[ILUG] Free software for .pando files?

[Thomas Bridge]

On 04/09/07, paul at clubi.ie <paul at clubi.ie> wrote:

> The premise here, at least in the post I was replying to, is that P2P
> is putting pressure on the traditional contention trick (of having
> some customers subsidise the greater usage of others), and that
> eventually something is going to have to change (e.g. customers
> paying more, some or all).

Typically the issue with high bandwidth consumers and cost in a
broadband environment is the impact on the circuits interconnecting
the Telco and possibly contention issues within the Telco's own
network.

The cost of transit is not the most significant cost.     And given
current transit prices, it is almost certainly the case that systems
to distinguish different traffic types would cost more than could be
saved by the variable billing metric (a decent, reliable system would
probably cost upwards of 100k simply to build).

> > Um - they are offering "native" IP network access.

> Uh, no they are not. You've not read my post about topology. Do that,
> then come back.

Yes I have - its irrelevant.

You've had a bee in your bonnet for some years about the fact that in
some situations Eircom took your PPP frame and wrapped it up in an IP
header to give to your ISP, and in other situations took the IP header
and simply stuck it in an ATM header.    It doesn't matter - you're
still running a direct PPP session between your DSL router and your
ISPs broadband aggregator.

Unless you're suggesting that all ISPs should run IP to the DSLAM -
but that's horrendously cost prohibitive compared to the wholesale
solutions offered by the Telcos.

If you're going to start blathering on about "native" IP access, you
need to define what you mean by it.   You also need to acknowledge
that regardless of how it's done, there's a whole bunch of layer 2
protocols underlying that connection.

[snip description of the physical topology]

The whole point of an IP layer is to abstract the physical topology.
It's the entire point of having a layered networking model.

Within that, a number of compromises are typically made based on cost.
   You will note that even Eircom don't run IP natively in each
telephone exchange - they backhaul to the regional BAS.   This is a
decision made on the grounds of cost - it's much cheaper to put a
small number of huge boxes in a few key exchanges and backhaul the
rest of the connections over their ATM network than to deploy smaller
boxes into each of the exchanges.     You also have better control
over traffic allocation and bandwidth allocation on a per service
basis that way.

> 1. Course, if you fix the manageability of IP so you can try cut out
> these layers of crap, then the ISPs would sort of cease to have much
> reason to exist. So everyone pretty much is happy to keep the layers
> of crap and pretend there are /good/ technical reasons for them..

The layers of "crap" are there for a good reason - to create
competition, and to allow the ISPs and the Telcos to offer different
services to different customers.   The idea that a telco might want to
offer a higher quality of service to a banks share trading platform
than it does to the home user downloading a Linux ISO over Bit Torrent
is the driver behind a huge amount of the development in IP over the
last 40 years.

If you're going to descibe something as crap just because it's
designed to address Layer 8 issues fair enough - I just find it ironic
coming from a BGP developer.

Thomas

-- 
Thomas Bridge
CCIE  #14108