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Re: [EFM] Banana networks

Roy-

At 10:23 AM 12/16/2002 -0600, you wrote:
Geoff,

The "de-tariffed" message that you got may be because the company that have your service with has filled for bankruptcy.  The filling allows them to operate outside normal "financial" rules/regulations/restrictions.

Wrong. This was the next step in a process that was first mentioned quite some time ago, long before their executive cadre revealed their long term bankruptcy business plan to the public. According to their flier (not in front of me) it is part of the FCC plan to deregulate tariffs on a wider scale.

See (10/15/02): http://telephonyonline.com/ar/telecom_att_asks_fcc_2/
Where it says:
" The (AT&T) petition specifically asks the commission to reverse a decision it made two years ago to de-regulate special access services, the high-capacity "fat pipes" that connect from a building to a central office and which are used to provide voice, data and high-speed Internet services primarily to large businesses."





What has me concerned is that the type of technology that is being developed by EFM is more suited to "discretionary" services.  With the major hits that the economy is taking, the amount of disposable discretionary resources that are available to the potential customer base is rapidly decreasing.  It will take quite a few years for this to recover the way that things are going, if ever.
Wow, a point that we actually agree on. I am very concerned about how much money communications and content services (e.g. telcos, LD carriers, cable TV providers, ISPs, content providers and Blockbuster Video) can, on average, extract from the average American household


With its EOC that can support "out-of-band" OAM the EFM copper PHY can support non-discretionary services.  This is the only PHY that really has a chance for a major market anytime soon, replacing ATM DSL as well as migration of fixed bandwidth customers to combinations of packet voice combined with lower granularities of committed/fixed bandwidth services.  The P2P supporting "Ethernet Frame Relay" as well as packet voice may have some minor deployment in the access environment of Tier 1 cities, where fiber is available to the customer site.  With funding drying up in the market, I don't see much, other than very small amounts of deployment for P2MP.  I hope that the reality is a lot better than I see it, but I have seldom been wrong.

We have a saying in the family, "Seldom wrong, never uncertain."


Thank you,
Roy Bynum

Geoff


At 09:58 PM 12/15/2002 -0800, Geoff Thompson wrote:
Roy-

At 11:11 AM 12/13/2002 -0600, Roy Bynum wrote:
Geoff,

There are always those that would say to governments or those in control, if you would only do it my way, things would be better.  I have been guilty of that myself.  It does not however change anything.

That, in and of itself is true. But it isn't only me. Why, I just read on my bill from a company that you used to work for that my service was being "detariffed". Our arrangement will continue for the foreseeable future but the handwriting is clear... things, they are a-changing.

It might even get to the point (in some places) where what is offered to the customer is based on what is currently possible/practical technically rather what is most backward compatible financially.

It won't happen everywhere at once, but it will happen. If it is enough better and provides a competitive edge to the customers then their competitors who operate in areas where such service is not available will overcome their disadvantage somehow. Guess what one of the methods will be?


Thank you,
Roy Bynum

Geoff




At 12:15 PM 12/12/2002 -0800, Geoff Thompson wrote:
Roy-

At 08:54 PM 12/10/2002 -0600, Roy Bynum wrote:
Geoff,

A service subscription network does not work like a privately owned LAN facility.

Currently true. Therein lies a great part of the problem that some of us are trying to solve.
Carriers have formulated the tariff/revenue model forever and it is based on the "old" model that bandwidth is scarce and precious.
Customers and us cranks from the LAN industry both want the WAN to look like a LAN

In a subscription network, there is no such thing as "excess bandwidth".  A copper facility will be provisioned and operate at the maximum that the distance attenuation will allow.  Fiber facilities will be provisioned to provide the maximum service bandwidth that the customer is willing to pay for.  When more than one customer can be put on the fiber facility, the service provider will provision the maximum that the fiber will support, often for packet/frame facilities, the bandwidth will be over provisioned in the aggregate for all of the customers.  This will hold true for either P2P or P2MP.  This is one of the economic realities of subscription networks.  The limitation of how much bandwidth and how many customers is put on that bandwidth is strictly do to the physical limitations of the facilities and the willingness of the sales and marketing people to keep putting people on the same facility.

