Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)

Wed May 30 17:47:08 UTC 2018

Scott hit the nail on the head.
Hotel/café/mall wifi is generally horrible for the same reason urban 4g is horrible.
The backhaul and load on the available spectrum is usually excessive.
Carrier wifi is usually (but not always) equipped with decent backhaul.
However carrier wifi in stadiums usually suffers from problems with spectrum saturation.
Any wifi or 4G will eventually run out of available bandwidth on assigned spectrum.
Wifi has the advantage of being able to use smaller range restricted access points but
the stadium example shows why even that is limited when you have 40K people trying
to access the internet.

Mack

From: K. Scott Helms [mailto:kscott.helms at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2018 11:10 AM
To: mark.tinka at seacom.mu
Cc: McBride, Mack <C-Mack.McBride at charter.com>; ben at 6by7.net; NANOG list <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)

Mark,

A couple of things, first that kind of utilization isn't feasible once penetration rates in dense areas reach certain levels.  There's a reason that NTT Docomo moved more than 70% of their data traffic to the 3.5 GHz band and that reason is that there's not (nor will there be) enough wireless spectrum to meet the needs of everyone with licensed space.  (That same use case is why all the big North American providers are looking at CBRS.) Further, 4G/5G is going to have trouble scaling to the kinds of network demands going forward, again especially in dense areas.  While it's certainly possible today to stream unicast video over LTE and will (for a while) even more feasible over 5G the physics simply aren't with the wireless world.

I'd say that your example of poor DSL performance isn't unique, it happens in some spots in the US, but in general wired performance has much higher individual and even higher aggregate capacities when correctly deployed.  I doubt your hotel example is a poor deployment though, it's more likely that the hotel owners are under paying for both the WAN connection and the WiFi infrastructure.

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 1:01 PM Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu<mailto:mark.tinka at seacom.mu>> wrote:

On 30/May/18 17:11, McBride, Mack wrote:

> In high density urban areas last mile infrastructure (mostly copper) is considerably better than 4G.
> Localized carrier powered wifi is good as well but it is not and should not be confused with 4G.

I think it depends on what it is you're trying to do. If your
application is linear IPTV streaming into your home, that probably isn't
a great idea for any kind of non-wired media. On the other hand, in
South Africa, where I live, it is routine to deliver video streaming
services (Netflix, Youtube, ShowMax, e.t.c.) to one's home over 4G/LTE,
to the extent that the service providers have special data plans that
support these kinds of use-cases.

In South Africa, I generally find wi-fi in the hotels to be pretty bad,
as the majority of them tend to be on ADSL backhaul, which averages
between 1Mbps - 4Mbps to support several dozen or more rooms. A few
hotels have migrated to fibre, but between guessing what last mile
they're on and how they operate the wi-fi network, I ALWAYS prefer to
tether my iPhone to my laptop and work when I'm on the road within the
country. In all major cities, my 3G/4G performs a lot more reliably,
better and predictably than most cafe, hotel or mall wi-fi. I don't even
bother when hotels offer their wi-fi vouchers upon check-in.

With my 4G services (Vodacom and MTN), I can average between 30Mbps -
55Mbps when tethering, and that's plenty enough for me. I have a decent
monthly data plan that I don't have to worry about running out. Of
course, performance isn't as great if you're in a remote part of the
country, but that's not unique to South Africa.

Mark.
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