Herman: October 2009 Archives

Next Generation Connectivity (2)

Posted by Herman | October 29 | 2009 12:37 PM | permalink

[This is second post in a series on the Berkman Report. ]

The methodical analysis of available data is where this report excels. They have searched for data that will substantiate the gut-level belief that Next Gen Connectivity will make a lot of difference.

Such as economic growth. The World Bank has published a study : historical data shows that adding 10 % broadband subscribers (10 more people out of 100 inhabitants) will increase GDP growth in that country by 1.21 % for western countries and 1.38 % for middle/low income economies. Compared to a 2.1 % average growth a massive impact.

Unfortunately you cannot extrapolate this causality beyond 100 % penetration, or translate the causality directly to Next Gen Connectivity. At best you can make a case that staying behind in the next step will probably hurt your growth severely.

The next analysis is in telecommuting. There is a direct relationship between the broadband penetration figures and the level of telecommuting.

A dutch study (2008) shows that already over 44% of the Dutch employees sometimes work at another place than the office. 32 % use the Internet to telecommute for at least one hour or more per week, on average 25 % of their working hours. 79% is of the opinion that telecommuting will reduce traffic. The traffic reduction is estimated at 10 % of commuting traffic and 4 % of total traffic/CO2 emissions. The direct reduction in cash-out for the country in oil not purchased per year can be estimated at over 130 mio Euro per year (enough to pay the interest on a 2-3 billion Euro loan for FttH deployment).

A relationship which is new to me is broadband and entrepeneurial spirit. And the position of Netherlands in the graph: way up there.

It just makes me wonder what the Eurostat statistics measure? If the selling of secondhand goods through Ebay or Marktplaats counts I would expect an even higher number than 25 %, if we would count websites for marketing purposes of small businesses I would have expected a lower number.

Anyway, it confirms the image we have of ourselves: traders by nature.

Global warming

Posted by Herman | October 28 | 2009 10:10 AM | permalink

A video conceived and made by amateurs (young women) in a couple of days. Internet liberates creativity !

AT&T, the Iphone and TCP/IP

Posted by Herman | October 26 | 2009 7:37 AM | permalink

A couple weeks ago I have posted about the design philosophy of the TCP/IP protocol: it was designed for imperfection. And if you have a mindset of perfection you will implement the protocol in such a way that the effective bandwidth will decrease dramatically.

Brough Turner has identified that this mistake may very well be the main cause of the extensively reported traffic congestion Iphone users experience on the AT&T mobile network in the USA.

AT&T uses this congestion to cry wolf about network neutrality regulations (" we need to manage our network or else...:") but the real cause may very well be a naieve implementation of a protocol by engineers who do not understand the basic mechanisms.

Next Generation Connectivity (1)

Posted by Herman | October 24 | 2009 6:26 AM | permalink

The Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University is a renowned research centre focused at Internet and the law. It researches the real and possible boundaries in cyberspace between open and closed systems of code, of commerce, of governance, and of education, and the relationship of law to each.

The FCC has commissioned the Berkman Institue to do a comprehensive study on "Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world". The draft version has been made available for comments recently. A hefty report of 231 pages with solid data gathering and data-analysis.

Most blogposts (like this one) have focused on what is a bombshell for most Americans: the US have lost their edge in broadband in the last decade. Part of the blame is on a historic policy change in the USA in the beginning of this decade: the telephone and cable companies were allowed to close their (access) network for competitors.

The rest of the world has chosen for a policy of unbundling of access lines and/or functional or structural separation of the access network, which turned out to be the better solution.

But there is a lot more interesting stuff in the report, if you take the time to read it fully. Some of it requires more detail, some of it needs comments.

More than can be written in one post so I will make a small series out of it.

The first observation that struck me was the way they defined "next generation broadband".

Berkman observes a very interesting dichotomy in the general mindset about next generation broadband (leading to the subtle title of the report "Next Generation Connectivity"). The primary distinction in emphasis is between a focus on high capacity on one hand (numbers) and a focus on user experience (ubiquitous seamless high capacity fixed and mobile) on the other hand. Most countries focus on capacity, the ones already ahead with deploying high capacity (with the Japanese leading the pack) focus on ubiquitous seamless (high-speed) connectivity. Most likely the difference in emphasis is just a matter of overlapping stages, first get the next generation infrastructure in place and secondly focus on innovation of services.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

That is why the data they gathered on (mobile) broadband had me worried.