You are assuming that the revenue/tariff model will not change.
I believe (1) that it will, if not in the US then elsewhere in the world in countries who are willing to bet that a new model will provide a "great lap forward" for them. and (2) if the revenue model does not change then EFM not be a success to any significant degree.


The use of "lettuce", "bananas", and "peanuts" was an effort to be able to indirectly discuss issues of service functionality requirements, which up until now, have not been fully explored.  Since "services" delivery is the specific purpose of a subscription network, without such a discussion, how will the group know if they have achieved the basic objective of  "Support Subscriber Access Network ..."

Thank you,
Roy Bynum

The world's WAN space is awash in lit and unlit excess bandwidth. (Transatlantic lit capacity is currently said to be 7X traffic) The telcom industry has no way to sell a significant portion of it in the current revenue model. Ultimately they (or their scrap dealers, who won't care about the current revenue. That's what makes scrap dealers/scavengers different) will have to make a decision about how to get some revenue out of it any way they can. High jitter, high bandwidth packet delivery systems that are terrible for real time voice and video provide the potential for this. If the scrap dealers can sell it this way in the regulated space I would expect them to do so. If the scrap dealers can sell in the unregulated space then they won't have to go to the trouble of making it jitter.

This vast vacuum of available bandwidth in the core will suck players into the access space to provide paths to the core.. Nature abhors a vacuum. Physics always wins in the long haul (pun intended).

Geoff


At 03:46 PM 12/10/2002 -0800, Geoff Thompson wrote:

Roy-
I think Hugh is closer to the mark than you are here.
The Ethernet link to the end user tries to be one simple thing:
        An excess bandwidth connection to the core network and the facilities that such a network connects to.

No peanuts vs. bananas, just one thing, excess bandwidth.
Sort of like a car.
You got two people in the family you can live with a smaller car than if you have seven.
In either case you buy a car that has at least enough seats for the family.
In all cases you are buying transportation capacity for your family or a subset thereof.

Geoff

At 06:39 PM 12/9/2002 -0600, Roy Bynum wrote:

Hugh,

I think the analogy of the produce stand would be more appropriate, from a service providers standpoint, if you were to make the produce align with the services that are delivered, and then physical stand becomes the delivery infrastructure, of which 802.3ah is a part.  From a service providers perspective, he has several stands in different parts of the town that he wants to sell out of.

Just like any produce market, you have different kinds of produce, vegetables like lettuce, fruit like bananas, and nuts like peanuts.   Sometimes the type of equipment in the stand dictates what kind of produce he can sell, for example, vegetables like lettuce tend to do better in refrigerated coolers than in the open heat, while nuts like peanuts tend to like warm dry storage.  Just like a real produce stand, there are some items that people are willing to pay more for than they are for other items.  A single head of lettuce brings a lot more than a single peanut.  I am sure that every wife would love to pay the cost of a single peanut for a head of lettuce, but they know it does not work that way even though they complain to the grocer.  The items that do not sell for as much, must sell in higher quantity to be able to be economical, because produce seller does make as much off of each one that he sells.  A grocer does not make as much off of a single peanut as he does a single head of lettuce.  Also, the owner of the produce stands needs to be able to supply the produce that meets what the customers want to eat.  Trying to change the way the customers eat produce, often does not work.  Trying to sell tame "vege-burgers" to someone from the Southwest that is used to hot and spicy meat, would not often work.  Those of you with ethnic backgrounds know what I mean. (I am including Texans like me that prefer beef steaks to turkey.)

The produce stand owner needs to be sure that his stands can either sell the produce that he makes more off of, or that the produce that he makes less off of can have a higher quantity supply.  Or he has to have stands that will sell all kinds of produce.

This is where the equipment in the stand becomes very important.  If the produce stand owner simply buys a type of equipment for his stand tries to sell whatever can be carried by that equipment, while someone else builds stands with different equipment that will sell either the better produce, or be able to deliver a higher quantity of the lessor produce, then the original owner of the produce stands will have economic problems.  This makes it not only important for the makers of the produce stand equipment to be aware of the issues, but also the owner of the produce stands needs to pay closer attention to what the customers are buying so as to make sure that he is building the right kind of produce stands.

