Re: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

[Scott Helms <khelms () zcorum com>]

"My point is that the option should be there, at the consumer level."

Why?  What's magical about symmetry?  Is a customer better served by having
a 5mbps/5mbps over a 25mbps/5mbps?


"There are so many use cases for this, everything from personal game
servers to on-line backups, that the lack of such offerings is an
indication of an unhealthy market."

Until we get NAT out of the way, this is actually much harder to leverage
than you might think.  I don't think there is anything special about
symmetrical bandwidth, I do think upstream bandwidth usage is going up and
will continue to go up, but I don't see any evidence in actual performance
stats or customers sentiment to show that it's going up as fast as
downstream demand.


Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
--------------------------------
http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
--------------------------------

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 3:36 PM, Daniel Taylor <dtaylor () vocalabs com> wrote:

> My point is that the option should be there, at the consumer level.
>
> If not for fully symmetrical service (I admit that 50MB/s upstream is a
> tough pipe to fill), at least for significantly higher upstream service
> than is currently available in most neighborhoods.
>
> There are so many use cases for this, everything from personal game
> servers to on-line backups, that the lack of such offerings is an
> indication of an unhealthy market.
>
> On 02/27/2015 02:25 PM, Scott Helms wrote:
>
> > Daniel,
> >
> > We'd have to come to some standard definition of, "But even if 1% of
> > users would reasonably be using a fully symmetric link to its potential..."
> >
> > As I said, I have visibility into a large number of symmetric connections
> > and without exception they'd fit well into a plan that offered upstreams
> > with that had a fractional speed of the downstream.  Now, keep in mind I'm
> > not talking about 1/10 as a ratio here, but 1/5 would accommodate ~99.2%
> > and 1/4 would fit ~99.9%.  It's also important to note that all of these
> > accounts are in the >25mbps down territory so their upstreams are >5mbps.
> >
> > What I see when I look at customer satisfaction ratings is a very strong
> > correlation with low uplink speeds and a high satisfaction rate when we
> > look at uplink speeds greater than 4mbps.  What I don't see is an increase
> > in customer satisfaction as upload speeds go past ~6mbps.  Conversely,
> > increases in customer satisfaction with correlate with increases in
> > download speeds past ~30mbps before the correlation starts weakening.
> >
> >
> > Scott Helms
> > Vice President of Technology
> > ZCorum
> > (678) 507-5000
> > --------------------------------
> > http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
> > --------------------------------
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 2:57 PM, Daniel Taylor <dtaylor () vocalabs com
> > <mailto:dtaylor () vocalabs com>> wrote:
> >
> >     The statistics certainly *should* be used when provisioning
> >     aggregate resources.
> >     But even if 1% of users would reasonably be using a fully
> >     symmetric link to its potential, that's a good reason to at least
> >     have such circuits available in the standard consumer mix, which
> >     they aren't today.
> >
> >     On 02/27/2015 01:30 PM, Scott Helms wrote:
> >
> >         Daniel,
> >
> >         Well, I wouldn't call using the mean a "myth", after all
> >         understanding most customer behavior is what we all have to
> >         build our business cases around.  If we throw out what
> >         customers use today and simply take a build it and they will
> >         come approach then I suspect there would fewer of us in this
> >         business.
> >
> >         Even when we look at anomalous users we don't see symmetrical
> >         usage, ie top 10% of uploaders.  We also see less contended
> >         seconds on their upstream than we do on the downstream.  These
> >         observations are based on ~500k residential and business
> >         subscribers across North America using FTTH (mostly GPON),
> >         DOCSIS cable modems, and various flavors of DSL.
> >
> >
> >         Scott Helms
> >         Vice President of Technology
> >         ZCorum
> >         (678) 507-5000 <tel:%28678%29%20507-5000>
> >         --------------------------------
> >         http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
> >         --------------------------------
> >
> >         On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Daniel Taylor
> >         <dtaylor () vocalabs com <mailto:dtaylor () vocalabs com>
> >         <mailto:dtaylor () vocalabs com <mailto:dtaylor () vocalabs com>>>
> >         wrote:
> >
> >             But by this you are buying into the myth of the mean.
> >
> >             It isn't that most, or even many, people would take
> >         advantage of
> >             equal upstream bandwidth, but that the few who would need
> >         to take
> >             extra measures unrelated to the generation of that content
> >         to be
> >             able to do so.
> >
> >             Given symmetrical provisioning, no extra measures need to
> >         be taken
> >             when that 10 year old down the street turns out to be a master
> >             musician.
> >
> >             On 02/27/2015 11:59 AM, Scott Helms wrote:
> >
> >                 This is true in our measurements today, even when
> >         subscribers
> >                 are given
> >                 symmetrical connections.  It might change at some
> >         point in the
> >                 future,
> >                 especially when widespread IPv6 lets us get rid of NAT
> >         as a de
> >                 facto
> >                 deployment reality.
> >
> >
> >                 Scott Helms
> >                 Vice President of Technology
> >                 ZCorum
> >         (678) 507-5000 <tel:%28678%29%20507-5000>
> >         <tel:%28678%29%20507-5000>
> >                 --------------------------------
> >         http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
> >                 --------------------------------
> >
> >                 On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Naslund, Steve
> --
> Daniel Taylor          VP Operations            Vocal Laboratories, Inc.
> dtaylor () vocalabs com   http://www.vocalabs.com/            (612)235-5711