[Nanog] ATT VP: Internet to hit capacity by 2010

Sat Apr 19 19:44:08 UTC 2008

In my experience, ATT(SBC at that time) hit over its effective capacity
(over 50% average utilization, and therefore no redundancy) around 2001.

At least for clients I was working with, it was always evident that they
didn't have enough capacity in any node to carry the traffic if they had
a problem on any single upstream link. They also tended to manually
handle routing decisions as opposed to letting the IGP handle it.

Given the nature of the beast, I doubt that has changed much, and the
anecdotal evidence posted here, most recently related to ATT/Cogent
peering, bears that out.

So, maybe from ATT's perspective the Internet (meaning their backbone)
WILL be saturated by 2010. 

Since the Internet is a network of independent internets connected to
each other, I'd like to know how Cicconi knows what the level of
saturation of everyone else's backbone is, or their available dark
capacity. I would think those are trade secrets that are closely
guarded.

It seems what we have here is ATT trying to create public hue and cry,
so that the taxpayer will be compelled to pay for their required and
overdue network upgrades, instead of themselves; or in order to get
further regulatory relief in the name of investing in their
infrastructure, as was done in the late '90s. Given their, and other's,
track records with the subsidies and regulatory relief they were given
in the late '90s, which they used to bankrupt the CLECs, and then passed
the increased revenue onto shareholders, rather than investing in
infrastructure, I'd be disinclined to give them what they want.

The US lags the world in Broadband not because the FCC and PUCs
hamstring the ILECs, but because of the disincentive for for-profit
common stock companies with government granted monopolies to do much
more than the bare minimum capital investment to keep operating costs
low and competitors out of the market, while maximizing revenue from
existing sunk cost. Would be competitors, on the other hand, have to
make massive capital investments that require a long recovery period or
high short-term prices, and are easily bankrupted by predatory pricing
by the incumbents.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean at donelan.com] 
> Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:16 PM
> To: Scott Weeks
> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: [Nanog] ATT VP: Internet to hit capacity by 2010
> 
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Scott Weeks wrote:
> > Does anybody know what the basis for Mr. Cicconi's claims were (if 
> > they even had a basis at all)?
> 
> Have there been an second reporting sources, or does anyone 
> have a Youtube link of Mr. Cicconi's actual statement in 
> context?  So far there seems to only be a single reporter's 
> account, echoed in the bloggerdome.
> 
> 
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