The Berkman report divides broadband access speeds in 4 classes (low, medium, high and very high). The Netherlands has a high penetration level of fixed line broadband but most of it is in the low/medium range. Here you can see how far ahead some countries like Japan and Korea are because almost all of their lines are of the very high speed class. It is time not to gloat any more on the high level of (low/medium bandwidth) connectivity but to compare ourselves with others in these speed classes. (And move ahead to full FttH as fast as possible to keep up with the pack).

The penetration level of 3G mobile broadband is exceptionally low compared to other countries. See their chart.

Their analysis of other available datasets and reports on 3 G connectivity (like OECD and Ofcom) show that these datasets are not very reliable, so they used the Teleograhpy database to counts subscriptions. The number for the Netherlands is more or less the same as you can derive from the ITU reports (which number some people even think is way too high).

The only explanations why we are so behind in mobile broadband I can think of is roll-out speed, pricing strategies of operators and text messaging. The pricing strategies I have seen seem to be aimed at creaming of the top (high prices for business users) instead of going for volume. The roll-out of 3G has been relatively slow. And last but not least we have grown used to text messaging which is a fantastic cash cow. The operators have introduced bundling of text-messages and voice minutes which is attractive for youngsters who are more into texting and chatting than voice. So we see more texting than twittering over here.

The statistics got me worried. The next economic drivers are based on services which rely on ubiquitous seamless (high-speed) connectivity and great user experience and we need to be part of this market.

Let's hope the policy makers in the Netherlands are very awake and read this report.

Symmetry in practice

Posted by Herman | October 20 | 2009 6:23 PM | permalink

One of the emerging debates in Next Generation Broadband networks is symmetrical bandwidth.

As discussed before the fact that your standard Internet Access download speed is (much) bigger than your upload speed has its roots in past engineering choices and the physical limitations of the wires.

Fiber does not have these limitations so (a-)symmetry is a choice.

A lot of providers around the world suggest or claim that there is no need for symmetry for normal users. However these claims are self-fulfilling prophecies: if you do not offer symmetrical bandwidth you will never observe if behaviour will change, applications will be developed and if it will be used.

Fortunately some new data is becoming available. In one of the Dutch FttH deployments where symmetrical bandwidth is the standard offering the operator has released more information on the observed use well after the first full year. (Measuring bandwidth consumption after everyone has grown used to this bandwidth shows normal behaviour and eliminates artefacts possibly created by the attractiveness of a new toy).

The number of active subscriptions observed is slightly less than 10.000.

[update] 7000.( Age and income distribution: across the scale, quite normal)

The first observation is that the use of Internet and bandwidth has grown fast to a new (higher) level. IPTV and VoD have been adopted quickly, Youtube HD is a favorite.

The most interesting observation is the aggregate [update] Internet bandwidth consumption over time. (see the graph below).

The data is measured over a couple of days [update] on the Internet backhaul link.

The graph shows that the aggregate upload consumption is more or less the same as the download consumption.

So much for claims that we do not need symmetry.....

Traffic congestion is bad for your childrens health

Posted by Herman | October 15 | 2009 3:25 PM | permalink

The summary says it all. You can find the source over here, and a good commentary over here.

This paper provides evidence of the significant negative health externalities of traffic congestion. We exploit the introduction of electronic toll collection, or E-ZPass, which greatly reduced traffic congestion and emissions from motor vehicles in the vicinity of highway toll plazas. Specifically, we compare infants born to mothers living near toll plazas to infants born to mothers living near busy roadways but away from toll plazas with the idea that mothers living away from toll plazas did not experience significant reductions in local traffic congestion. We also examine differences in the health of infants born to the same mother, but who differ in terms of whether or not they were "exposed" to E-ZPass. We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 10.8% and 11.8% respectively. Estimates from mother fixed effects models are very similar. There were no immediate changes in the characteristics of mothers or in housing prices in the vicinity of toll plazas that could explain these changes, and the results are robust to many changes in specification. The results suggest that traffic congestion is a significant contributor to poor health in affected infants. Estimates of the costs of traffic congestion should account for these important health externalities.

