Re: [EFM] OAM developing Geoff's observation.
Fletcher,
I do not want you to take this the wrong way.
You are prime example of the skew that has been prevalent in the commentary
about the services market. As an IP services provider, you have a certain
set of requirements. At present, it is very likely that you deploy your
service infrastructure over some other service providers' inter-machine
trunks, or you have your own high speed long haul infrastructure. Using
the OSI model of protocol peering, L3 IP services only need IP based
management to be supportable. The irony is that the most common management
language used by the L1 inter-machine trunk long haul infrastructure is not
IP based, it is TL1. As far as I know, there are no MIBs defined for TL1
by the IETF. There are a lot more TL1 managed systems in the world than
there are systems that use IP based management.
There are other services than IP that need to be supported by EFM. I am
not suggesting using TL1. I simply trying to get everyone to realize that
the overall data communications service provider world is bigger than just
the IP services providers. What about all the banks in the world that
still use SNA 3270 directly over Ethernet, in spite of the inroads that IP
is making in the rest of the enterprise network environment.
Thank you,
Roy Bynum
At 04:38 PM 9/17/01 -0400, Fletcher E Kittredge wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Sep 2001 13:55:18 -0500 Roy Bynum wrote:
> > There are a lot of ISP based SPs that are creating a lot of noise. Is it
> > because they are falling prey to the ".com" syndrome? Could it be that
> > they do not have the ability to deliver a high margin service and do not
> > want others to realize that? What about the rest of the
> industry? What is
> > the reality of the rest of the industry? What are service requirements
> for
> > business versus those for residential?
>
>Roy;
>
> I think I understand (and share) your frustration with the
>industry. However, I think it is dangerous to make assumptions on why
>businesses fail, or on the industry as a whole, by concentrating on a
>few well publicized cases. It is also dangerous to make assumptions
>about how competitive a particular product is based on the health of
>the vendor as a whole. HP can sell great printers but if the rest of
>their product line is in the crapper, they are out of business. From
>my perspective, the reason these ISP based SP's have gone out of
>business has nothing to do with IP, but rather that they were lousy
>businesspeople. Also, I couldn't help but notice they weren't very
>good IP engineers... Lots of inexperienced folk jumped into the
>market...
>
> So, companies like ours have been successful in our market
>niche. We make money selling high speed IP services. I don't think
>we are shy about explaining what we do and how we do it. In fact, I
>worry sometimes that we say too much... I feel both GWI and Oregon
>Trails have given back to the community by publicizing the reasons for
>our success, and giving others a chance to copy and potentially
>compete with us. Traditionally, sharing knowledge this is the
>Internet way.
>
> You are most correct that business requirements may differ
>from residential. I would not want to claim otherwise.
>
> > Think about this simple fact. The vast majority of small to medium size
> > businesses that have multiple sites on an enterprise network, use several
> > "Private Line" or "Virtual Private Line" links to make up their enterprise
> > networks. Most of them however only have one Internet type link. If
> > people simple think thing through and realize how their own enterprise
> > networks are deployed, they would realize what the real priority for EFM
> > supporting business deployment should be. In this environment slightly
> > higher costs can be justified to obtain better efficiency.
>
>I respectfully disagree on this point. We don't build our networks
>this way. I am not asking you to agree with me. I am asking you to
>treat my perspective with the same respect I treat yours. What I
>would like to see is an EFM which would allow you to build QoS into
>your network, and us not to use your QoS mechanisms. Then we can let
>the market decide the argument, not a vote of a standards commitee.
>
>It may be that there is no way to build QoS without inserting it into
>EFM. However, before adding complicated QoS mechanisms I would like
>to see significant proof that it is necessary and at least two working
>prototypes of the mechanism; prototypes which can be easily
>reproduced.
>
>For an IP connection, QoS on one part of a TCP/IP link does not add
>much value. QoS must be end-to-end to be effective.
>
> > For deployment to residential services, there are other issues. Only the
> > voice service is symmetrical.
>
>One data point to back up your conclusion, over the last five years,
>for our high speed residential IP services we see a fairly steady 10:1
>incoming to outgoing.
>
>However, a lesson I have been taught again and again over the last 15
>years is that you can't predict the traffic patterns of the customer.
>We got into the ISP business before the growth of the web and frankly
>I thought the web was an insignificant toy. Our world changed when
>the web became widespread. None of us know what the next killer app
>will be. I don't feel comfortable predicting future values based on
>past performance.
>
>Fortunately, both IP and Ethernet handle changes in traffic patterns
>well.
>
> > The Internet service to residential
> > customers is normally very asymmetrical. The video/broadcast services are
> > simplex. This will make for a very different infrastructure and cost
> model
> > than business services. Other than for the voice, PPPoE may work very
> > well.
>
>Peer-to-peer traffic such as gaming and teenage-girl-to-teenage-girl
>applications are our biggest driver of high speed, low latency
>residential services. None of us can predict the next killer
>app... but my gut is that it will not be VoIP nor traditional video.
>Spend some time with a teenager and you may develop the same
>intuition.
>
>By the way, this teenage peer-to-peer stuff took us by suprise. We
>used to have some of the local traffic filters other SPs have talked
>about on our networks. We learned the hard way that kids these days
>want low latency, high speed links internal to their town. If you
>make their packets take the long way round, they will drop you like a
>hot potato in order to switch to the local cable company... What is
>how you say it "low ping bastard?"
>
> > The real question is, can a service provider make any money in this
> > domain?
>
>Yes, we do make money currently and for the last number of years. I
>hope we will continue to make money. But the future is always
>uncertain. I am trying to "make my own luck" by participating in this
>forum.
>
>sincere and most respectful regards,
>fletcher