[AusNOG] iCloud - Is it going to hurt access providers?

[Skeeve Stevens]

Hey all,

I've been thinking about the impact that iCloud (by Apple) will have on the Internet.

My guess is that 99% of consumer internet access is Asymmetrical (DSL, Cable, wireless, etc) and iCloud when launched will 'upload' obscene amounts of gigs of music, tv, backups, email, photos, documents/data and so on to their data centres.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I love the concept of iCloud, as I do DropBox, but from an Access Providers perspective, I'm thinking this might be a 'bad thing'.

>From what I can see there are some key issues:

  *   Users with plans that count upload and download together.
  *   The speed of Asymmetric tail technology such as DSL
  *   The design of access provider backhaul (from DSLAM to core) metrics
  *   The design of some transit metrics

So basically the potential issue is that a large residential provider could have thousands of users connect to iCloud, their connections slowed because of uploading data, burning their included bandwidth caps, slowing down the backhaul segment of the network, and as residential providers are mostly download, some purchase transit from their upstreams in an symmetric fashion.

This post is really just to prompt discussion if people think there is anything to actually worry about, or there are other implications that I've not really thought of yet.

…Skeeve

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Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists

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