In this analogy, 802.3ah becomes the equipment in the produce stand.  The different kinds of produce are different kinds of services.  Just like there are certain kinds of produce that people are willing to pay more for, there are services that people are willing to pay more for.  The services that they are not willing to pay more for must be able to deliver at a higher quantity than the higher cost services.  802.3ah in the different media must be able to deliver either higher quality services, or high quantity services.  I am sure that the service providers would like to migrate their customers to the higher quantity services, but many times that does not work for customers that are used to the higher quality.  It is very difficult to change the way that people eat.

Thank you,
Roy Bynum

At 08:55 AM 12/9/2002 -0800, Hugh Barrass wrote:

Sanjeev,

Good to see that you've introduced perishable fruit into the discussion - more
relevant than many people expect...

If you have a fruit stand selling your bananas then you have a difficult problem
to decide how many bananas to start each day with (for simplicity I will assume
that you can choose to have your banana delivery each morning and also that
bananas decompose at the end of each day). You may make a reasonable guess at how
many you will sell on average, but you can't predict how many you will sell on a
given day. So what should you do?

You could err on the conservative side - only buy "enough" bananas so that on some
days you have a few bananas left over, on other days you run out before closing
time. This way you minimize the wastage. The downside is that on many days
customers arrive and are disappointed. Those customers may look elsewhere for
their bananas and discover the other fruit stand that doesn't run out - you've
lost a regular customer that will reduce your average sales.

Alternatively, you could over-provision. You buy more than the average number of
bananas with a view to minimizing the number of days when customers are turned
away. This will mean a larger wastage of bananas which can be weighed against the
better overall sales figure. The advantage is that you are buying the bananas
wholesale and selling them retail (plus tax).

The Ethernet Solution
==============

Network provisioning is a similar problem. Bandwidth must be provisioned but
cannot be carried over from one day to the next - it is the ultimate "perishable
resource."

Ethernet aims to make the bananas so cheap that the cost per banana can (almost)
be ignored. You massively over-provision, you never need to turn away customers
and the wastage is forgotten. As you  approach the point when there is a
possibility of turning away customers, you implement QOS (reserving bananas for
your best repeat customers) to keep things going a bit longer. Then you simply
order the next biggest box - the Ethernet advantage is that much higher speeds at
small increments in cost are available because a simplistic approach allows us to
ride the technology curve.

So, whether it's networks or bananas, you need to take the approach that a simple
(and apparently wasteful) approach will often beat the theoretical optimization
that complicates unnecessarily.

Hugh.

PS - anyone want to buy some bananas?

Sanjeev Mahalawat wrote:

