Heavy Internet Users Unplugged By Us Cable Company

[technocracy]

You seem to have forgotten contention in that example. Virtually all household non-business ADSL services the world over have a contention ratio of 50:1 i.e. 50 user share 1 meg. Obviously this is dependant on the loading of the DSLAM.

No I have not forgotten that.

The example calculation was made based on 2 assumptions. Read again.

Oh and the 21Gbps is actual traffic available at once - the amount of people that would support is quite staggering.

21Gbps total international bandwidth was the number published in June 2007 - see the Thai IX'es.

Not long ago I did a review of a metro network provide who supplied 100meg tails to companies, when I did the review they had nearly 300 companies with 100meg circuits. They were concerned by the fact they only had multiples of 1Gbps of bandwidth in the core - traffic was split using MPLS over 2 different paths. The avg throughput of the core was 225Mpbs~ on each of the paths. In general there is a lot more to the utilisation of bandwidth than the numbers of users.

These people downloading large amounts of data don't necessarily have to be hammering 10meg just leave a 512kbps circuit on a large list of Bit-torrents or e-Mule downloads 24/7 and they'd rack up a huge amount of downloaded data but little actual utilisation of bandwith.

Both issues you describe have a lot to do with the amount of packets-per-second that the routers can switch or route. Bittorrent causes an enormous amount of concurrent connections - the average home-use router/modem/whatever-thing will very soon give up, while the actual bandwidth utilization may only be 50% or so. As I said before, the "router" that TOT supplies with their adsl line is the biggest joke of last century.

Firstly one of the assumptions isn't based on reality so isn't it a bit of a pointless example? As for how TOT operate the network - I'd expect to be honest it'd be quite good - running an ADSL network isn't particuarly complex.

As for issues that I have described, I haven't described any, I have described situations of user utilisation rather than issues. Concurrent connections in general isn't an issue even for low end routers. A few years back I did a full product performance comparison of a low end Zyxel DSL routers (both ADSL and g.SHDSL) verses Cisco 828 and 827. This testing involves all speed, link saturation, concurrent traffic flows etc etc etc. Basically what ever test the SmartBits testers can do was done and more.

This was full lab test complete with concentrators and DSLAMs to emulate a leg of the ISPs network (who requested the tests) - basically the outcome of the tests was identical and at certain packet sizes the Zyxel outperformed the Cisco. None of the tests did Cisco box outperform Zyxel.

The upshot they moved from Cisco to Zyxel boxes and saved themselves a fortune. Just because a box is a faceless Chinese box doesn't mean it's crap! Also most DSL router use same chipsets. I used to use a noname USB dsl modem in the UK and could easily get 2Mbps throughput (on a 2mbps circuit) the only reason I changed from it was I wanted to use more PCs and didn't want use Windows for the network.

And in the case of the metro network company I mention above they were using mid level Cisco switches which I have personally tested to maintain a throughput of over 2Gbps without issue, on the gig models I have even overrun the circuits at 4:1 - i.e. 2Gbps link (etherchannel) with 8 Gbps in coming and they did a pretty good job of buffering it. In the core they use high end Cisco switch/routers so lets just say they didn't have any problems!

Anyway enough rambling and back to topic . .

[Firefoxx]

Two things:

Unlimited: As I said before, advertising is advertising. You can only fit so many words in any kind of slogan/advertisements. The "unlimited" word, used in so many DSL advertisements, arises from the fact that broadband used to be limited by online-time, as in you could only be connected so and so hours per month (or pay extra for each hour beyond that). Yes, it's not unlimited in that very heavy (as in, irresponsible) usage is frowned upon, and may result in termination. It's also not unlimited in that you couldn't use the line, for say, connecting directly to your company (as in leased line). It's also not unlimited in that it can't jump over buildings and cook your dinner for you. But that's what the fine print is for, the details. Look at the fine print of any agreement and you'll see that you're limited in your use of the line. Misleading? What about an all-you-can-eat buffet, which is even more common? It says all you can eat, but it's really "all you can eat in a single sitting, for a certain amount of time, you alone, you can't take anything with you, you should eat most of what you put on your plate, etc. etc. etc.". As long as you don't behave like an ass, it's "all-you-can-eat", and as long as you don't download like an idiot, it's "unlimited". Yes, they could be *very* clear in advertisements, but they'd end up needing commercials that are half an hour long, and even that wouldn't cover it all.

Keeping track of data transfer being impossible for Thailand: It's possible. Why? Because, broadband, when it was first introduced in Thailand, was all "limited", either by hours or by data transfer. Even now, some packages (very few) are still data transfer-limited. In the past, during the "limited" era, you could even check your data transfer through the web. So yes, it's possible, and I think it's still done, since there are reports (although very, very few) of people getting calls from Thai ISPs about their heavy usage.

[Prasert]

Firstly one of the assumptions isn't based on reality so isn't it a bit of a pointless example? As for how TOT operate the network - I'd expect to be honest it'd be quite good - running an ADSL network isn't particularly complex.

No it's not a pointless example. The goal of the example is outlining the required amount of bandwidth if unlimited would truly mean unlimited: contention ratio 1:1, perfect speeds, low latency etc. The international available bandwidth could not handle this, and that's what I tried to outline here.

Running an adsl network doesn't stop at the DSLAMs. There are many adsl users who experience intermittent problems. Quite a bit of those problems are caused by bad copper wiring; twisted connections with some pvc tape to insulate it works okay for a telephone signal, but it's bad for the adsl frequencies (the joints eventually get wet and corrode). I've seen so many adsl lines with only 1 or 2 dB SNR. The subscribers are lucky if they have a connection that works more than 30% of the day.

The telephone engineers have been running telephone lines for decades like this and they simply won't accept that they must pay more attention to running telephone lines when they're used for data traffic.

Running an adsl network also requires support that is able to troubleshoot. The TOT helpdesk (1100) can only ask two questions:

1. is DSL light on?

2. is internet light on?

When the answer to either question is no then they will call an engineer (well, that is what they say...) and they'll ask for your number but they never call back. Further than that, they have absolutely no clue at all about how adsl works.

So yes, running an adsl network is very very complex for Thai people!

As for issues that I have described, I haven't described any, I have described situations of user utilisation rather than issues. Concurrent connections in general isn't an issue even for low end routers. A few years back I did a full product performance comparison of a low end Zyxel DSL routers (both ADSL and g.SHDSL) verses Cisco 828 and 827. This testing involves all speed, link saturation, concurrent traffic flows etc etc etc. Basically what ever test the SmartBits testers can do was done and more.

...

Maybe 'described' was a poor choice? English ain't my native language.

Zyxel does indeed have good and reliable routers (we're running several of those on the network here) and are absolutely a lot cheaper than Cisco! And a Zyxel router will absolutely outperform the TOT router.