Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Andrew C Burnette [acb () acb net]
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 11:20 AM
To: David Farber; 'Brett Glass'
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

Brett,

Those bandwidth *costs* do not increase, and are continually declining
as fiber (at least in "NFL cities") becomes ever more pervasive, and
inexpensive. The ongoing transition alone from OC192 to 10G Ethernet
cuts by half (at least) of the equipment costs associated with
settlement free peering.

I'm saying that with the full awareness that you've (and your ISP) been
given a raw deal by an RBOC that's got no strategic plans, no funds, and
has managed to screw it's customers for at least the next decade.

The cost to a colo hotel within a peering location breaks down to under
$500k in total capital costs (that was my estimate when I ran 5 peering
locations in 2005), with recurring bandwidth (e.g. dark fiber) available
at less than $2500 a pair in most metro areas.  (even at a cost of
roughly $200k per route mile, a 490+ fiber bundle easily recovers it's
basis within a year or two). Of course, the cabinet and power may cost
$500/month or $1000 at most.

Yes, comcast does that. They formerly paid AT&T's AS7018 on the order of
$5/Mbps of traffic for the majority of their MSO's.

You'll also find the likes of akamai, yahoo, google, etc (content heavy)
peering with or selling prime transit (call it paid peering) at below
basement pricing to eyeball heavy (e.g. comcast) networks. If you ask
their peering coordinators, the price simply is to offset the capital
costs involved. The gain for both parties is in peering with yet other
networks in a better traffic balance. (most SF peering agreements limit
directional ratios to 2:1 or less)

It's taken the RBOC's a long while to actually get into the peering game
due to other concerns (I'm being polite here, the prime word would be
cluelessness).  Verizon did it buy purchasing the MCI backbone, SBC the
AT&T backbone, and Qwest, well, they were likely the first to reverse
engineer a bankrupt ISP into an RBOC.

The true suffering that comast has is in the local loop, not the
backhaul or transit to other networks. coax has limited bandwidth, and
they've used it up for video, despite their fiber being less than 400M
from my old house. (I'm closer to the woods now, but verizon still
managed to show up with fiber in hand; $199/mo for 50/50Mbps, $49 for
20/5Mbps)

Best regards,
andy

David Farber wrote:
> ________________________________________
> From: Brett Glass [brett () lariat net]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 9:14 PM
> To: David Farber; ip
> Subject: Re: [IP] Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees
>
> [Dave: A reply for the list, to prevent people from being confused -BG]
>
> At 06:36 PM 5/7/2008, Dan Lynch wrote:
>
> > Uh?  Comcast gets Internet bandwidth for free?  Surely you jest, Brett.
>
> This is not what I said. What I said is that purchasing a pay per view
> movie from the cable company does not cost the cable company money for
> Internet bandwidth (which the cable company itself must buy from a backbone
> provider at a high and increasing cost). Thus, there is no need for an
> additional charge, as there would be if the cable company had to buy the
> bandwidth to convey the movie to the customer.
>
> What's more, since each download would be individual, the cable company
> would pay again and again for each customer. On the other hand, pay per
> view movies conveyed via video are commonly done in a way that allows
> many customers to view the movie on the same channel at the same time,
> creating still greater efficiencies.
>
> > As for TCP being a good way to distribute video, you are right on there.  I
> > don't understand why vendors have not instituted Multicast.
>
> Because there are some savings, but they are not great. Transmissions are
> still quite inefficient, especially over certain "last mile" media which
> essentially do not multicast.
>
> --Brett Glass
>
>
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