Re: Bell vs. Internet Providers (fwd)

[hwb () upeksa sdsc edu (Hans-Werner Braun)]

>               Hi there folx,
>
> > > From the 'For What Its Worth' Department.
> >
> > - paul
> >
> >
> > BELL VS. INTERNET PROVIDERS
> > Bell Canada plants to increase line rate charges for Internet service
> > providers by as much as 400%, saying the higher charge is necessary because
> > those providers use lines for 55 to 60 minutes every hour compared with
> > voice usage on a Centrex line of about 10 minutes.  The service providers
> > say the move aims to eliminate competition for Bell when it introduces its
> > Worldlinx Internet access by the end of this year.  (Montreal Gazette 9 Nov
> > 95 D7)
>
>       The same outrages story is going on in Russia ... they're trying
>       to force ppl. with modems pay 2-5 times more for the telephone
>       service.
>       Scumbugs even designed devices to listen periodically to the
>       random lines in the TelCo COs , trying to get a  modem carrier.
>       And if they find one , they put some kind of filter on that
>       line which makes impossible to use the modem - till you
>       pay the dough
>
>       I think that it is the point in certain other countries
>       with state/one company monopoly in communications. 
>
>       Rashid

Now wait a second, guys, you are right that it is not nice in and of
itself, but it is nevertheless understandable. Different from the
Internet, the phone companies do extensive network analysis, and base
their optimization and capacity functions on the results (needless to
say, their (individual) systems are also a little bit bigger than those
(individual NSP) Internet toys, and analysis and capacity planning may
be a bit more important there).  This includes knowing what the profile
of typical phone calls is (frequency, duration, ...). In the US the
local calls are typically free, but with a modem you hog switches
potentially forever. I have used the same voice line with a modem,
clearly traversing phone company switches, for weeks at a time. It does
have an impact on capacity planning. I am not saying the phone
companies are right or wrong, just that we are clearly talking about
different workload profiles, which may not be coverable in their "free
local calls" budget. No, I would still not like it either if they would
charge me more for modem access than for voice.

May be similar to the introduction of multimedia into the Internet.
You guys treat all the same, but sooner or later you will be caught by
that with your pants down. E.g., in a heavy traffic aggregation
environment we see, say, 80,000 simulteneous transactions, perhaps half
of them in number of transactions and volume being web traffic. So, may
be 50% of 80,000 causing 50% of the traffic (numbers not quite
accurate, just to make a point). Now you see, say, 2% of your traffic
caused by CU-SeeMe. No problem, right? But that up'n'coming multimedia
stuff was may be caused by only 16 transactions. Would not you better
worry, just like the phone companies about modems? How long can that be
sustained, if routine packet losses of 10% on the underprovisioned and
uncontrolled infrastructure are already declared as perfectly
acceptable?