Mobile Ice Age

Posted by Herman | October 15 | 2009 1:23 PM | permalink

On of the big debates in the USA is on Network Neutrality rules and legislation. A more subtle part of the lobbying efforts is targeted at the mobile Internet.

It is very well knownnow that Iphone users have quite a different usage pattern than owners of other mobile devices. The casual use of the Internet is so easy and seductive that a much higher data volume is the result.

For AT&T this has resulted in higher revenues and complaints from disappointed users.

This fact is apparently used in the lobbying efforts : a warning of a ' Mobile Meltdown' is issued. With a not very subtle undertone: " we will need usage based pricing otherwise we cannot manage the network, a small minority will crowd out everybody else" , " if Net Neutrality rules will be enforced there is no reason to invest in the badly needed mobile infrastructure".

The funny part is that no data is available, no hard numbers are used. So lets do some guesswork.

Mobile data volumes are tiny compared to fixed data volumes, so the fixed network can easily sustain a (flat fee) mobile backhaulvolume.The difference is in cell-towers and the connection between the cell-tower and the existing fixed network.

I am told that a good celltower will set you back 150.000 euro's, all included. A good backhaul connection (lets assume microwave, 100/100 Mbps, SDH to support voice) costs 100.000 euro's. (Fiber is an option dependent on the local situation).

Lets depreciate it in 7 years, assume a WACC of 8 % and a maintenance cost of 6 % of CAPEX per year.Total costs: 70 k Euro/year.

Lets assume a 50/50 split between voice and data, so 35 k Euro/year for data. For that you allocate 50 Mbps to data traffic. Lets assume that in a mobile data subscription 15 euro is used to cover these costs for a flat fee/high data usage subsription.

A quick calculation shows that approx 200 FTU's (full time equivalent users) are needed to cover the costs.

Hmm. Even if you do some variation analysis it seems that it would not be a problem to justify more investments and get an excellent ROI, even with flat fee subscriptions.

No "Mobile Meltdown" to be seen, seems more like an "Ice Age".

Stealth

Posted by Herman | October 14 | 2009 11:30 AM | permalink

Ars Tecnica reports how researchers have discovered a method to "see" humans move behind a wall using wifi mesh gear.

Wifi is a free wireless band with a frequency very close to the one used to heat food in microwave ovens. (Which is why it is free: everybody assumed the noise and interference of microwave ovens would prevent any commercial use of this frequency band: a historical mistake).

The microwave oven heats the food because bipolar molecules (aka H2O or water) absorb the energy in radio waves with this particular frequency very well.

A human body full of water will absorb some of the (extremely low level of) energy a wifi access point emits, which you can detect. The researchers measure the changes in the radio field generated by the absorption in a body and calculate the position of the body.

Pretty neat but not new.

The Serbians (in the recent civil war in former Yugoslavia) had discovered they could track the path of low flying Stealth planes by measuring the changes in the radio field emitted by cell phone towers. The mass of the plane had a noticeable effect on the radio fields.

So much for stealth...

Posted by Herman | October 14 | 2009 11:30 AM | permalink

The fun of stairs

Posted by Herman | October 13 | 2009 8:01 AM | permalink

Creative minds. How to transform a stairway to a thing of joy.

Gym Babes

Posted by Herman | October 09 | 2009 12:55 PM | permalink

The Iphone universe is just expanding and expanding. And here is a great analysis why, triggered by an utterly useless but smile-evoking application called Gym Babes.

Watch the video and listen to the intelligent (no, truly) observations made by the reviewer.

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

EC: Definition of Technology Neutral infrastructure

Posted by Herman | October 02 | 2009 5:11 PM | permalink

The final version of the EU Guidelines on State Aid for broadband projects (see over here) is only slightly different from the Draft Guidelines published some months ago (see my comments). The quite difficult burden of proof "that there are no plans by operators" is still there, with some added guidelines. Benoit Felten calls them the Incentive Paradox Guidelines.

