;) Greets, Jeroen signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
Thus spake Dave Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] The past solution to repetitive requests for the same content has been caching, either reactive (webcaching) or proactive (Akamaizing.) I think it is the latter we will see; service providers will push reasonably cheap servers close to the edge where they aren't too oversubscribed, and stuff their content there. A cluster of servers with terabytes of disk at a regional POP will cost a lot less than upgrading the upstream links. And even if the SPs do not want to invest in developing this product platform for themselves, the price will likely be paid by the content providers who need performance to keep subscribers. Caching per se doesn't apply to P2P networks, since they already do that as part of their normal operation. The key is getting users to contact peers who are topologically closer, limiting the bits * distance product. It's ridiculous that I often get better transfer rates with peers in Europe than with ones a few miles away. The key to making things more efficient is not to limit the bandwidth to/from the customer premise, but limit it leaving the POP and between ISPs. If I can transfer at 100kB/s from my neighbors but only 10kB/s from another continent, my opportunistic client will naturally do what my ISP wants as a side effect. The second step, after you've relocated the rate limiting points, is for ISPs to add their own peers in each POP. Edge devices would passively detect when more than N customers have accessed the same torrent, and they'd signal the ISP's peer to add them to its list. That peer would then download the content, and those N customers would get it from the ISP's peer. Creative use of rate limits and acess control could make it even more efficient, but they're not strictly necessary. The third step is for content producers to directly add their torrents to the ISP peers before releasing the torrent directly to the public. This gets official content pre-positioned for efficient distribution, making it perform better (from a user's perspective) than pirated content. The two great things about this are (a) it doesn't require _any_ changes to existing clients or protocols since it exploits existing behavior, and (b) it doesn't need to cover 100% of the content or be 100% reliable, since if a local peer isn't found with the torrent, the clients will fall back to their existing behavior (albeit with lower performance). One thing that _does_ potentially break existing clients is forcing all of the tracker (including DHT) requests through an ISP server. The ISP could then collect torrent popularity data in one place, but more importantly it could (a) forward the request upstream, replacing the IP with its own peer, and (b) only inform clients of other peers (including the ISP one) using the same intercept point. This looks a lot more like a traditional transparent cache, with the attendant reliability and capacity concerns, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were the first mechanism to make it to market. I think the biggest stumbling block isn't technical. It is a question of getting enough content to attract viewers, or alternately, getting enough viewers to attract content. Plus, you're going to a format where the ability to fast-forward commercials is a fact, not a risk, and you'll have to find a way to get advertisers' products in front of the viewer to move past pay-per-view. It's all economics and politics now. I think BitTorrent Inc's recent move is the wave of the short-term future: distribute files freely (and at low cost) via P2P, but DRM-protect the files so that people have to acquire a license to open the files. I can see a variety of subscription models that could pay for content effectively under that scheme. However, it's going to be competing with a deeply-entrenched pirate culture, so the key will be attractive new users who aren't technical enough to use the existing tools via an easy-to-use interface. Not surprisingly, the same folks are working on deals to integrate BT (the protocol) into STBs, routers, etc. so that users won't even know what's going on beneath the surface -- they'll just see a TiVo-like interface and pay a monthly fee like with cable. S Stephen Sprunk God does not play dice. --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSSdice at every possible opportunity. --Stephen Hawking
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:51:08 -0800 Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 20, 2007, at 6:14 PM, Mark Smith wrote: It doesn't seem that the P2P application developers are doing it, maybe because they don't care because it doesn't directly impact them, or maybe because they don't know how to. If squid could provide a traffic localising solution which is just another traffic sink or source (e.g. a server) to an ISP, rather than something that requires enabling knobs on the network infrastructure for special handling or requires special traffic engineering for it to work, I'd think you'd get quite a bit of interest. I think there's interest from the consumer level, already: http://torrentfreak.com/review-the-wireless-BitTorrent-router/ It's early days, but if this becomes the norm, then the end-users themselves will end up doing the caching. Maybe I haven't understood what that exactly does, however it seems to me that's really just a