Internet access and telco usage patterns

Tue Jul 2 01:12:27 UTC 1996

There is an interesting column in PC Mag
http://www.pcmag.com/issues/1513/pcmg0017.htm
regarding "Will the Internet Crash" but Machrone understands the
technology better than to do a chicken little imitation. 

Anyway, he has an anecdote about what PC Mag's BBS did to telco usage
patterns with about 100 dialup lines in use nationally. I know that Bell
Canada in the toronto area of Canada and BC Tel in Vancouver have also run
into problems caused by Internet dialup usage patterns that lead BC-Tel to
drop selling Centrex to ISP's and Bell Canada to attempt putting ISP's
into a higher tariff category. I suppose other telcos are running into
similar capacity problems.

Anyway, since some of the core providers in North America are telcos
(Sprint, MCI) and since all the other ones work rather closely with the
telcos for obvious reasons, I have a question.

Has anybody looked at the practicality of installing modem pools in each
telco switch location to grab the dialup user's traffic at the IP level
and then route it to their ISP of choice for authentication and further
routing. In other words, an ISP wouldn't buy phone lines, modems and
terminal servers, they would buy IP access ports.

I have heard of something like this (I think) going on in Britain where 
Demon Internet services has Energis providing their dialin lines via
something called the Virtual POP in which Demon has no equipment located
outside their NOC and has the ability to switch capacity from location to
location as load patterns change. Of course, this is probably not working
at the IP level but simply dealing with routing of digitized switched
audio calls.

Michael Dillon                                   ISP & Internet Consulting
Memra Software Inc.                                 Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com                             E-mail: michael at memra.com