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Building an IP Market from scratch

At Menog 7, I had the pleasure of enjoying an explanation of the Middle East IP market place (link), provided by James Cowie at research organisation Renesys.

It demonstrates clearly that deregulated markets offer enormous advantages over controlled ones, and should serve well as a reminder to operators and policy makers that simply getting out of the way could be the best way to further their aims for industry in any given region.  This is mainly because:

• Allowing networks to interconnect freely (calculated as number of active ASNs in a region), and the size of the market (calculated from the pool of announced ip addresses in a region) are strongly correlated (slide 8).  My guess is that more organisations get online, because competition leads to price falling, whilst the versatility and relevance of services offered increases.
• When there are a larger number of networks in a region, the global carriers have a greater incentive (more customers!) to run diverse connectivity into the region.  This leads to a huge advantage to firms in a region, their connectivity carries on despite local major fibre breaks. (slide 25, 36)
• Content moves out of the US/Western Europe and into the local market place, creating opportunity (and jobs) for local players, and improving the performance of services for local users.

Incumbent networks in this region have a huge opportunity to grow revenues, as the market expands, as long as they are willing to interconnect widely in this region.  As the number of providers in a region expands, customers will be able to (and, according to this research, actually do) pick between innovative and disruptive new providers with excellent regional (via peering), and international (via transit) capacities.  Peering also makes capacity cheap, because traffic can stay local to the ISP.  An incumbent provider that refuses to peer in order to retain market share will not be able to compete in quality terms with the new providers.  Defending a 100% market share is impossible in a competitive market, so the strategy must change, the aim must become enjoying the fruits of a booming market instead of monopoly.  As the Renesys slides say, there is no dominent IXP in this region yet, with many networks dragging traffic to London, Amsterdam or Frankfurt to exchange, but this will change as the density of providers in the Middle East reaches a critical mass.

UK Open Access Fibre

One of the main questions that enterprises ask NetSumo is how they can get access to better office connectivity, because their applications and workflow demand ever increasing quantities of bandwidth.  Solving bandwidth capacity issues in the data centre is easy today and less expensive than it has ever been, but turning up huge capacities in your home or office is much more expensive.

Solving this bandwidth starvation is the role of fibre optics and next-generation broadband.  A relatively simple way to roll out fibre backed technology is to use VDSL – service providers run high capacity fibre optic networks to distribution boxes in streets (FTTC – Fibre to the Cabinet), and utilise the existing copper infrastructure between street and house or business carries high speed internet.  The shortness of the copper run enables higher speeds. This is increasingly available from companies such as Digital Region Broadband, who offer 40Mbit broadband at consumer prices, but is obviously only available in specific neighbourhoods where the streetboxes have been rolled out.

Removing the copper element will enable much higher speeds and new products like premise-to-premise connectivity.  FTTP – Fibre to the Premises opens up a world where connectivity between service provider and your office can run at 100Mbit or Gigabit speeds.  Office-to-home or Office-to-office connectivity that runs at Gigabit or even 10Gigabit would be possible too. This would make remote-working via high definition video conferencing, ultra high speed access to company resources and files, and also better quality and more interactive entertainment services a normal thing for everyone.

However, a national – even urban wide – fibre rollout project is expensive because of the construction (civils) costs, legal costs, and impact on neighbourhoods.

Earlier this month, Ofcom released a statement on wholesale access products, explaining that they were planning to require BT to make access to their existing ducts, intending to make fibre rollout cheaper.  The two key mechanisms are:

• Virtual Unbundled Local Access – BT offer other service providers access to existing fibre.
• Physical Infrastructure Access – BT offer service providers space in their fibre ducts, allowing service providers to run their own fibre.

I welcome this development, but hope that the regulation framework mandated by Ofcom does not remove the incentive BT to roll out new ducts and fibres.  The regulation will be a success if it enables more regional FTTC broadband schemes like the one cited in South Yorkshire, and also if it makes new FTTP the ‘norm’ for all new housing developments and telecoms upgrades.  Further, another huge disincentive from rolling out fibre based services — the UK fibre tax — must also be repealed in order to achieve the typical 30Mbit/sec broadband that the EU wish to see for all citizens by 2020.

The modern day window tax on the internet

In 1696, King William III of England imposed a tax on glass. Essentially, houses with more than ten windows paid a levy to the government, but the tax is now remembered as unfair and very avoidable by bricking up the windows in your home. Today there is a new tax on glass – firms who light the glass in fibre optic cable pay the government a levy based on the length of the fibre. Again the tax is desperately unfair, and very avoidable because firms can just not roll out services on fibre.

When firms avoid fibre, it hurts us all.  When fibre is cheap, firms can use it to roll out super-fast broadband to their users, using the sort of technology that facilitates connections tens or hundreds of times faster than a typical UK home enjoys.  It also allows service providers to increase the capacity of their network edge, and to improve the robustness of their network – for instance by building more links between their network points.  Improved robustness also means better business continuity planning options, improving the availability of their services.  This tax kills faster access, and better services.