bit-torrent client/server in the ADSL router. Certainly having a bittorrent server in the ADSL router is unique, but not really what I was getting at. What I'm imagining (and I'm making some assumptions about how bittorrent works) would be bittorrent super peer that : * announces itself as a very generous provider of bittorrent fragments. * selects which peers to offer it's generosity to, by measuring it's network proximity of those peers. I think bittorrent uses TCP, and it would seem to me that TCP's own round trip and througput measuring would be a pretty good source to measuring network locality. * This super peer could also have it's generosity announcements restricted to certain IP address ranges etc. Actually, thinking about it a bit more, for this device to work well it would need to somehow be inline with the bit torrent seed URLs, so maybe that wouldn't be feasible to have a server in the ISP's network do it. Still, if BT peer software was modified to take into account the TCP measurements when selecting peers, I think it would probably go a long way towards mitigating some of the traffic problems that P2P seems to be causing. Regards, Mark. -- Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly alert. - Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Jan 20, 2007, at 7:38 PM, Mark Smith wrote: Maybe I haven't understood what that exactly does, however it seems to me that's really just a bit-torrent client/server in the ADSL router. Certainly having a bittorrent server in the ADSL router is unique, but not really what I was getting at. I understand it's not what you meant; my point is that if the SPs don't figure out how to do this, the customers will, by whatever means they have at their disposal, with always-on devices which do the distribution and seeding and caching automagically, and with a revenue model attached. I foresee consumer-level devices like this little Asus router which not only act as torrent clients/servers, but which also are woven together into caches with something like PNRP as the location service (and perhaps an innovative content producer/ distributor acting as a billing overlay prover a la FON in order to monetize same, leaving the SP with nothing). The advantage of providing caching services is that they both help preserve scare resources and result in a more pleasing user experience. As already pointed out, CAPEX/OPEX along with insertion into the network are the current barriers, along with potential legal liabilities; cooperation between content providers and SPs could help alleviate some of these problems and make it a more attractive model, and help fund this kind of infrastructure in order to make more efficient use of bandwidth at various points in the topology. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Technology is legislation. -- Karl Schroeder
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007, Mark Smith wrote: What I'm imagining (and I'm making some assumptions about how bittorrent works) would be bittorrent super peer that : Azereus already has functional 'proxy discovery' stuff. Its quite naive but it does the job. The only implementation I know about is the JoltId PeerCache, but its quite expensive. The initial implementation should use this for client communication. Then try to work with the P2P crowd to ratify some kind of P2P proxy discovery and communication protocol (and have more luck than WPAD :) Adrian
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 19:47:04 -0800 Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip The advantage of providing caching services is that they both help preserve scare resources and result in a more pleasing user experience. As already pointed out, CAPEX/OPEX along with insertion into the network are the current barriers, along with potential legal liabilities; cooperation between content providers and SPs could help alleviate some of these problems and make it a more attractive model, and help fund this kind of infrastructure in order to make more efficient use of bandwidth at various points in the topology. I think you're more or less describing what already Akamai do - they're just not doing it for authorised P2P protocol distributed content (yet?). Regards, Mark. -- Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly alert. - Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
On Jan 20, 2007, at 8:10 PM, Mark Smith wrote: I think you're more or less describing what already Akamai do - they're just not doing it for authorised P2P protocol distributed content (yet?). Yes, and P2P might make sense for them to explore - but a) it doesn't help SPs smooth out bandwidth 'hotspots' in and around their access networks due to P2P activity, b) doesn't bring the content out to the very edges of the access network, where the users are, and c) isn't something which can be woven together out of more or less off-the- shelf technology with the users themselves supplying the infrastructure and paying for (and being compensated for, a la FON or SpeakEasy's WiFi sharing program) the access bandwidth. It seems to me that a FON-/Speakeasy-type bandwidth-charge compensation model for end-user P2P caching and distribution might be an interesting approach for SPs to consider, as it would reduce the CAPEX and OPEX for caching services and encourage the users themselves to subsidize the bandwidth costs to one degree or another. --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Technology is legislation. -- Karl Schroeder
