Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3)

Thu May 15 18:01:03 UTC 2014

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:48 PM, Scott Helms <khelms at zcorum.com> wrote:
> Its not really that complex, if you think about it having 10000s of
> 'movieco' with the same priority is the status quo.  At the end of the day
> the QoS mechanics in DOCSIS are pretty straightforward and rely on service
> flows, while service flows can have equal priority I doubt most operators
> will sell more than a few (perhaps just one) top priority in a given a
> category.
>

yes, there will only ever be 5 computers. or you couldn't possibly
need more than 640kb of ram..... or more than 4billion 'ip addresses'.

I don't think you have to get to more than 10 or 20 of the stated
examples before things get dicey ... Once a set of customers
experience (and can measure) the effect, they'll back their complaints
up to 'moviecompany' and some set of contract penalties will kick in,
I suspect.

Sure, if there is only one it's not a problem, but there are already
not just one...

>
> Scott Helms
> Vice President of Technology
> ZCorum
> (678) 507-5000
> --------------------------------
> http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
> --------------------------------
>
>
> On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Christopher Morrow
> <morrowc.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:06 PM, Ryan Brooks <ryan at hack.net> wrote:
>> > On 5/15/14, 11:58 AM, Joe Greco wrote:
>> >>
>> >> 2) Netflix purchases 5Mbps "fast lane"
>> >>
>> >
>> > I appreciate Joe's use of quotation marks here.    A lot of the dialog
>> > has
>> > included this 'fast lane' terminology, yet all of us know there's no
>> > 'fast
>> > lane' being constructed, rather just varying degrees of _slow_ applied
>> > to
>> > existing traffic.
>> >
>>
>> please correct me if I'm wrong, but 'fast lane' really is (in this
>> example):
>>   'cableco' port from 'moviecompany' has 'qos' marking configuration
>> to set all 'moviecompany' traffic (from this port!) to some priority
>> level.
>>
>>   customer-port to 'cableco' has 'qos' handling/queuing that will
>> ensure '5mbps' of 'moviecompany' is always going to get down the link
>> to the customer, regardless of the other traffic the customer is
>> requesting.
>>
>> right? (presume that in the rest of the 'cableco' network is
>> protecting 'moviecompany' traffic as well, of course)
>>
>> So, when there are 1 'moviecompany' things to prioritize and deliver
>> that's cool... but what about when there are 10? 100? 1000? doesn't
>> the queuing get complicated? what if the 'cableco' customer with
>> 10mbps link has 3 people in the location all streaming from 3
>> different 'moviecompany' organizations which have paid for 'fastlane'
>> services?
>>
>> 3 x 5 == 15 ... not 10. How will 'cableco' manage this when their
>> 100gbps inter-metro links are seeing +100gbps if 'fastlane' traffic
>> and 'fastlane' traffic can't make it to the local metro from the
>> remote one?
>>
>> This all seems much, much more complicated and expensive than just
>> building out networking, which they will have to do in the end anyway,
>> right? Only with 'fastlanes' there's extra capacity management and
>> configuration and testing and ... all on top of: "Gosh, does the new
>> umnptyfart card from routerco actually work in old routerco routers?"
>>
>> This looks, to me, like nuttiness... like mutually assured destruction
>> that the cableco folk are driving both parties into intentionally.
>>
>> -chris
>>
>> BTW: I didn't use a particular 'cable company' name for 'cableco', nor
>> did I use a particular streaming media company for 'moviecompany'...
>> Also, 'cableco' is short-hand for
>> 'lastmile-consumer-provider-network'. Less typing was better, for me,
>> I thought.
>
>