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Yeah, but generally speaking carriers price things independent of cost. I'm guessing this is because it would be lethal to say, "you live in a less dense area,

by mdasen 18y ago

Yeah, but generally speaking carriers price things independent of cost. I'm guessing this is because it would be lethal to say, "you live in a less dense area, but we still serve you, just at twice the price." Plus, if you had read, a large part of the issue is that some places might be dense, but you're not connecting to servers within that dense area. If you live in Manhattan, you might live in a dense area, but the backend cost of connecting you to servers in Texas and California and laying (or paying for) a lot of fiber to do that. So, there's two costs. The cost of wiring a less dense population and the cost of backend wiring a larger geographic area where servers might be located. Even if you live in NYC, you still have the second cost.

deleted 18y ago
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pbz 18y ago
1) The "backend cost" cannot be much more than what it is in Japan. They have to develop those networks as well. You make it sound like all the Japanese are actually accessing US servers. I would guess that the vast majority of the traffic is internal to the country. Yes, the distance is greater, but running "a few" high speed cables between the East and West coast is way cheaper than wiring a whole city. 2) You argue that you can't have one price for densely populated areas and another otherwise. In effect, this is exactly what it's happening, except that in those less dense areas you don't get service at all. Any way you slice it, you just can't add up the huge difference in what we're getting and what they're getting.
- mindslight 18y ago
  No, his point is that a communications company in Japan can "wire the whole country" and peer with fellow network providers, while building such a comprehensive network in the US is prohibitive, and thus ISPs have to pay for transit. Basically, a bigger and more distributed (between "autonomous systems") network increases the asymmetry of the interconnections, leading to more billable events (antithesis of "the internet").

by mdasen 18y ago

deleted 18y ago

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pbz 18y ago

1) The "backend cost" cannot be much more than what it is in Japan. They have to develop those networks as well. You make it sound like all the Japanese are actually accessing US servers. I would guess that the vast majority of the traffic is internal to the country. Yes, the distance is greater, but running "a few" high speed cables between the East and West coast is way cheaper than wiring a whole city. 2) You argue that you can't have one price for densely populated areas and another otherwise. In effect, this is exactly what it's happening, except that in those less dense areas you don't get service at all. Any way you slice it, you just can't add up the huge difference in what we're getting and what they're getting.

mindslight 18y ago
No, his point is that a communications company in Japan can "wire the whole country" and peer with fellow network providers, while building such a comprehensive network in the US is prohibitive, and thus ISPs have to pay for transit. Basically, a bigger and more distributed (between "autonomous systems") network increases the asymmetry of the interconnections, leading to more billable events (antithesis of "the internet").