Interesting People mailing list archives
CUSEEME and Europe
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 09:53:54 -0400
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 1994 22:10:43 -0400 (EDT) From: danu () dccs upenn edu (Dan Updegrove) Dave, This list has had some interesting chat of late about the threat posed by CU-SeeMe. (I know you're already on the list.) This message has some especially interesting data about European long line costs and a wonderful tag line by the sender. Regards, Dan Forwarded message:
From: Per Gregers Bilse <bilse () EU net> To: Multiple recipients of list <cu-seeme-l () cornell edu> Subject: Re: Borre's bandwidth concern ex Nordic sites Date: Sat, 15 Oct 1994 14:42:37 -0400 I've been lurking on this list for a couple of weeks, and I'm quite happy to see that bandwidth consumption is being of concern to people.From our (EUnet's) perspective, CU-SeeMe actually poses a seriousthreat to the quality of the services we can offer, and we have been considering various means of protecting ourselves and our customers. On Oct 14, 19:31, Mike Stanyer wrote:I would argues from a slightly different perspective. It may well becorrectthat for Nordic academic institutions that there are no plans toimprove thetrans-Atlantic bandwidth. BUT is this true for fee paying access?Speaking as the person who evaluates, plans, implements, and controls the transatlantic bandwidth for -- no holds barred -- Europe's biggest commercial ISP, bandwidth is certainly going up and up. We double every six months. But ...In the UK this is certainly not the case and the commercial internetprovidersare steaming ahead with their parrallel networks and their own funded trans-Atalntic links. This may contain the germ of a bandwidthsolution... ifthese commercial internet access providers find that it is worth theirwhile,they would certainly find it commercially sensible to fund local reflectors rather than invest ever increasing sums into long haul high bandiwdth comms circuits. The network of reflectors solution seems the correct way togo butquite what it will eventually look like is unclear to me... local reflectors and/or whatnot doesn't solve the situation where somebody with a Mac behind a 64k (or even 19.2 async) link goes to the US (or elsewhere in Europe, for that matter) and turns on what can only properly be described as a megabit-blast (which happens a couple of times every week). Even if they had the local bandwidth to receive it, I don't think they would be prepared to pay for it. In order to serve these people, we would need to have a separate 1-2Mbit transatlantic link, just for their video. 2Mbit transatlantic plus _one_ 2Mbit link across Europe costs on the order of USD 100000-150000 per month, just for the lines themselves; we'd need to have separate 1-2Mbit links across Europe to every single country we serve (over two dozen), simply to avoid CU-SeeMe tearing apart regular traffic (telnet, ftp, WWW, customer-specific applications, etc). Obviously, this is not an issue open for discussion. Were we to bill people for their usage, it would easily come to USD 50-100 per hour. For the benefit of US-based readers of this list who find this too incredible, here are some examples of European vs US leased line prices: Route Cap Monthly Distance Equiv. (Mbit/sec) cost (miles) US Cost (GBP x1000) (GBP x1000) Brussels/Paris 2 22.87 170 3.06 Brussels/Amsterdam 1 17.74 98 1.54 Brussels/Luxembourg 1 17.7 117 1.58 Brussels/London 2 31.53 211 2.12 London/Amsterdam 2 32.12 230 2.17 London/Frankfurt 2 42.64 400 2.56 London/Geneva 2 43.69 457 3.69 London/Paris 4 80.83 209 4.24 London/Stockolm 4 75.44 908 7.48 Paris/Luxemburg 1.5 21.8 180 1.96 Paris/Geneva 2 29.3 250 2.21 Paris/Madrid 1 29.35 649 2.59 Frankfurt/Amsterdam 2 31.88 228 2.10 Frankfurt/Geneva 2 34.29 287 2.3 Frankfurt/Luxemburg 1.5 28.03 110 1.8 Amsterdam/Luxemburg 1 17.51 196 1.73 Geneva/Barcelona 1 34.56 395 2.36 Geneva/Milan 2 40.16 147 1.98 Total 634.14 62.37 GBP 1 = USD 1.35, give or take 10-20%. There's no question that CU-SeeMe is a great tool, great fun, and a wonderful step forward (although I've never used it myself :-). But careless use can have devastating effects on the networks used for the transport. As mentioned, wee see this happening once or twice every week. My personal guess is that unless something is done to ensure more "socially responsible" use in the US, the problems we have in Europe now will become widespread in the US in 6-12 months time. Rationale: At the current level of CU-SeeMe use European and transatlantic lines are ready for meltdown, while in the US (where lines typically are 10 times bigger) one observes "busy day". When CU-SeeMe use has reached 10 times its current level, one will in the US have to solve the same problems we in Europe have to solve over the coming 6-12 months. Imminent death of the Internet _not_ predicted, BTW. :-) -- bilse <bilse () EU net> +31 20 592 5109 (dir: 5110); fax +31 20 592 5163 ``We used to ! but now we @'' (jensen)
-- Daniel A. Updegrove University of Pennsylvania Associate Vice Provost 3401 Walnut, Suite 221A Information Systems and Computing Phila, PA 19104-6228 Executive Director 215 898-2883 Data Communications & Computing Service fax 898-9348
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- CUSEEME and Europe David Farber (Oct 16)