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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (2705)	5/17/1999 10:33:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

And one last one. From another perspective. Re: Free Bandwidth ---------------------- From NANOG: [Greetings,] It's amazing that people continue to spout this "bandwidth is free" notion over and over again. Based upon economics, could someone please explain to me how service providers can run a business by giving away bandwidth? I work at a small networking startup, with a moderate speed connection to the Internet. If bandwidth was essentially free, our company would have an OC48c connection to the service provider. Our company would perform all of its backups over the network to an offsite data center. I would be downloading movies from a new "electronic online video rental" company so I could watch it at home (until my home received an OC48c and I streamed it directly). I would install cameras at home that I can login into from work and watch constantly as a security measure. Using these simple examples, I estimate that I could easily consume several Mbps on average. So could everyone else. Is bandwidth still so plentiful that it could be given away and QoS is not needed? Let's compare bandwidth to another product that is getting cheaper: PCs. PCs continually offer much better performance at the same price, but are not free. The "free PCs" model is simply a way of offsetting the cost to another party that sees value in getting captive long-term clients. The PC maker still gets paid. Likewise, bandwidth will continue to cheaper, but will not be free. As with PCs, the cost of bandwidth may be offset by a third party, but that is not "free bandwidth". The service provider still gets paid. How much depends upon factors like the QoS, the bandwidth, and the service availability. Well paid (read profitable) service providers are good for all of us. This includes the end customers, who need a service provider that can investment in good facilities, equipment, and most of all, talented people to run the network. [Regards,] [so and so wrote:] > Nice to see that I'm not the only one believing in the foolishness of QoS > hype. Bandwidth is essentially free, and will always be cheaper than QoS. > And since in the end nearly all decisions are based on economics, it should > be apparent which is the more logical decision. > > Allow me to point you to an interesting paper called "Rise of the Stupid > Network." Many of you here may have already seen this. It was written back > in 1997 by David Isenberg, then a reasearcher at AT&T Labs (Isenberg is now > an independent consultant). His paper profoundly changed my views on QoS and > made me realize that networks perform best when we limit how smart they get > and ensure that networks focus on transport only. I urge everyone to read > it. > > Paper: rageboy.com > Isenberg's site: isen.com