Backdoor Santa wrote:
Ever wonder what Comcast's connections to the Internet look like? In the
tradition of WikiLeaks, someone stumbled upon these graphs of their TATA links.
For reference, TATA is the only other IP transit provider to Comcast after
Level (3). Comcast is a customer of TATA and pays them to provide them with
access to the Internet.
1 day graphs:
Image #1: http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/78/ntoday.gif
Another thing to notice is the ratio of inbound versus outbound. Since Comcast is
primarily a broadband access network provider, they're going to have millions of
eyeballs (users) downloading content. Comcast claims that a good network maintains
a 1:1 with them, but that's simply not possible unless you had Comcast and another
broadband access network talking to each other. In the attached graphs you can see
the ratio is more along the lines of 5:1, which Comcast was complaining about with
Level (3). The reality is that the ratio argument is bogus. Broadband access
networks are naturally pull-heavy and it's being used as an excuse to call foul of
Level (3) and other content heavy networks. But this shoulnd't surprise anyone, the
ratio argument has been used for over a decade by many of the large telephone
companies as an excuse to deny peering requests. Guess where most of Comcasts
senior network executive people came from? Sprint and AT&T. Welcome to the new
monopoly of th
e 21st century.
If you think the above graph is just a bad day or maybe a one off? Let us look
at a 30 day graph...
Image #3: http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8917/ntomonth.gif
This tells me two things:
1 - Don't use comcast as your ISP. Personally I prefer to use a local
ISP, maybe even "ma and pa store" style, if available.
2 - If for some reason you just can't live without comcast, then plan
ahead do all your leeching between 7 AM and 5 PM. Then watch your
previously saved videos at your leisure without interruptions in the
evening. And plan on finding a better ISP :-)
--
http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
