[LINK] America's Internet Disconnect

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

Adrian,

Adrian Chadd wrote:

>On Fri, Nov 10, 2006, rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Between a US server and here we have (roughly!):
>>- lots of router hops (from Sydney to samspade.org = 10 hops).
>>    
>>
>
>Maybe half a mil to one millisecond a hop? Depends on a whole lot of
>factors.
>
>Heck, thats just L3 hops. You generally don't have any idea what the
>underlying topology is; whether there's tunneling involved (GRE/IPIP/etc),
>L2 stuff (MPLS for various values of L2, ATM/FR) and SONET-style backbones.
>  
>
We do have an idea about the underlying topology. The Southern Cross 
Cable Network is the primary path to the US; and it runs an SDH 
backbone. But layers 1 and 2 in an optical system have far less impact 
on propagation than routing.

[snip]

>>- Plus 40 milliseconds (approx) speed of light across the Pacific.
>>    
>>
>
>Gotta remember; the speed of light in fiber isn't the speed of light in a vacuum.
>I think you'll find its ~ 30-35ish ms each way Per-Mel. I can't believe its
>40ms each way from Syd -> West coast.
>  
>
Oh, all right. Speed of light in fibre is 70% of vacuum. Roughly 60ms 
each way.

>US users get better performance because:
>
>* the cost of transit is cheaper;
>* the cost of backhaul exchange/ISP network is (probably) cheaper;
>* the cost of general network infrastructure might be cheaper, but
>  again Pipe/Amcom/Bright/etc have made it more affordable to build
>  city-wide networks (thanks Telstra!)
>* the sites they want are in the US or Europe ; not hiding away in Australia
>  at ~ 200-350ms away.
>  
>
<small grin> I would have left Bright out of the list ... IIRC one of 
the reasons Bright had a long hiatus was that Western Power found a $26 
M investment in not-very-much fibre... Yes, cheap transit and cheap 
backhaul are the two biggies; and in particular we pay over-the-odds for 
transit. If the ISP pays 5x the US price for transit, it buys less.

RC