iOS 7 update traffic

Thu Sep 19 20:18:32 UTC 2013

Absolutely correct. Large file updates etc are not an issue for wide band
communications networks. If you have 10mbps to your house with a 30ms
delay to your first hop.. You're sitting pretty.

If you have a 1mbps/512kbps pipe with a built in 750ms latency, things get
a little more complicated. Add in the fact that our bandwidth is insanely
expensive (link budgets put 1mbps are at about 1MHz *1bits/hz* which costs
roughly $3800 a month in sky access ONLY). We have some challenges, and we
try (sometimes actually succeed) to get data from point A to point B in an
acceptable time frame. The issue is.. When a user begins to EXCEED their
general usage things in contention land get pretty hairy. If my 500 remote
locations are running on 10MHz worth of capacity (about 10mbps down, 2mbps
up) at a 10:1 or 20:1 oversub things get tight sometimes. Imagine an
entire user base trying to update their electronic devices on something
that feels like 56k.

All things on the internet are not created equal, and I can accept that. I
can accept that I/we have challenges, but I would figure that those of you
who had easier lives would want to share that ease with us who are doing
things a little differently. I'm not saying poor us, we need love.. I'm
just saying.. I would really appreciate if those of you in the industry
who are responsible for these types of scenarios could think about the
people who are paying a lot of money, for a very little amount of
bandwidth. We don't tier our service by usage cap, but if
Apple/Microsoft/whoever increases their update rate we may have to end up
looking at something like that.

Big files, over a little pipe, with little margin for improvement, is
hard. It wouldn't be *THAT* hard to help out those who are trying to make
communications available to a much larger customer base than a traditional
ISP. 

Group Hug.

//warren

On 9/19/13 1:08 PM, "Fred Reimer" <freimer at freimer.org> wrote:

>I certainly don't want to put words in his mouth, but I thin Warren's
>problem is that he can't upgrade his pipes.  Physics limits the bandwidth
>available, as I think he is a satellite provider.  My argument is that if
>I'm a satellite user I should be well aware, particularly because this is
>not a new phenomenon, that there are times when my bandwidth will suck.
>It is what it is.
>
>
>On 9/19/13 3:06 PM, "Ryan Harden" <hardenrm at uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>>To be honest, I don't see this as a problem at all. Use it as an excuse
>>to upgrade your pipes, talk Akamai or CDN of choice into putting a cache
>>on your network, or implement your own caching solution. As operators of
>>the Internet we should be looking for ways to enable things like this,
>>not be up in arms at Apple for releasing an update to their phone OS or
>>making it available in a way that's inconvenient to our oversubscription
>>policies.
>>
>>As a side note, how are some of you not aware of this? This has happened
>>with every single Apple OS update since the iPhone was released in 2007.
>>This isn't a new phenomenon. I realize some of you are too cool for
>>Apple, but paying attention to traffic trends and keeping abreast of how
>>new software releases might affect your utilization is part of properly
>>running a network.
>>
>>/Ryan
>>
>>Ryan Harden
>>Senior Network Engineer
>>University of Chicago - AS160
>>P: 773-834-5441
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>On Sep 19, 2013, at 1:22 PM, Warren Bailey
>><wbailey at satelliteintelligencegroup.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I own a galaxy note 2..tmo ran an update that pushed to unique IMEI's
>>>sequentially. That way, you do not..
>>> 
>>> 1. Murder your last mike packet network, which is your bandwidth
>>>bottleneck.
>>> 
>>> 2. Murder your ggsn/whateverpacketnodeyouwant closer to the core.
>>> 
>>> 3. Anger your paying customers who would like to use packet data
>>>successfully on an ios download day.
>>> 
>>> These people (Apple) represent themselves as smart guys, but their
>>>actions reflect otherwise. I bet this would be a larger deal to Nanog
>>>people if your Internet stopped working as the result of 100% Linux
>>>adoption. That is very close to what this is.. Tens of millions of
>>>people trying to update their 13 ios devices at the same time. Who owns
>>>a single ios device? A household could do 5-10gb worth of updates in a
>>>single day..
>>> 
>>> I personally do not own an ios device, and I see close to 3 gigs worth
>>>of update traffic at my house. These things are everywhere, and this
>>>problem will not stop.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Sent from my Mobile Device.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -------- Original message --------
>>> From: Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se>
>>> Date: 09/19/2013 11:16 AM (GMT-08:00)
>>> To: Warren Bailey <wbailey at satelliteintelligencegroup.com>
>>> Cc: Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster at mykolab.com>,NANOG <nanog at nanog.org>
>>> Subject: Re: iOS 7 update traffic
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, 19 Sep 2013, Warren Bailey wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Why does apple feel it is okay to send every mobile device an update
>>>>on a single day?
>>> 
>>> They don't, these are users who actively goes into the software upgrade
>>> menu and pressing "upgrade".
>>> 
>>> I believe the nagging won't start for quite some time.
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se
>>
>