It remains to be seen how this will play out in practice.

The gem is hidden in the last paragraphs. A definition of a technology neutral infrastructure has been adopted.

In addition, whatever the type of the NGA network architecture that will benefit from State aid, it should support effective and full unbundling and satisfy all different types of network access that operators may seek (including but not limited to access to ducts, fibre and bitstream). In this respect it should be noted that "multiple fibre" architecture allows full independence between access seekers to provide high-speed broadband offers and is therefore conducive to long-term sustainable competition. In addition, the deployment of NGA networks based on multiple fibre lines supports both "point-to-point" and "pointto-multipoint" topologies and is therefore technology neutral. [ bold added later ]

Since 2008 I have been presenting the view that topology matters. You can build a topology that is specific for a technology, or design one that can support many technologies. A technology neutral topology. See the image below for an explanation.

This is not theory but practice, as shown by ECFiber and Burlington Telecom in the USA (courtesy Timothy Nulty).

"In our approach, every premise is "home-runned" to a "fiber aggregation point (FAP) " which is an actual building--with power, HVAC, light, security etc. Anything up to 4000 or so subs. can home in on one such FAP, or "remote hub"....(which are trunkedback to the main hub--and to each other--using carrier grade 10G/40G-E systems). All electronics are in the FAPs--where they can be both easily maintained/repaired AND replaced--incrementally or entirely, as desired. You can patch past the splitters and provide mega-circuits if you want to (dedicated Terrabit circuit, anyone?). You can replace specific customer OLT's with something else (later vintage PON, customized active elements etc)--in small batches or all at once. In fact, you can do most anything you want--including change out the whole system. You can do all these things without ever touching the main infrastructure and main cost item--the fiber distribution network itself. The fact that there are NO stategic (let alone active) components in the field not only greatly improves maintenance (ease and cost) but also increases the ease and efficiency of upgrading/changing/migrating AND inserting other signals should that be desired."

The Guidelines as published by the EC show that this very significant insight has been understood and adopted in Brussels.

(A-)Symmetric Internet Access

Posted by Herman | October 02 | 2009 11:51 AM | permalink

The Internet access specifications for residential cable-internet-access and ADSL-internet-access are always asymmetrical: the downloadspeed is larger (much larger) than the uploadspeed. Internet access over fiber shows higher speeds and quite often (but not always) the same assymetry where the download is much faster than the upload.

A lot of people wonder why. What is the driver for this difference? Technology? Costs? Marketing? Based upon a recent discussion between experts I have tried to summarize the geeky details.

We have to keep in mind that Internet access was piggybacked upon networks designed for quite different purposes: cable for distributing TV-channels, copper network for telephony. So the engineers charged with creating Internet access had to work with what they got.

The key engineering issues involved in creating Internet access over these lines are attenuation, noise and cost of equipment.

Attenuation is the weakening of signal strength as you get farther away from the source. If the strength of a signal starts to drop to the same level as the noise on the line you start to lose information carrying capacity (down to zero: no information). If you send information over a cable/telephone wire/fiber the signal strength weakens with the distance travelled.

The rule of thumb is: higher frequencies weaken earlier than low frequencies ( compare it to driving to a band playing on a festival ground: you hear the base player from far, the high notes only when you are close).

The second rule-of-thumb is: the higher the frequency you can carry over a wire over a distance, the more information (bandwidth) you can send per second.

Telephone wires are difficult to work with: high frequencies weaken very fast with distance. Coaxial cable is much better (that's why Siemens invented it : transatlantic telegraphs through normal wires was terrible) but anything over 1 Ghz weakens very fast. Fiber is way, way better (a million times better), you easily get 40-50 miles at extremely high frequencies before you have to repeat the signal. (Wireless behaves more or less the same and at the same time different: the signal weakens with distance but the sensitivity to anything inbetween you and the sending antenna is very dependent on the (carrier)frequency used.).

The noise you pick up is the second limitation.