Undersea fiber cut after Taiwan earthquake - PCCW / Singtel / KT e tc connectivity disrupted
What's really interesing is the fragility of the existing telecom infrastructure. These six cables were apparently very close to each other in the water. In other words, despite all the preaching about physical diversity, it was ignored in practice. Indeed, undersea cables very often use the same conduits for terrestrial backhaul since it is the most cost effective solution. However, that means that diversifying across undersea cables does not buy the sort of physical diversity that is anticipated. Roderick S. Beck EMEA and North American Sales Hibernia Atlantic [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com This e-mail and any attachments thereto is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may be proprietary and/or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email, and any attachments thereto, without the prior written permission of the sender is strictly prohibited. If you receive this e-mail in error, please immediately telephone or e-mail the sender and permanently delete the original copy and any copy of this e-mail, and any printout thereof. All documents, contracts or agreements referred or attached to this e-mail are SUBJECT TO CONTRACT. The contents of an attachment to this e-mail may contain software viruses that could damage your own computer system. While Hibernia Atlantic has taken every reasonable precaution to minimize this risk, we cannot accept liability for any damage that you sustain as a result of software viruses. You should carry out your own virus checks before opening any attachment
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Thus spake Adrian Chadd [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sun, Jan 21, 2007, Charlie Allom wrote: This is a pure example of a problem from the operational front which can be floated to research and the industry, with smarter solutions than port blocking and QoS. This is what I am interested/scared by. Its not that hard a problem to get on top of. Caching, unfortunately, continues to be viewed as anaethma by ISP network operators in the US. Strangely enough the caching technologies aren't a problem with the content -delivery- people. US ISPs get paid on bits sent, so they're going to be _against_ caching because caching reduces revenue. Content providers, OTOH, pay the ISPs for bits sent, so they're going to be _for_ caching because it increases profits. The resulting stalemate isn't hard to predict. 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. Basically, they're looking for a box that delivers what P2P networks inherently do by default. If the rate-limiting is sane, then only a copy (or two) will need to come in over the slow overseas pipes, and it'll be replicated and reassembled locally over fast pipes. What, exactly, is a middlebox supposed to add to this picture? 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. So what you have is a Layer 8 problem due to not letting the network topology match the physical topology. No magical box is going to save you from hairpinning traffic between a thousand different L2TP pipes. The best you can hope for is that the rate limits for those L2TP pipes will be orders of magnitude larger than the rate limit for them to talk upstream -- and you don't need any new tools to do that, just intelligent use of what you already have. (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.) As someone who voluntarily used a proxy and gave up, and has worked in an IT dept that did the same thing, it's pretty easy to explain: there are too many sites that aren't cache-friendly. It's easy for content folks to put up their own caches (or Akamaize) because they can design their sites to account for it, but an ISP runs too much risk of breaking users' experiences when they apply caching indiscriminately to the entire Web. Non-idempotent GET requests are the single biggest breakage I ran into, and the proliferation of dynamically-generated Web 2.0 pages (or faulty Expires values) are the biggest factor that wastes bandwidth by preventing caching. S Stephen Sprunk God does not play dice. --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSSdice at every possible opportunity. --Stephen Hawking
Re: Undersea fiber cut after Taiwan earthquake - PCCW / Singtel / KT e tc connectivity disrupted
That's news? The same still happens with much land-based sonet, where diverse paths still share the same entrance to a given facility. Unless each end can negotiate cost sharing for diverse paths, or unless the owner of the fiber can cost justify the same, chances are you're not going to see the ideal. Money will always speak louder than idealism. Undersea paths complicate this even further. On Sun, 21 Jan 2007, Rod Beck wrote: :What's really interesing is the fragility of the existing telecom infrastructure. These six cables were apparently very close to each other in the water. In other words, despite all the preaching about physical diversity, it was ignored in practice. Indeed, undersea cables very often use the same conduits for terrestrial backhaul since it is the most cost effective solution. However, that means that diversifying across undersea cables does not buy the sort of physical diversity that is anticipated. : :Roderick S. Beck :EMEA and North American Sales :Hibernia Atlantic
