[nycbug-talk] Cogent and Sprint - a signal of things getting Oldschool?

[Alex Pilosov]

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008, Isaac Levy wrote:

> >> My DSL (Speakeasy) gets quite slow for small periods of time since
> >> yesterday.  OpenBSD 4.4 release today is coming down *slowly*.  My
> >> home-office telecommute work day is sucking rocks. My neighbor
> >> (Comcast Cable), reported less than 20k bandwidth for long periods of
> >> time last night.
> > Correlation does not imply causation.
> 
> Er, it does imply, but your sentiment is correct if I modify-
> correlation does not confirm causation.
Correlation does not imply causation. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

I'm right, you are wrong, wikipedia says so.

> >> Admittedly unscientifically, from my endpoint --> traceroute to known
> >> points in NYC, now go through mzima where they used to always go
> >> through some level3 pipes- so I *believe* I'm not crazy to say the
> >> Sprint/ Cogent de-peering affected my piddly DSL, (as it reportedly
> >> seems to affect a lot more people).
> > Yes, gamerz coming out from woodwork and "OMG IM PINGIN 10"
> lol
I missed mzima in the above sentence. That's where lulz is.

> After years of (happily) paying ISP's, I see little change or
> explanation from ISP's for why speeds/quality/reliability remains the
> same.
Disagree. People think that Interwebs is now a mission-critical service, 
and demand 100% availability. They are getting close to it now. Whereas, 5 
years ago, it was quite different and people were not really expecting 
100%.

> I see old networking gear, and a massive multi-billion dollar business
> maintaining a status quo which I'm not happy about.
Point fingers, please.

> Examples:
> ISP's getting into the CDN business: AT&T, XO, Internap, etc...
Nothing wrong with that, it's where the money is. Means new builds for CDN
etc.

> Network Providers focused on ringtones: Telewest, Sprint, AT&T
That's where the money is.

> Network Providers marry Media (Content) Businesses: AT&T, Quest, Verizon
VZ doesn't have own content (AFAIK). Neither does Qwest. You probably
meant to say "Time Warner" or "Comcast" (who owns both content and pipes).

> None of this free market has opened up the market for various content
> businesses to use the internet, however my point here is that none of it
> has made our providers re-invest significantly in their own networks
> either.
What data do you have that providers don't "re-invest significantly in
their own networks", I'm dying to know.

As far as free market for content - I don't think there's been a better 
time. See all pr0n companies, none of them have any problems delivering 
their content to end user.

> I was thinking Sprint may have been going around rattling cages to cut
> costs and make their next quarters numbers...  Not a conspiracy, but as
> the market is down...
Doubt anyone in Sprint corporate even *knows* about sprint internet 
transit. It is such a tiny portion of their revenue, I doubt they finance 
people care.

> My point here, is that upgrading the networks seems to be happening in
> big waves- instead of a more cumulative or calculated manner- and
> therefore has pains.
Explain what you mean by waves of upgrade, and how are they different from 
cumulative or calculated. 

> When I worked on the web-hosting ISP, we had a life-span for each server
> accounted for in advance, and rough estimates on what the tech (and
> service offerings) would be a couple of years down the road.  It worked
> out peachy- servers, storage, etc... all could cumulatively grow and
> change as technology advanced.
There's no lifespan of networking gear. It stays in service until it is 
unable to handle traffic passing through it. There's nothing wrong with 
that. If traffic is not increasing and there are no additional feature 
requirements, it'll stay. 

> >> I would argue that to continue to compete and grow internationally,
> >> American businesses desperately need increased bandwidth all around-
> >> especially at the datacenter.  I argue that carriers need to be
> >> supported in, as well as held accountable for, planning upgrade
> >> cycles.
> > We all held them accountable, with our wallets. It's called 'free
> > market'.
> 
> I'm no economist, but didn't the raw free market, and Freedman-style
> economics, just wholly collapse?
I wouldn't quite put it like that just yet. We won't have whole picture 
until a year from now, at least.

> But if a company has a network application which drives their business,
> and the network sucks/fails, it's out of their hands, right?  It becomes
> a surprise cost, and everyone down the chain is affected by the big
> carriers decision making?
Wrong. It means you didn't build *your* network right, didn't multihome 
properly. If the network is *so* critical to your business, you owe it to 
plan for your carrier's failures - just like you plan for your own 
equipment to fail.

> I would argue that the US Govt. was far too immature with where networks
> were going to even legislate, back then- and perhaps now?
Sorta. Reed Hundt's FCC was actually fairly sensible and visionary.

<snip>


> Well, at least the Obama campaign seems serious about getting government
> more involved...
I really don't want to get into that...

> What, no comment on "Separation of Content and Infrastructure"?
I don't think there's a problem with it. If content merges with a network, 
nothing's wrong. It's when you get into the monopoly (or duopoly) 
situation, problems happen.

> >> Who has internet backbone?
> > I dunno. But I can has cheezburger.
> 
> Oh- I guess that means you think content and infrastructure are the
> same.
No, I mean that this thread has not enough lulz. So here's a picture of a 
firewall: 
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/funny-pictures-furwall-prevents-unauthorized-access.jpg

-alex