> Michael Turner wrote:
>
> > Packets get to where they need to go (subject to filtering, of course)
> > by being routed -- if DoCoMo connects to something that has an
> > overseas connection (however indirectly), packets will get through,
> > though not necessarily with satisfactory speed or latency.
>
> I was told in Hong Kong at least that connecting to the local Internet
> Exchange, which would allow an ISP to connect to any ISP connected to
> that Exchange, does not guarantee Internet connectivity. ..... In
> fact, I suspect all the ISPs do this since NOT doing it means that their
> international bandwidth might be used by someone else, degrading
> performance and quality. The Hong Kong Exchange itself actually requires
> an ISP to have international bandwidth before it lets them connect. The
> cost of international bandwidth in Hong Kong still makes up about
> 30%-40% of an ISP's total operating costs, so I don't think ISPs will
> willingly share what they have with their competitor.
One thing that is clearly wrong: the idea that ISPs, in general,
buy international bandwidth. My provider in the states (idiom.com)
doesn't. They don't need to. (And a good thing -- with a staff
of three or so, and connections being made to them from all
over the world, if international bandwidth WERE an additional,
and steeper, source of costs, they would have gone under long
ago.)
Two things strike me as anomalous in the case of Hong Kong:
(1) Hong Kong is a financial-services hub, with a strong base of
English-speaking (therefore world-wide-media-consuming) customers.
(2) Hong Kong is, the one-country-two-systems rhetoric aside,
part of the People's Republic of China, which is a country that
attempts to censor overseas communications by default, not
on a case-by-case basis (as in France and Turkey.)
It therefore makes sense that a large burden of the communication
cost in Hong Kong will be for overseas traffic, AND that there are
some peculiar restrictions on connectivity.
By contrast, the vast bulk of Japan internet communications is
with Japan, and I don't see Japan blocking sites. (As if. What
incoming sites would they block? Child porn? As the world's
largest exporter of it, that would be somewhat hypocritical,
I think.)
I don't think you can reasonably extrapolate from Hong Kong
to the rest of the Pacific Basin.
> Also, ask any of the global network builders, Flag, Level 3, Global
> Crossing and now bankrupted 360networks, and they will say that there is
> not enough bandwidth today, hence the billions in investment into
> terabit-level trans-pacific pipes. Then again, there is the bandwidth
> glut/bubble argument.
Yes, why would one have these network builders going under (or be
on the verge of bankruptcy) if there were such a dire global
need for their services?
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
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Received on Wed Jul 4 11:50:07 2001