nanog mailing list archives

Re: Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)


From: Matt Hoppes <mattlists () rivervalleyinternet net>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2018 09:27:17 -0400

I am incredibly rural in Pennsylvania and pay about $.50 per megabit. 

On May 29, 2018, at 09:23, Lamar Owen <lowen () pari edu> wrote:

On 05/28/2018 06:13 PM, Matthew Petach wrote:
Your 200mbit/sec link that costs you $300 in hardware
is going to cost you $4960/month to actually get IP traffic
across, in Nairobi.   Yes, that's about $60,000/year.
I live in the US of A, and this is what 200Mb/s roughly would cost me as well here in Rural Monopoly-land.  Rural 
ILEC also has the CATV business, and, well, they are _not_ going to run cable up here.  I've actually priced 150Mb/s 
bandwidth from the ILEC over the years; in 2003 the cost would have been about $100,000 per month. As of five years 
ago 10Mb/s symmetrical cost roughly $1,000 per month, the lion's share of that being per-mile NECA Tariff 5 transport 
costs.

The terrain here prevents fixed wireless.  The terrain also prevents satellite comms to the Clarke belt (mountain to 
the south with trees on US Forest Service property in the line of sight).  I get 1XRTT in one room of my house when 
the humidity is below 70% and it's winter, and once in a blue moon 3G will light up, but it's not stable enough to 
actually use; it's the speed of dialup.  If I traipse about a hundred yards up the mountain to the south (onto US 
Forest Service property, so, no repeater for me) I can get semi-usable 4G; nothing like being in the middle of the 
woods with an active black bear population trying to get a usable signal.

I'm paying $50 per month for 7/0.5 DSL (I might add that they provide excellent DSL that has been extremely reliable) 
from the only ISP available in the area.

I remember a usable web experience not too long ago on 28.8K/33.6K dialup (it was quite a while before said ILEC got 
a 56K-capable modem bank).  DSL started out here at 384k/128k.  On the positive side, we have a very low 
oversubscription ratio, so I actually get the full bandwidth the majority of the time, even video streaming. I also 
know all the network engineers there, too, and that also has its advantages.

(Yes, I am aware that rural living is a choice, and there are things worth a great deal more than bandwidth, that 
it's a tradeoff, etc.)

So it's not just '3rd-world' countries with expensive bandwidth.



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