The fibre tax also worsens the conditions for international networks looking to build into the UK, for instance in order to bring their content and services to the UK market .  This is not a hypothetical risk, it is a game-changer that has destroyed the business cases of several projects that we have been contributed to last year.

This morning, George Osborne was on BBC TV explaining that he saw an advancement in next-gen broadband (based on fibre optic cabling) as a priority. If this is the case, then he must commit to repealing the 21st Century Window Tax. To date, they have only considered repealing the 50p per month tax on telephone lines that has been suggested by the hugely flawed Digital Britain study.

We are just not competitive with this tax.

IPv4 Run-out policies in Europe

There are a few policy suggestions pushing their way through the RIPE policy development process which discuss how the final remaining IPv4 addresses should be given to end users in the European region.

They all show that the effects of scarsity of IP addresses will be felt before the final few addresses become assigned to end users.  All consumers of addresses will feel constrained, which means all businesses trading online, whether they are a traditional ISP, a growing e-commerce shop, or a datacentre/hosting firm.  The policies under consideration are :

• 2008-06 – Both new and existing organisations requesting IPV4 addresses shall be given addresses only to support transitioning technologies (i.e. infrastructure services which enable access to IPv6 addressed resources.)  They will only be given one block of IPv4 addresses, and this shall be the smallest possible range of addresses as decided by the community at large.  This is the only range of addresses which shall be given to the end user, even if their needs justify more.
• 2009-03 – From summer 2010, any organisation shall only be given enough new addresses to cater for anticipated need for nine months.  By summer 2011, this will change to three months.  Organisations (registries and end users) MUST have used more than half of their address space within six months of assignment or allocation.
• 2009-04 – Organisations must demonstrate that they are implementing an IPv6 transition policy (RFC5211) in order to be given IPv4 addresses.  Allocations from the RIPE NCC will be /27 (32 addresses for the entire registry, e.g. ISP)

This also means that the effects of black market trading in address space will be seen before the ‘anticipated’ IPv4 dry date in 2011.  There are no magic bullets, you (and your customers, suppliers, and partners) need deep pockets, decades worth of existing resources, or an ipv6 transition plan.  The only sensible option is to plan your v6 deployment today.

Preventing Mailman annoyances

Inspired by TheHodge’s “After you install WordPress” article, I made a note of the things I did to configure a Mailman mailing list, after creating it.  Much of this is to make the look-and-feel replicate how I used to run Majordomo lists.

Firstly, I like the Bounce handling and web-interface to Mailman, so this is why I don’t just run Majordomo for lists any more.  Its worth pointing this out, in case you wonder why I still use tool B, even though I have to do lots of work to make it work like tool A !

After running newlist, I recommend the following configuration changes (defaults which are changed assume you are running the Debian packaged Mailman) :

• General Options – make the administrators email address a role account that you will not subscribe to the mailing list. This is basically so that if you bounce an administration message from Mailman, due to your spam filters or an error, Mailman wont decide to unsubscribe you from the mailing list!  I have had this happen to me before when I used to hand-check spam directed at uknot.
• Decapitalise public name of the list – to make it look neater, and more like the output of the ‘lists’ command in majordomo.  Don’t forget to decapitalise the subject line tag if you do this.  I also tend to make the subject line tag very small so that on little displays, it’s still possible to scan a folder and read threads of interest on subject alone.
• Disable monthly reminders – they are really annoying to your subscribers, and Debian’s default position is disabled, but some implementations do not disable subscription reminders.
• My users get confused by the Filter out duplicate messages to list members option.  When a list subscriber is cc:d to a list post, users tend to expect to see a copy of the mail in their inbox, and their mailing list archive.  I turn the filter off so that this happens.
• I tend to enable the Should administrator get notices of subscribes and unsubscribes option, so that I can track whether promoting a list in a certain place has worked!
• In “Non Digest options”, if I am migrating for a Majordomo list, I empty the box for message footer, and also tend to remove it when its a geek mailing list, as to most high volume mail readers, its obvious when an email has been posted to a mailing list, because its filtered into the correct mailbox !  For low volume lists that are intended for low volume mail readers, the footer might be useful.
• Check the reply to option, so that mailing lists that are intended to promote on-list discussion have a header that directs conversation back to the list, and mailing lists that will yield a high proportion of off-list mail do not have this header.
• Be slightly annoyed with me that the only English option in ‘Language Options’ is English (USA) when there is no English (UK).

Happy list-administration!

And you may find the following lists interesting to your work :

• mailop, for those who work in the field of mail systems administration.
• experts, for those who work in expert e-commerce roles.
• uknof, for those who work in network engineering roles, or systems/ISP environments.

Internet TV is ace

Lots of people have been telling me that IP delivered video will be big.  For a long time, I have disagreed because innovations like the PVR (and therefore simple timeshifting) and the coming of age of multiplexing (and therefore multi channel tv) have expanded choice and allowed me to fit good TV that I like around my schedule.

