7 ms·

I disagree with your (hyperbolic?) overrun predictions, but won't international backhaul remain a problem? Then again, a more connected country might make putti

by joahua 15y ago

I disagree with your (hyperbolic?) overrun predictions, but won't international backhaul remain a problem? Then again, a more connected country might make putting proper CDN points of presence more attractive.

jacques_chester 15y ago
You're correct in highlighting backhaul; when talking to other Australians I point out that it would be useless to have fibre running into every home if we're still squeezing everything down 3 (soon 4) very expensive pipes. Out of the 50 odd billion that's been budgeted for the project it might have been nice to splurge a few billion for an additional 2 or 3 pipes -- say one to Singapore, one to Guam and another on the trans-Tasman route to California. The paucity of competition in backhaul makes traffic so expensive in Australia that I actually host all my sites in the US -- including several of Australia's most influential blogs. Dollar for dollar I can get the same RAM, CPU and disk space in Australia, but I will get only about a tenth of the traffic quota with punitive overages.
- te_chris 15y ago
  I do exactly the same in NZ, except here we have 1 intl. pipe. They're trying to get another one off the ground, but it's probably far off in the future and I'm yet to be convinced it will make any meaningful difference. The govt. are also trying to roll out fibre to the home, but they're fucking it up fantastically and basically gifting it to Telecom (NZ's monopoly telecommunications provider). Thank allah for Linode.
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    I'm on Linode too. So if backhaul was being built, perhaps NZ could be persuaded to chip in for more trans-Tasman pipes being laid? As I understand it, the one pipe from NZ to California continues on to Sydney.
    - te_chris 15y ago
      Actually, looking at their website, looks like they're basically planning on duplicating that pipe and running it to SYD as well http://pacificfibre.net/ http://pacificfibre.net/ Guess that could be good for you guys too.
- nl 15y ago
  The big cost for hosting providers in Australia is bandwidth. Broadly available fiber should help that. I disagree about the need for the government to pay for international bandwidth. So far private companies have done that pretty well, and it's quite a competitive market. More demand will probably encourage another couple to be built - but without needing tax payer money.
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    My point is that the entire economics of IP traffic in Australia is driven by those international pipes. Massive internal bandwidth won't change that (less the effect of CDN POPs). It is becoming a competitive market, but so is DSL. My point is that we're going to spend tens of billions on a white elephant we might as well actually spend some of it where it counts. Even if it took the form of giving (say) a billion dollars to each of PIPE Networks, Southern Cross Networks and Telstra to get them to lay more cables.
    - nl 15y ago
      I don't believe that there is actually a shortage of TransPac bandwidth, and the prices aren't crazy. The high prices for hosting in Australia is because of the cost of domestic bandwidth, not TransPac. (As a random example - many people host using Amazon EC2 on the US West Coast instead of in Singapore because some ISPs route to Singapore via the US for cost reasons(!!)). I do agree more international bandwidth would be great though, but I'd prefer to see additional entrants rather than money to the existing ones. It would be interesting to see if TransPac bandwidth usage follows a powerlaw, eg: most usage to a few sites (YouTube?) If this was the case then it would make a lot of sense to encourage those companies to setup a local CDN endpoint, which would also reduce the usage of the TransPac links.
      - jacques_chester 15y ago
        Domestic bandwidth is expensive because ISPs and data centres don't distinguish between domestic and international packets at the server, but get billed by the international pipes based on traffic. Hence the price for bandwidth consumers -- retail and commercial -- is set at a level that covers that international traffic. Hence domestic prices are driven by the international component. These conditions should continue for so long as there are a) few competitors and b) most content is located overseas. I agree that it would be nice to have local CDN POPs, but all that does is transfer the high cost of Australian packets back to the provider ... and they would want to pay that because ...?

by joahua 15y ago

jacques_chester 15y ago

You're correct in highlighting backhaul; when talking to other Australians I point out that it would be useless to have fibre running into every home if we're still squeezing everything down 3 (soon 4) very expensive pipes. Out of the 50 odd billion that's been budgeted for the project it might have been nice to splurge a few billion for an additional 2 or 3 pipes -- say one to Singapore, one to Guam and another on the trans-Tasman route to California. The paucity of competition in backhaul makes traffic so expensive in Australia that I actually host all my sites in the US -- including several of Australia's most influential blogs. Dollar for dollar I can get the same RAM, CPU and disk space in Australia, but I will get only about a tenth of the traffic quota with punitive overages.

te_chris 15y ago
I do exactly the same in NZ, except here we have 1 intl. pipe. They're trying to get another one off the ground, but it's probably far off in the future and I'm yet to be convinced it will make any meaningful difference. The govt. are also trying to roll out fibre to the home, but they're fucking it up fantastically and basically gifting it to Telecom (NZ's monopoly telecommunications provider). Thank allah for Linode.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  I'm on Linode too. So if backhaul was being built, perhaps NZ could be persuaded to chip in for more trans-Tasman pipes being laid? As I understand it, the one pipe from NZ to California continues on to Sydney.
  - te_chris 15y ago
    Actually, looking at their website, looks like they're basically planning on duplicating that pipe and running it to SYD as well http://pacificfibre.net/ http://pacificfibre.net/ Guess that could be good for you guys too.
nl 15y ago
The big cost for hosting providers in Australia is bandwidth. Broadly available fiber should help that. I disagree about the need for the government to pay for international bandwidth. So far private companies have done that pretty well, and it's quite a competitive market. More demand will probably encourage another couple to be built - but without needing tax payer money.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  My point is that the entire economics of IP traffic in Australia is driven by those international pipes. Massive internal bandwidth won't change that (less the effect of CDN POPs). It is becoming a competitive market, but so is DSL. My point is that we're going to spend tens of billions on a white elephant we might as well actually spend some of it where it counts. Even if it took the form of giving (say) a billion dollars to each of PIPE Networks, Southern Cross Networks and Telstra to get them to lay more cables.
  - nl 15y ago
    I don't believe that there is actually a shortage of TransPac bandwidth, and the prices aren't crazy. The high prices for hosting in Australia is because of the cost of domestic bandwidth, not TransPac. (As a random example - many people host using Amazon EC2 on the US West Coast instead of in Singapore because some ISPs route to Singapore via the US for cost reasons(!!)). I do agree more international bandwidth would be great though, but I'd prefer to see additional entrants rather than money to the existing ones. It would be interesting to see if TransPac bandwidth usage follows a powerlaw, eg: most usage to a few sites (YouTube?) If this was the case then it would make a lot of sense to encourage those companies to setup a local CDN endpoint, which would also reduce the usage of the TransPac links.
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      Domestic bandwidth is expensive because ISPs and data centres don't distinguish between domestic and international packets at the server, but get billed by the international pipes based on traffic. Hence the price for bandwidth consumers -- retail and commercial -- is set at a level that covers that international traffic. Hence domestic prices are driven by the international component. These conditions should continue for so long as there are a) few competitors and b) most content is located overseas. I agree that it would be nice to have local CDN POPs, but all that does is transfer the high cost of Australian packets back to the provider ... and they would want to pay that because ...?