nanog mailing list archives

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth


From: manolo hernandez <mhernand1 () comcast net>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:22:18 -0400

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On 9/28/10 3:01 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
Jack,

Apologies, I did not realize that you guys were doing so much. Please don't take my last email as anything which was 
intended to question or insult you guys. Up here (Alaska) we have about 100,000 cable subscribers along with mixed 
Fiber/DSL/POTS access and nearly 50,000 cellular customers with high speed data around our Metro network. I am an RF 
Engineer, however the network I run is IP based (satellite) and I run in the neighborhood of 250mbps forward and 
30mbps return to most of the State of Alaska. I find that anywhere from 40-65% of our total traffic is 
"questionable", which is why I was asking about an ISP who liked their users downloading torrents. It is very 
difficult to gauge a users behavior if they are on an "all out" downloading binge over a weekend. Normally, a user 
logs in and does what they need to in a relatively short amount of time (hours). In the case of most providers, we 
oversubscribe our resources and have found this model is beginning to not apply to 
user behavior changes. Long gone are the days of the user turning off their computers, and our customer base (rural 
Alaska) have few things to do besides use the internet. This has made a "perfect storm" of sorts, as we are now seeing 
most of our users utilizing 70%+ of their allocated (purchased) bandwidth 24 hours a day. The vast majority of the 
night use is gaming, and bit torrent. It makes things much more complicated when trying to give an experience to 
people..

//warren

-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Bates [mailto:jbates () brightok net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:26 AM
To: Warren Bailey
Cc: Richard Barnes; NANOG
Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

On 9/28/2010 1:00 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
Jack,

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but looking at your website - do you only offer dial up services? This could be the 
background for a statement like "a proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic." We have a couple of OC-192 
running to Seattle, so certain "types" of traffic can make a good day turn very badly without some traffic 
"management".


BrightNet itself has ILEC's as customers. We're a turnkey glue for ILECs 
nearby. Among other things, I provide engineering support and advise for 
each ILEC. Each has their own levels of service, management, and 
technologies deployed including wireless, cellular, DSL, FTTH, and 
cable. I'm currently running around 1.2gbit between us and 4 NSP 
transits with 3gbit available. Some of the ILECs have additional load 
shifting with other transits. I estimate the need to go 10Gig ring or 
split transit in less than 5 years at current growth rates, and the 
largest problem we've run into is getting infrastructure to handle gig-e 
speeds out of rural ILECs for the 100+ mile longhauls. I've had issues 
with gig-e connectivity just getting out of OKC to enough NSP transits 
and it will become more difficult/expensive when we do hit 10G.

As it currently stands, we usually have no problems with event spikes, 
though we sometimes have to tweek the traffic paths depending on how the 
NSPs do. The largest issues have always been the last mile. As we 
resolve last mile costs (which dropping 100% fiber in a rural area today 
doesn't have the safety nets and guarantees that were provided when 
copper was dropped in), we'll then have to tackle the longhaul 
connectivity issues, but hopefully the cost to handle that will drop as 
well.


Jack


What is keeping your company from buying more bandwidth? I find the
excuse of over subscription to be a fail. If that's your companies
business model then it should not be whining when people are using what
you sell them. Provision bandwidth accordingly and stop being cheap and
squeezing every last dime from the end user for bandwidth that can be
had for less than the price of a burger in some places.



Manny
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