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From: Brian {Hamilton Kelly} <bhk@dsl.co.uk>
Newsgroups: demon.ip.support,demon.tech.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Batch FTP and Web Pages
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 96 08:19:17 GMT
Organization: Dragonhill Systems Ltd
Lines: 93
Message-ID: <836295557snz@dsl.co.uk>
References: <31D4AA3A.BC0@www.play-hookey.com> <836073421snz@dsl.co.uk> <31D87436.7C7F@www.play-hookey.com>
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In article <31D87436.7C7F@www.play-hookey.com>
kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com "Ken Bigelow" writes:
> Chris Croughton wrote:
> >
> > In article <4r71bs$bpt@newsgate.duke.edu>
> > reese@chem.duke.edu "Charles Reese" wrote:
> >
> > >I also connect via a dial up account, it is to Duke University but it
> > >shouldn't make much difference who provides your ISP service. If you
> > >have a shell account on your ISP machine
> >
> > You still haven't got it. We don't have shell accounts on Demon's
> > machines, we have PPP/SLIP directly routing TCP/IP. It's not a
> > university account, we have our own nodes. If we want a continuous
> > connection we have to pay for it, not some educational institution.
> >
> > > Using this approach has nothing to do with phone charges as I don't
> > >pay them (its a local call in US)
> >
> > Bully for you. We *do* have to pay them, local calls aren't free in the
> > UK.
> >
>
> I've been having an e-mail discussion of this with Ian Stirling, who is
> connected to Demon. We've batted it back and forth a number of times, and I
> still don't see any real solution to the problem in the UK, as long as you are
> stuck, for whatever reason, with those s-l-o-w links. I mean no offense, but
> 200 bytes/sec *stinks!* It's a wonder you can do anything useful at all on
> that basis.
The links are *not* slow from our dial-up lines to the ISP; neither are
they slow within (most of) the UK. The biggest problem lies in your
oh-so-wonderful USofA, where the routers are overloaded and flapping
incessantly, and just generally *slow*. People regularly get 3kB/s or
more on ftp connections (occasionally, I've been getting them to some
sites stateside, by judicious choice of calling time). (I should add
that Demon's current peering arrangements mean that all the traffic
passes through the notorious MAE-East site, which must be the most
overloaded in the universe: it is from *there* that the 200B/s rates
originate.)
Another problem with web surfing is that Netscape took a cynical decision
to launch parallel multiple sessions which are playing absolute havoc
with the RTT timeout adjustment algorithms of most TCP/IP packages: it
has been said that this is the single most contributory factor to the
slowing down of the 'net in the past year, with fully 40% of packets
being needlessly duplicated.
> The technology exists to speed things up, so that's not the barrier. What kind
> of regulations, taxes, and other impediments would be applied to an ISP who
> actually did have a direct, high-speed connection to the backbone and who
> could therefore offer practical dial-up connections at 14.4 kbaud or higher?
Ahem. Demon have installed a 45Mb/s transatlantic link, which is
currently being tested, and scheduled to enter service within the next
fortnight. Note that the capacity of this link, which costs Demon some
hundreds of pounds *per hour* is the same as MCI's current
transcontinental backbone. A very large number of Demon's customers use
V.34 modems, running at 28,800: with V.42bis compression, it's easily
possible to get 7kB/s on compressible data such as news downloads. A
small, but still significant number, have 64kb/s ISDN links, and others
have faster leased lines. The problem is *not* with connectivity to
Demon, nor even with their connectivity to the USA: it's in the latter
country.
> Also, what are the chances of establishing a flat fee for local telephone
> usage? I have a sneaking hunch that that one factor is *the* primary
> limitation in your system, and that you folks in the UK will be held back
> until some sort of flat rate becomes possible.
Not until hell freezes over: there have been multiple rumours about such
an approach, but it won't happen whilst Oftel run the telephones. It has
even been rumoured that BT *might* like to introduce such a service, but
Oftel would never permit that because it would have a detrimental effect
on BT's competitors. Anyway, if telephone calls were charged at a flat
rate, the ISPs would have to introduce some sort of time-based charging
(Demon customers just pay ten pounds a month, regardless of how often or
for how long they connect to Demon); that would lead to higher costs,
because of the overhead of the accounting and charging operation.
Better than a flat rate, anyway, would be *free* calls; charging a flat
fee *per connection* encourages people to stay connected for longer than
they need, thus forcing up costs (and charges) for ISPs, who have to
provide increased capacity: the city of Kingston-upon-Hull has a flat
rate charge, and eventually Demon had to close their PoP there, because
some anti-social elements were remaining connected for hours, even days,
at a time (the record was 8 days, IIRC).
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} bhk@dsl.co.uk
"A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy"
-- Samuel Johnson