10 Mbit/s problem in your network

Constantine A. Murenin mureninc at gmail.com
Mon Feb 11 02:57:35 UTC 2013


On 10 February 2013 11:02, joel jaeggli <joelja at bogus.com> wrote:
> On 2/9/13 7:55 PM, Constantine A. Murenin wrote:
>>
>> Dear NANOG@,
>>
>> In light of the recent discussion titled, "The 100 Gbit/s problem in
>> your network", I'd like to point out that smaller operators and
>> end-sites are currently very busy having and ignoring the 10 Mbit/s
>> problem in their networks.
>>
>> Hotels in major metro areas, for example.  Some have great
>> connectivity (e.g. through high-capacity microwave links), and always
>> have a latency of between 5ms and 15ms to the nearest internet
>> exchange, and YouTube and Netflix just work, always, and nearly
>> flawlessly, and in full HD.
>>
>> Others think that load-balancing 150+ rooms with Fast Ethernet and
>> WiFi in every room, plus a couple of conference/meeting rooms (e.g.
>> potentially more than a single /24 worth of all sorts of devices) on a
>> couple of independent T1 and ADSL links is an acceptable practice.
>> Yes, a T1 and an ADSL, with some kind of Layer 3 / 4 balancing!  This
>> is at a time when it would not be uncommon to travel with an Apple TV
>> or a Roku.  And then not only even YouTube and cbs.com don't work, but
>> an average latency of above 500ms is not unusual in the evenings, and
>> ssh is practically unusable.  (Or sometimes they do the balancing
>> wrong, and the ssh connections simply break every minute due to the
>> broken balancer.)
>>
>> And this happens even with boutique hotels like the Joie de Vivre
>> brand in the Silicon Valley (Wild Palms on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale
>> has an absolutely horrible bandwidth even when it's half empty), or
>> with brand-new properties like Hyatt Place in the hometown of a rather
>> famous ILEC that has the whole town glassed up with fiber-optics (the
>> place is less than 2 years old, and Google Maps still shows it as
>> being constructed, yet independent T1 and ADSL links from two distinct
>> ILECs is the only connectivity they have!).
>
> Network is rather far outside  the core competency of most hotel manangement
> corporations and REITS assuming they have any at all.
>
> There's fairly abundant reasons reasons why they or their contractors might
> not be very good at it or be able to deliver a decent service at the
> pricepoint they have budgeted.
>
> When you consider  the alternative is bringing your own (in the form of
> HSDPA/LTE)  and that might in many cases be an order of magnitude faster,
> it's hard to imagine how most of them would address that in a fashion that
> generates in cost recovery  on the service or pricing power on rooms.

Well, let's do a thought experiment on cost comparison to put things
into perspective.

* How much do they pay for the actual pipe?
* How much do they pay for the outsourced maintenance and the
technical support contract?  (Tech support is outsourced to New York.)
* How much do they pay to an average in-house employee?
* How much do they pay to receive and deliver the newspapers in the
mornings to at least half the rooms?  (Potentially more than 2000
copies a month at just half the rooms.)

And:

* How much do they charge per night per room?  Then times 151, then
times 31?  Something along the lines of 200'000$/mo to 600'000$/mo?

Unless my guesstimates are wrong, even 100$/mo for the actual pipe is
completely and utterly nothing compared to all the other expenses (and
the revenue), and I think their 10Mbps down / 1Mbps up fibre-optic (or
ADSL?) connection from SureWest Business is even cheaper than that
(although their AT&T T1 is probably not, but then it's still rather
unclear why they even need to load-balance 151 rooms over a T1 in a
brand-new building in a major metro area in California in 2013
anyways).

Even at 500$/mo for the pipe it would still be SEVERAL TIMES cheaper
than delivering the daily newspaper to every guest every morning
alone.

Even with just a couple of speed-related tech-support calls per month,
it might still be cheaper to upgrade to a better pipe than to have the
guests needing to call the support and being inconvenienced with even
a very slight likelihood of not returning.

Besides, why would leisure and business travellers need a
complementary newspaper in the morning, but would be OK with 200ms
average latency and 300ms std-dev / jitter, and not being able to
watch YouTube, video conference or work remotely comfortably, is
something that I'm yet to comprehend.

Yet the local management of the hotel thinks that there's no problem.
"Internet works."  "It's been fixed."  "We've fixed your internet, sir
-- the system has been rebooted; please check again in a few minutes."
 "Yes, sir, some customers occasionally do complain that the video
streaming doesn't work; but most people just check their email, and it
works."  "Sir, I personally do have a 30Mbps connection at home, but
here at our hotel 10Mbps (+ 1.5Mbps) is shared between 151 suites;
what's your problem again, sir?"

I think it is honestly laughable that they must be spending about
3$/day (the price of coffee at some Starbucks locations) for their
actual internet pipe for the whole hotel.  Also, do people really
think that a 10/1 connection is still a 10/1 "broadband" even when
shared with hundreds of folks?

Best regards,
Constantine.

>
>> How should end-users deal with such broadband incompetence; why do
>> local carriers allow businesses to abuse their connections and their
>> own customers in such ways; why do the sub-contracted internet support
>> companies design and support such broken-by-design setups?
>>
>> When you are staying at a 3* hotel, should you have no expectations
>> that you'll be getting at least a 3Mbps pipe and at least an under
>> 100ms average latency, and won't be getting a balancer that would be
>> breaking up your ssh sessions?
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Constantine.




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