[AusNOG] Netflix, AWS and Softlayer vs. Australia

[Mark ZZZ Smith]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Andrews <marka at isc.org>
> To: Bill Walker <bill at wjw.co.nz>
> Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
> Sent: Friday, 5 December 2014, 11:37
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Netflix, AWS and Softlayer vs. Australia
> 
> 
> The brings us back to the NBN and the artificial limits on link
> speed.  This skewed the cost benefit analysis by introducing
> willingness to pay for speed.  Many of the benefits of a fibre
> network come from having the high speed available when you need it.
> Most people don't need high speed most of the time.  It doesn't
> cost anymore to provide the last mile at full speed.  The system
> just needs price feedback to avoid abuse.  That feedback doesn't
> have to be done as link speed.
> 

I think the fundamental problem with this idea is that it would conflict with customer expectations.

The industry has trained customers for many decades to consider their access link speed to be both the most important attribute of the service as well as one that is representative of general network performance, even for a best effort multi-party network like the Internet. I think this is also why there is no understanding that the NBN != Internet outside of the telecommunications industry.

I think the keenness of Whirlpoolers for 1Gbps NBN plans is also because of the implication that there would be an ISP network and the Internet upstream of it it that would provide a consistent 1Gbps of performance. They believe that if NBNco can provide a 1Gbps access circuit for a few hundred dollars, then a 1Gbps Internet service doesn't cost much more to provide.

Perhaps another way to put it is that most people think their access link is always the bottleneck, and as it is both a service attribute and one they have a lot of control over, it sets their performance expectations.

So even if you avoided any mention at all of link speeds customers would still care about it, because that is what they've been trained to do. If you let people connect to their NTU at 1Gbps (without any mention of service speed), I think many of them would either expect 1Gbps performance occasionally, or at least expect service speeds occasionally in the multiple 100s of Mbps if they'd accepted that they wouldn't get 1Gbps.


> I'd love to see the analysis redone where everyone on fibre had the
> full link speed available to them but there were monthly volume
> limits included.
> 
> Mark

> -- 
> Mark Andrews, ISC
> 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
> PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org
> 
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