[aclug-L] Re: High-speed server access

[Jonathan Hall <jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Dec 27, 1999 at 05:01:07PM -0600, Carl D Cravens wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Jonathan Hall wrote:
> 
> > Once SouthWind supports DSL, I'm sure dedicated access will be available
> > through them... although I don't know what the cost will be.
> 
> I can't imagine the cost being better than ISDN.  (And UUNet beats their
> ISDN cost.) SouthWind's concern is the cost of bandwidth, and that doesn't

I looked into UUNet, but they prohibit the resale of bandwidth on their
ISDN accounts.  To resell bandwidth, you have to get a "wholesale T1."  Now
what you do may not count as reselling bandwidth--I actually sell dialup
accounts, so we may be in completely different boats as far as UUNet is
concerned.

There are many other companies in the Wichita area that offer ISDN cheaper
than SouthWind does... I looked into a few (Tera World, Our Town, etc), and
found that, while they beat SouthWind on price by 25-50%, they were MUCH
slower.  Ping times to Our Town's server, from John Goerzen's ADSL account
in Dallas, for instance, ranged around 150ms, as I recall, but to
SouthWind's server, it was more in the range of 40ms or so.  I decided the
extra quality of service (and the fact that I work at SouthWind, so have
better influence on the ISP side of things) more than made up for the
additional cost.


> change... and things like DSL just allow more to be eaten up.  (Remember,
> these are the guys that considered charging extra for 56k because of the
> bandwidth it would use.)

heh... 56k is a myth.  I would venture to say that a 56k modem pool probably
uses, on average, 5-8% more bandwidth than a 33.6k pool.  Now, I may be
wrong... but here's my reasoning:

 * As we all know, "56k" modems are limited to only 53k.  That's less than
   57% more than 33.6.
 * The average connection speed with a "56k" modem is typically around 44k. 
   That's only ~31% more than 33.6.
 * Many people still don't own 56k modems and/or don't have telephone lines
   capable of 56k speeds.
 * From the limited experience I have, 5 customers dialed into my 5-modem
   pool of 33.6k USR Couriers use at most about 8kB/sec at any given time,
   maximum.  That's about 1.6kB/sec per modem, on average (or about
   16kbits).  And as the number of simultaneous users online increases, the
   average will go down a bit, until it levels off.  I know of one instance
   where a town with 24 modems was being fed by a 128k ISDN line, and the
   ISDN line never reached full capacity.  That's only about 5kbits/sec per
   modem, on average.  Point being: If only 15-48% (5/33.6 - 16/33.6) of a
   33.6 modem's capability is in use at any given time anyway, chances are a
   lower percentage of a 56k modem's capability will actually be used.  Web
   browsing and e-mail, the two activities most done by people online, use
   very little bandwidth most of the time.  They are very bursty activities. 
   Someone downloads a web page, and then reads it, then they click a link,
   etc.  Online chatting (IRC, ICQ, etc) also uses very little bandwidth.

Anyway... that's not really related to the topic at hand.  And I really
don't have any hard facts to back that up--I'd be interested to see some
actual stats on that (if anyone has some, please let me know :-).

P.S. I also know that in most instances, it's cheaper to provide 56k access
than 33.6--at least in markets with a certian number of modems 10-15 I think
is the average threshold, so in really small communities, 33.6 can still be
more economical on the ISP side of things.


--
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin,
president, Royal Society, 1895.
--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  Jonathan Hall  *  jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx  *  PGP public key available
 Systems Admin, Future Internet Services; Goessel, KS * (316) 367-2487
         http://www.futureks.net  *  PGP Key ID: FE 00 FD 51
                  -=  Running Debian GNU/Linux  =-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -