Thanks for the insight Scott. I appreciate the experience and point of
view you're adding to this discussion (not just the responses to me).
While I might be playing the devil's advocate here a bit, I think one
could argue each of the points you've made below.
I do feel that general usage patterns are a reflection of the
technologies that have traditionally been available to consumers. New
uses and applications would be available to overcome hurdles if the
technologies had developed to be symmetrical. I'm not saying that the
asymmetrical choice was a bad one, but it was not without consequences.
If residential ISPs sell asymmetric connections for decades, how can the
ISP expect that application developers would not take this into account
when developing applications? I don't think my application would be very
successful if it required X Mbps and half of my market did not meet this
requirement. Of course content/service providers are going to tailor
their services based around their market.
--Blake
Scott Helms wrote the following on 5/16/2014 12:06 PM:
Blake,
I might agree with your premise if weren't for a couple of items.
1) Very few consumers are walking around with a HD or 4K camera today.
2) Most consumers who want to share video wouldn't know how to host
it themselves, which isn't an insurmountable issue but is a big
barrier to entry especially given the number of NAT'ed connections. I
think this is much more of a problem than available bandwidth.
3) Most consumers who want to share videos seem to be satisfied with
sharing via one of the cloud services whether that be YouTube (which
was created originally for that use), Vimeo, or one of the other
legions of services like DropBox.
4) Finally, upstream bandwidth has increased on many/most operators.
I just ran the FCC's speedtest (mLab not Ookla) and got 22 mbps on my
residential cable internet service. I subscribe to one of the major
MSOs for a normal residential package.
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
--------------------------------
http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
--------------------------------
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Blake Hudson <bl...@ispn.net
<mailto:bl...@ispn.net>> wrote:
Certainly video is one of the most bandwidth intensive
applications. I don't deny that a < 1 Mbps video call is both less
common and consumes less bandwidth than an 8Mbps HD stream.
However, if Americans had access to symmetric connections capable
of reliably making HD video calls (they don't, in my experience),
we might be seeing video calls as a common occurrence and not a
novelty. I think the state of usage is a reflection on the
technology available.
If the capability was available at an affordable price to
residential consumers, we might see those consumers stream movies
or send videos from their home or mobile devices via their
internet connection directly to the recipient rather than through
a centralized source like Disney, NetFlix, Youtube, etc. Video
sharing sites (like youtube, vimeo, etc) primary reason for
existence is due to the inability of the site's users to
distribute content themselves. One of the hurdles to overcome in
video sharing is the lack of availability in affordable internet
connectivity that is capable of sending video at reasonable
(greater than real time) speeds.
--Blake
Scott Helms wrote the following on 5/16/2014 11:02 AM:
Blake,
None of those applications come close to causing symmetrical
traffic patterns and for many/most networks the upstream
connectivity has greatly improved. Anything related to voice
is no more than 80 kbps per line, even if the SIP traffic
isn't trunked (less if it is because the signaling data is
shared). Document sharing is not being impinged, on my
residential account right now I've uploaded about 30 documents
this morning including large PDFs and Power Point presentations.
Off site back up is one use that could drive traffic, but I
don't believe that the limiting factor is bandwidth. We
looked at getting into that business and from what we saw the
limiting factor was that most residential and SOHO accounts
didn't want to pay enough to cover your storage & management
costs. In our analysis the impact of bandwidth on the
consumer side adoption was basically zero. There is no
expectation that back ups run instantly. Having said all of
that, even if hosted back up became wildly popular would not
change the balance of power because OTT video is both larger,
especially for HD streams, and used much more frequently.
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000 <tel:%28678%29%20507-5000>
--------------------------------
http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
--------------------------------
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 11:53 AM, Blake Hudson <bl...@ispn.net
<mailto:bl...@ispn.net> <mailto:bl...@ispn.net
<mailto:bl...@ispn.net>>> wrote:
Jay Ashworth wrote the following on 5/16/2014 10:35 AM:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Tinka" <mark.ti...@seacom.mu
<mailto:mark.ti...@seacom.mu>
<mailto:mark.ti...@seacom.mu
<mailto:mark.ti...@seacom.mu>>>
While that is true a lot of the time (especially
for eyeball
networks), it is less so now due to social media.
Social
media forces the use of symmetric bandwidth (like
FTTH),
putting even more demand on the network,
Oh yes; clearly, Twitter will be the end of L3.
:-)
Could you expand a bit, Mark on "Social media forces
the use
of symmetric
bandwidth"? Which social media platform is it that
you think
has a)
symmetrical flows that b) are big enough to figure into
transit symmetry?
Cheers,
-- jra
Applications like Skype and Facetime (especially
conference calls)
would be one example where an application benefits from
symmetric
(or asymmetric in favor of higher upload speed) connectivity.
Cloud office applications like storage of documents,
email, and
IVR telephony also benefit from symmetrical connectivity.
Off-site
backup software is another great example. Most residential
connections are ill suited for this. I believe these
applications
(and derivatives) would be more popular today if the
connectivity
was available.
--Blake