RE: Undersea fiber cut after Taiwan earthquake - PCCW / Singtel / KT e tc connectivity disrupted
Hi Brian, Unfortunately it is news to the decision makers, the buyers of network capacity at many of the major IP backbones. Indeed, the Atlantic route has problems quite similar to the Pacific. :Roderick S. Beck :EMEA and North American Sales :Hibernia Atlantic This e-mail and any attachments thereto is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may be proprietary and/or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email, and any attachments thereto, without the prior written permission of the sender is strictly prohibited. If you receive this e-mail in error, please immediately telephone or e-mail the sender and permanently delete the original copy and any copy of this e-mail, and any printout thereof. All documents, contracts or agreements referred or attached to this e-mail are SUBJECT TO CONTRACT. The contents of an attachment to this e-mail may contain software viruses that could damage your own computer system. While Hibernia Atlantic has taken every reasonable precaution to minimize this risk, we cannot accept liability for any damage that you sustain as a result of software viruses. You should carry out your own virus checks before opening any attachment
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Thus spake Jeremy Chadwick [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chances are that other torrent client authors are going to see [BitThief] as major defiance and start implementing things like filtering what client can connect to who based on the client name/ID string (ex. uTorrent, Azureus, MainLine), which as we all know, is going to last maybe 3 weeks. BitComet has virtually dropped off the face of the 'net since the authors decided to not honor the private flag. Even public trackers _that do not serve private torrents_ frequently block it out of community solidarity. Note that the blocking hasn't been incorporated into clients, because it's largely unnecessary. This in turn will solicit the BitThief authors implementing a feature that allows the client to either spoof its client name or use randomly- generated ones. Rinse lather repeat, until everyone is fighting rather than cooperating. Will the BT protocol be reformed to address this? 50/50 chance. There are lots of smart folks working on improving the tit-for-tat mechanism, and I bet the algorithm (but _not_ the protocol) implemented in popular clients will be tuned to adjust for freeloaders over time. However, the vast majority of people are going to use clients that implement things as intended because (a) it's simpler, and (b) it performs better. Freeloading does work, but it takes several times as long to download files even with the existing, easily-exploited mechanisms. Note that all it takes to turn any standard client into a BitThief is tuning a few of the easily-accessible parameters (e.g. max connections, connection rate, and upload rate). As many folks have found out with various P2P clients over the years, doing so really hurts you in practice, but you can freeload anything you want if you have patience. This is not particularly novel research; it just quantifies common knowledge. The result of these items already been shown: BT encryption. I personally know of 3 individuals who have their client to use en- cryption only (disabling non-encrypted connection support). For security? Nope -- solely because their ISP uses a rate limiting device. Bram Cohen's official statement is that using encryption to get around this is silly because not many ISPs are implementing such devices (maybe not *right now*, Bram, but in the next year or two, they likely will): http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/29886.html Bram is delusional; few ISPs these days _don't_ implement rate-limiting for BT traffic. And, in response, nearly every client implements encryption to get around it. The root problem is ISPs aren't trying to solve the problem the right way -- they're seeing BT taking up huge amounts of BW and are trying to stop that, instead of trying to divert that traffic so that it costs them less to deliver. ( My ISP doesn't limit BT, but I've talked with their tech support folks and the response was that if I use excessive bandwidth they'll rate-limit my entire port regardless of protocol. They gave me a ballpark of what excessive means to them, I set my client below that level, and I've never had a problem. This works better for me since all my non-BT traffic isn't competing for limited port bandwidth, and it works better for them since my BT traffic is unencrypted and easy to de-prioritize -- but they don't limit it per se, just mark it to be dropped first during congestion, which is fair. Everyone wins. ) S Stephen Sprunk God does not play dice. --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSSdice at every possible opportunity. --Stephen Hawking
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
Its not that hard a problem to get on top of. Caching, unfortunately, continues to be viewed as anaethma by ISP network operators in the US. Strangely enough the caching technologies aren't a problem with the content -delivery- people. if we enbrace p2p, today's heavy hitting bad users are tomorrow's wonderful local cachers. randy
Re: Google wants to be your Internet
holy kook bait. it's amazing after all these years, and companies, how many people, and companies, still don't get it. /rf