> Ariel,
>
> At 12:23 AM 12/6/2002 -0800, Ariel Maislos wrote:
>
> >Sanjeev,
>
> Sorry I am leaving out your economic and i-bubble content as I seem to be
> unable to answer it. :)
>
> >Under these circumstances I would argue that 1% more bandwidth is not
> >equal to 1% more bananas from each subscriber, or 1% more subscribers
> >for that matter.
>
> One buys x bananas and sells only x-1 and saves 1 for oneself in case one gets
> hungry and if one does not get hungry throw away. Thats not increase
> that is loss. Now, one starts with only x-1 (low) and pay more that may be
> different
> choice.
>
> >1% more bandwidth is equal to XX more bananas in transceiver costs as we
> >are not allowed to leverage the economies of scale inherent in Gigabit
> >Ethernet, a market that has significantly more volume than a future
> >ITU-T market.
>
> Agree if one can get x bananas from A (IEEE) in less money than x-1 (from
> ITU-T)
> and could make same or more money even has to throw 1 or more bananas, it
> may make sense to buy cheap to some.
>
> Thanks,
> Sanjeev
>
> >Ariel
> >
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: owner-stds-802-3-efm@majordomo.ieee.org
> > > [mailto:owner-stds-802-3-efm@majordomo.ieee.org] On Behalf Of
> > > Sanjeev Mahalawat
> > > Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 19:34
> > > To: ariel.maislos@xxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Cc: 'Mccammon, Kent G.'; Thomas.Murphy@xxxxxxxxxxxx;
> > > stds-802-3-efm@ieee.org; Vipul_Bhatt@ieee.org; wdiab@xxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: RE: [EFM] PON Optics Telephone Conference, December 5th
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > At 02:51 PM 12/5/2002 -0800, Ariel Maislos wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > >The only questions remaining for the service providers to
> > > answer is can
> > > >they make more money from the network with the extra 1.2% of
> > > bandwidth?
> > >
> > > SP should do the calculation. But it is tempting to see the money
> > > difference, so just that.
> > > This 1.2% translates to about 11.616 Mbps, around 7.5
> > > 1.54Mbps DSL connections. Assuming $50 per DSL it is around
> > > $377/PON/month. Assume one 32-port OLT
> > > serving
> > > 1024 customers (assuming 1:32 ratio) it would be
> > > $12064/month. Does this SP lost revenue breaks their neck,
> > > they would know?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Sanjeev
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > >Regards,
> > > >         Ariel
> > > >
> > > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > > From: owner-stds-802-3-efm@majordomo.ieee.org
> > > > > [mailto:owner-stds-802-3-efm@majordomo.ieee.org] On Behalf Of
> > > > > Mccammon, Kent G.
> > > > > Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 17:45
> > > > > To: 'Thomas.Murphy@xxxxxxxxxxxx'; stds-802-3-efm@ieee.org;
> > > > > Vipul_Bhatt@xxxxxxxx; wdiab@xxxxxxxxx
> > > > > Subject: RE: [EFM] PON Optics Telephone Conference, December 5th
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Tom,
> > > > > Since I have a conflict with the call tomorrow and I am
> > > interested
> > > > > in this decision, here are some questions.
> > > > >
> > > > > 1)Do any of the options for PON timing impact the delivery of
> > > > > services such as toll quality voice, a T1, or multicast video? We
> > > > > had this concern previously and the answer previously was
> > > claimed to
> > > > > be only an efficiency hit for loose timing. Are the modeling
> > > > > assumptions to compare efficiency valid for TDM services
> > > or is that
> > > > > not a consideration in this debate to date? 2)The negotiation of
> > > > > timing parameters rather than a tight specification have
> > > any impact
> > > > > on future interoperability testing?  If we ever decide to test
> > > > > interoperability of EPON OLT and ONT, can a lab testing
> > > > > system be reasonably built to test compliance to a
> > > > > specification for OLT/ONT timing for the various options
> > > > > under debate?
> > > > > 3)Do operating temperature swings have an impact on timing
> > > > > options. Is their reason to add extra margin or extra
> > > > > negotiation time of timing parameters due to temperature
> > > > > variations? What about cold start in cold temperatures, that
> > > > > was an issue for power levels, does it also impact the
> > > > > electronics of the PMD?
> > > > >
> > > > > Comment: As an advocate of PON technologies I echo my earlier
> > > > > comments about striving for common PON PMD to get the
> > > volume started
> > > > > in today's economy.  I am optimistic a compromise can be found in
> > > > > January. Thanks, -Kent
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > > > From: Thomas.Murphy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > > > > [mailto:Thomas.Murphy@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > > > > > Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 10:12 AM
> > > > > > To: stds-802-3-efm@ieee.org; Vipul_Bhatt@xxxxxxxx;
> > > wdiab@xxxxxxxxx
> > > > > > Subject: [EFM] PON Optics Telephone Conference, December 5th
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hello Again,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Attacted two possible approaches to this discussion forming two
> > > > > > decision trees. Glen and I worked on these I I did not have a
> > > > > > chance to co-ordinate with him and refine to one slide.
> > >  The first
> > > > > > slide is mine and I would like to start here as it allows us to
> > > > > > generate values without having to make decisions. When
> > > the values
> > > > > > are agreed upon, we can work towards the decision and
> > > perhaps this
> > > > > > is simpler with the values we have.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If this does not work, we can try the seconf slide, Glen's
> > > > > > approach, which is a more top-down attack.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Talk to you tomorrow
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Tom
> > > > > >
> > > > > >  <<PON Timing Decision Tree.ppt>>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hello All,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Items to Be Covered
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 1)  Determine the exact meaning of the terms "Fixed Value" and
> > > > > > 'Upper Bound" in terms
> > > > > >     of their use for PMD timing parameters.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 2)  Try assign placeholder values for all of the options
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 3)  Are these values fixed or bounded for the different options.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 4)  Other items
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Regards
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Tom
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
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> > > > > >
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> > >