A normal copper wire acts as an antenna : while transmitting information over the wire, the wire acts as an antenna, sending at the same time to everything in the neighbourhood.

It is also a giant receiving antenna, picking up noise and signals from neighbouring wires (crosstalk) and spikes (especially in old networks). This is why you run into problems if you get too many DSL subscribers in the same cable: your neighbours signal is noise to you. A coaxial cable is much better: it shields its transmissions more, and picks up less. But any endpoint or crack in the shielding introduces noise.

Fiber (again) has much less problems: it does not send anything, does not pick up anything. (But bad engineering, construction or maintenance can reduce its capabilities).

When DSL was engineerd for copper wires the design choice was to reserve a relatively low frequency band for the upstream link. The pro's: less attenuation over distance so less sensitive for noise, less computing power needed at home (the required Digital Signal Processors where expensive at that point in time) making the gear cheaper. The con: limited bandwidth upstream but hey, who would ever need that?

The general idea at that time was that users would passively look at websites and send some short email messages every now and then. In that frame of mind you need much more downstream bandwidth than upstream, but you need reliable upstream. Why?

The TCP/IP protocol requires that the receiver sends an acknowledgement of received packets to the sender. Erratic or slow sending of ACK's is a trigger for the sender to reduce the sending speed and re-send (presumably lost) packets of information. So for a fast download you need reliable upload, preferable in a ratio of 5 to 1 or better. (Try filling up your upload capacity in a normal ADSL line and you will experience a fast drop in download performance).

Downstream was positioned in a higher frequency band. The downstream bandwidth has been increased as DSP's grew less expensive, but became less predictable as a result. It is dynamically adjusted to the maximum throughput possible, given the noise and attenuation. If you are unlucky (bad wire, noisy environment) the downstream advertised as 20 Mbps (max) is no more than 2 Mbps in reality (as I have experienced).

A lot of extremely clever engineering has been thrown at the problem to maximize the use any bit of untainted bandwidth/spectrum, but you cannot defy the laws of physics.

So VDSL was introduced: reduce the wire length to a couple of hundred meters so you can use higher frequencies (which would weaken too much otherwise) and gain bandwidth. The problem of not being able to predict the noise and crosstalk levels remains, so the predictability of the preformance is not good. Again the design choice in VDSL washow to split the available bandwidth. You can go for symmetric if you want to, but 40 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up advertises better than 25/25.

In Coaxial cables you have to allocate the available radio spectrum to downstream, upstream and TV channels. The upper limit is 1 Ghz or less, so there is a contest for space between Internet access and (HD)TV-channels. Again, very clever engineering squeezes a lot of bandwidth out of the spectrum at the expense of sensitivity to noise.

As the medium is shared by users (couple of hundred on one coax cable as a rule) you share the available bandwidth.

The standard upstream channel is limited in bandwidth and placed at the low end: again with a "content consumer" frame of mind and the objective to reduce the sensitivity for noise. Most hybrid fiber coax networks have not been designed for more upload capacity to begin with. Modyfiing the hardware is required as a start.You could also change the allocation of capacity in a spectrum (quite an effort but doable) or split up the coax network more so you end up with less shared users (messy, means digging and investing in hardware).

Again: physics and historical engineering choices have biased the access network towards asymmetrical bandwidth.

In fiber there is no such inherent bias. Symmetrical bandwidths are as easy as anything, most professional communication lines are symmetrical. Asymmetry is a design decision.

Even with GPON-fiber networks (USA, Japan) where the bandwidth is shared : symmetrical bandwidth requires a home "modem" designed for the task, but that is a choice you make. The GPON standard specificies an overall downstream bandwidth capacity which is twice the size of the upstream capacity. Again, a choice, not a necessity.

There might be a commercial reason not to offer symmetry. If you are a telco who has been serving high-end business customers with dedicated fiber lines, you have a problem explaining the difference in price between what they charge now and the consumer FttH offerings.

There is a reason why the business lines are/have been much more expensive (as a start: a dedicated dig is terribly expensive compared an FttH roll-out spreading all costs over many users) but it is a very difficult sell. An asymmetric offer makes the explaining a bit easier.