Traffic ratio of an ISP

Wed Jun 19 21:30:45 UTC 2019

Hi Prasun,

It was updated because ‘Balanced’ wasn’t accurate, we didn’t notice that’s what it said until you pointed it out, because it really don’t matter in the whole scheme of things. In regards to:

>> So, my question was more like to understand when an ISP decides to claim itself as any of these (Heavy Outbound/ Inbound or Balanced)? From an ISP’s own point of view, at what point, it says, my outbound:inbound is something, so I’m Heavy Outbound.

As a residential ISP, we are an eyeball network, we connect to the people using the content on the internet (of course with commercial customers also who host content, but mainly residential). Because of the nature of the users on our network, we are considered Heavy Inbound since most traffic will be going from content providers to users on our network. It’s really as simple as that, we do no calculation to figure out our traffic ratio and update according to some arbitrary ratio number, because none of that matters. That field in PeeringDB is used as additional information for someone who may look at the ASN and try to determine what to expect in general if connecting to them.

TL;DR - There are no hard numbers to give you, it just depends how someone feels that day of the week when setting it.

Hope this helps.

From: Prasun Dey [mailto:prasun at nevada.unr.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2019 4:08 PM
To: Knopps, Brian; Peering
Cc: Josh Luthman; nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Traffic ratio of an ISP

Seems you just have updated today. Thanks for letting us know.
Last time, I checked was yesterday and based on that I mentioned your traffic ratio being ‘Balanced’.

Regards,
Prasun Kanti Dey
Ph.D. Candidate,
Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Central Florida
web: https://prasunkantidey.github.io/portfolio/

On Jun 19, 2019, at 4:57 PM, Knopps, Brian <Brian.Knopps at charter.com<mailto:Brian.Knopps at charter.com>> wrote:

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From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Josh Luthman
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2019 3:24 PM
To: Prasun Dey
Cc: nanog at nanog.org<mailto:nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Traffic ratio of an ISP

>my question was more like to understand when an ISP decides to claim itself as any of these (Heavy Outbound/ Inbound or Balanced)

Maybe I'm missing something but it's as simple as looking at the interface graphs.  We see a whole lot of green for inbound and a little little blue line for outbound.  We are an ISP with residential and commercial customers.

Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373

On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 4:20 PM Prasun Dey <prasun at nevada.unr.edu<mailto:prasun at nevada.unr.edu>> wrote:
Hi Martijn and Josh,
Thank you for your detailed explanation. Let me explain my requirement so that you may help me better.
According to PeeringDB, Charter (Access), Sprint (Transit), Amazon (Content) all three of them are ‘Balanced’. While, Cable One, an Access ISP says it is Heavy Inbound, while Akamai, Netflix (Content) are Heavy Outbound. On the other hand, Cox, another access ISP, it says that it is Mostly Inbound.
So, my question was more like to understand when an ISP decides to claim itself as any of these (Heavy Outbound/ Inbound or Balanced)? From an ISP’s own point of view, at what point, it says, my outbound:inbound is something, so I’m Heavy Outbound.
Please ignore my lack of knowledge in this area. I’m sorry I should’ve done a better job in formulating my question earlier.
Thank you.

-
Prasun

Regards,
Prasun Kanti Dey
Ph.D. Candidate,
Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Central Florida
web: https://prasunkantidey.github.io/portfolio/

On Jun 19, 2019, at 2:13 PM, i3D.net<http://i3d.net/> - Martijn Schmidt <martijnschmidt at i3d.net<mailto:martijnschmidt at i3d.net>> wrote:

It kinda depends on the application that's being used. For example, videogaming has a ratio somewhere around 1:2.5 since you're only transmitting metadata about the players environment across the wire. The actual video is typically rendered at the end user's side. So it's not very bandwidth heavy.

Compare that with a videostream (watching a movie or TV series) and you're pumping the rendered video across the wire, so there's a very different ratio. Your return path traffic would pretty much consist of control stuff only (like pushing the pause button).

Some networks are dedicated to serving one type of content, whereas others might have a blend of different kinds of content. Same story for an access network geared to business users which want to use emails and such, vs residential end users looking for the evening's entertainment.

Best regards,
Martijn
On 19 June 2019 19:54:45 CEST, Josh Luthman <josh at imaginenetworksllc.com<mailto:josh at imaginenetworksllc.com>> wrote:
If you're asking an ISP, consumers will always be inbound.  It's the end user.  The outbound would be where the information is coming from, like data centers.

I'm not sure you're going to get any better answer without a more specific question.

Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373

On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 12:50 PM Prasun Dey <prasun at nevada.unr.edu<mailto:prasun at nevada.unr.edu>> wrote:
Hello,
Good morning.
I’m a Ph.D. candidate from University of Central Florida. I have a query, I hope you can help me with it or at least point me to the right direction.
I’ve seen from PeeringDB that every ISP reveals its traffic ratio as Heavy/ Mostly Inbound or Balanced or Heavy/ Mostly Outbound.
I’m wondering if there is any specific ratio numbers for them. In Norton’s Internet Peering Playbook or some other literary work, they mention the outbound:inbound traffic ratio as 1:1.2 to up to 1:3 for Balanced. But, I couldn’t find the other values.
I’d really appreciate your help if you can please mention what Outbound:Inbound ratios that network admins use frequently to represent their traffic ratios for
1. Heavy Inbound:
2. Mostly Inbound:
3. Mostly Outbound:
4. Heavy Outbound:

Thank you.
-
Prasun
--
Sincerely,
Prasun Kanti Dey,
Ph.D. candidate,
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Central Florida.

--
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