I disagreed on the grounds that unicast IP is a fairly bad way to broadcast large volumes of data.  When wrapped with TCP to guarantee delivery and ensure quality, the infrastructure to handle the volumes of viewers for major tv series or live events, makes it hard to imagine it being possible to deliver real-time internet TV. This is before we consider the bandwidth requirements for high-definition video and audio.
So why the change of mind ?

I previously assumed internet delivery was the Raison d’etre for Net Video.  Its not.  The internet might not have proved itself as the most viable platform for broadcast video, but it has proved itself time and again as the perfect platform for publishing content.  Internet TV is going to mean that “TV” gets some of the “wisdom of crowds” treatment, and that organisations with interesting things to say will be able to launch video content to worldwide audiences.  Previously, content makers would have needed to work with a huge machine of tens of organisations before video hit the airways, and they’d need to work with hundreds if they wanted to distribute to a worldwide audience.  Today ?  All you need is a bit of content, a bit of tallent and some hosting.

The second benefit to internet video is how portable it is.  I have syndicated three shows from Revision3 (Diggnation, Systm, and Scam School), Scobleizer TV, and some other geeky video stuff.  It is downloaded to my laptop, and copied to my iPhone.  I can watch this on a normal TV at home in high quality, via a cheap phone to tv cable, or on the move via laptop or phone.  I can watch my usual TV if I am staying away by plugging the phone into a tv in a hotel room.
In the future, I expect to watch niche stuff that is downloaded, and popular things that are spooled to disk via a broadcast system.  I would like to see some really neat devices shipping this year which allow me to combine recorded broadcast TV with downloaded Internet video, and let me carry broadcast TV in the same portable manner.

Also would love to hear what internet TV people are watching via the comments on the blog!

Openness and telecoms

This is a response to Lee Dryburgh’s article on Skype.  We had a debate on Twitter, but I have not yet mastered the art of debate in 140 characters!

Lee’s premise is that “Certainly Skype is not a walled garden. All things being relative, it’s certainly not overly closed either.”  Lee claims that the accusations of closeness are unfair, because they are levied by commentators who advocate SIP based addressing and dialing rather than any other system.

This is not my premise.  I claim that Skype is closed because calls are signalled and completed using protocols that are entirely secret as a matter of policy.  Skype’s founder presented at Spring VON 2007 and stated that if Skype did not keep their protocols entirely secret, then Skype would be full of spam and attack like email is.  I think this is a poisonous claim, telephone networks have been interconnecting around the world since telephony was conceived.  By not allowing telecoms firms to interconnect between the skype namespace and other networks, Skype have prevented openness to develop and maintain a monopoly position. That’s perfectly acceptable business, but it is not in the slightest bit open.

Randy Bush googled Walled Garden for a recent presentation and found this cartoon.  I like this definition because it’s correct.  Is Skype a Walled Garden ?  Lee says a Walled Garden is a commercial restriction, for example, “sharing of ringtones via Bluetooth, using WiFi from a PDA, having access to all Web sites“.  I think that only allowing interconnection with the purchase of an upgrade like SkypeOut is a restrictive or practice that suggests Skype is a Walled Garden.  Worst of all a call between two VoIP networks using this method requires default PSTN routing, which harms signal quality, and prevents the expansion of next-generation services such as Wideband/High Definition audio.

The meshing of networks, whether they are traditional voice or IP networks, leads to higher audio quality and increased reliability.  Keeping telephony systems and protocols secret in order to prevent meshing may well be a viable business model, but it is not an open business model.

2011 – An addressing odyssey. Preparing enterprise for IPv6.

Yesterday I gave a talk to Sheffield GeekUp on preparing enterprises for IPv6 [download].  The premise of the talk was :

• IPv4 addresses are scarse, and at current consumption rates, the IANA pool of free v4 addresses will be gone at the start of 2011.
• This starts a “Post IPv4 world” where the IPv4 internet continues to function as before (certainly initially), but obtaining new addresses becomes harder and expensive.  This inhibits expansion of existing firms, and new entrants to the market.
• Address trading is likely to lead to a larger routing table, meaning that failure-recovery times increase, and the risk of blackholes on the internet increases.
• Large broadband providers may not have enough v4 addresses to give one address per customer.  This means protocol translation techniques need to be used, which break the end to end model.  We rely on the end to end model when innovating new services on the internet.
• If services and consumers gradually roll v4 and v6 (dual stack), the negative impact of markets for addresses, routing problems, and translation can be mitigated.
• Service providers are enabling v6 in the core.  Enterprises need to move next in order to get the world v6 ready.

The advice I gave was :

• Today’s market leaders are already learning v6 lessons in their labs, (e.g. ipv6.google.com).  They are doing this to help them retain market leadership.  If you want to retain your market position, start labbing your applications and service provision with v6.
• Write a policy stating all new purchases of infrastructure and services need to be from providers with v6 support, or a well defined v6 road map.  In other words, make v6 a “life cycle upgrade”.
• Share information, and learn information from your industry peers.
• I also listed some advice to developers with regard to v4 and v6 differences.
• I then delivered a very quick primer to those who have not seen v6 deployed before.

My hope is that this talk is improved upon and delivered internationally to enterprises.