Peering Wars

This was actually a quite old story issued by Renesys several months ago and it was also presented at NANOG 43 (June 2008). The story took a case of network-depeering and the actors were Cogent and Telia. At that time, both Cogent and Telia are considered as "near" Tier-1 providers. Why "near"?

• Cogent gets (got?) transit from NTT (formerly Verio) to reach AOL (ATDN?).
• Telia appeared to get transit from Verizon to reach certain networks.

Additionally, it is worth to mention that

• Tier-1 providers act like a cartel and have no incentive to add members
• "Near" Tier-1 providers can try to buy their way into the club (via "paid peering")

Jakarta (IP) Bandwidth Price

I followed some traces left by Pak Meneer and was delivered to his records at Opisboy. This is claimed to be an "Informal ISP Technical ( dir-pji-like :p )" forum. Comments ? :-D Well, for non-local readers, "dir-pji" could be understood as "indonesian ISP Executives/VIPs" or as the forum of ISPs' owners/high-rank officials. It is "dir-pji-like" ? Personally, I would say "better-than-dir-pji" :-D Reasons? he..he..he. Don't take it seriously or even start thinking about that!! :-D

Back to bandwidth. According to Pak Meneer, the condition is as follows:

Jakarta Metro Backbone

It seems that everybody in Jakarta want to have his own metro :-) Currently many companies have built their metro infrastructure to support their business, particularly in big cities such as the Greater Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Bandung etc. These include :

• well known telcos (TELKOM/TSEL, ISAT, XL, other?)
• successfull ISPs (BizNET,CBN, other?)
• VSAT network operators (CSM, Lintasarta, other ?); and
• backbone operators (ICON+,PowerTel,Napinfo,Moratel, other ?)

Recently, PT. iForte Solusi Infotek announced, that they have finished the construction of their fiber optic network which is using (and installed simultaneously with the development of) the TransJakarta busway infrastructure (map see below). They currently offer connection/access services called M-Wifo which are basically WiFi (802.11n compatible) access and fiber bridging. To my guess, it might be a RoF (Radio over Fiber) system.

How Much Bandwidth do Indonesian ISPs Have ?

Though there are many Internet and NAP service providers running their business since several years ago, "big Internet pipes" are only owned by the (former-telco-only) giants: Indosat, Telkom, Excelcomindo, and Telkomsel. They may have a total international IP bandwidth more than 1 Gbps. Unfortunately, as usual :-D I don't have complete, official, clear, and confirmable numbers for that. Maybe next time, I would come with a simple calculation using several rough statistics found in the media and balanced with some cases (personal experiences).

National and Regional RENs

Actually since a long time ago I want to write threads about RENs (Research and Education Networks). Why? Simply because they were the origin of the current Internet and they still have a major role in creating advances in networking technologies. This time I would not start with an indonesian case (if INHERENT or Jardiknas can be categorized as a National REN/NREN), but with european cases.

International IP Bandwidth

Currently I have only some official information specific to Indosat. This was presented by Indosat several times ago (Apricot 2006 Bali ??). However, it belongs to the "biggest" pipes owned by indonesian ISPs.

Indosat's IP Transit Bandwidth:

Can Broadband Spread to the Masses?

In this post, I just want to archieve some facts and opinions given by Arjun Trivedi (NSN-Nokia Siemens Networks) in the first Indonesian Broadband Summit held last April in Jakarta. The title above is taken from Arjun Trivedi's slides, since to my opinion, that title describes the most important message from his presentation. (I was not attending this event and just found his presentation material through a link referred from Mastel website). But don't forget to balance the question with "Where are the Masses?" :-)

Some facts/statistics as of end 2007 (source UN, Ovum, ITU, BIS Sharapnel, Operators, NSN Market Intelligence):

Indonesian DSL Market

The title might be broader than I could write here right now. However, as usual, the thread will be continued later if I get some new interesting information.

Though several small ISPs do offer DSL access, PT. Telkom is surely the market leader with 97+% market share (of the number of customers). You may see the number of customers as of Q2/2008 in the picture below. There are totally around 400 th. subscribers (we might compare with the number/statistics mentioned by Arjun Trivedi - however it is for Q4/2007). More than the half of it (200+ thousands) resides in Java.

Indonesia's (ICT) Statistics

In this post, I just want to archive some statistics, in particular those with regards to telecommunication / ICT development in Indonesia. If it is not explicitly mentioned, the values are valid as of Q1/2008.

ICT statistics (KOMINFO):

• Wireline telephone subscribers : 8,758,096
• FWA (limited mobility) subscribers : 9,069,827
• Mobile subscribers : 81,834,590
• Internet subscribers : 2,543,649
• Internet users : approx. 10 times of the number of Internet subscribers
• Fixed broadband subscribers/users : approx. 241,000 (ADSL, Cable, WiFi Hotspot -- actually it shall be more!)
• Mobile broadband subscribers (3G, 3.5G, ...G :-)): 5,500,000 (??)
• Density: PSTN-->3.89%; FWA-->4.03%; Mobile-->36.39%; Total-->44.31%

• 182 ISPs (only 43 active -- number of subs. as mentioned above)
• Computer penetration : 0.01-0.05% (less than 5 PCs / 100 households)
• Thousands of public Internet kiosks (Warnet)
  

P2P Internet Traffic : The Elephant

Since several years ago, peer-to-peer issues have been a central topic on IP networking. This has been pictured in the program of some top networking conferences e.g. INFOCOM, SIGCOMM, ITC, GLOBECOM etc. What actually makes P2P issues so important?

One possible answer can be seen in the graph at the right. According to Telegeograhpy, as of 2007 54% of the total Internet traffic is originated from P2P applications which are in the forms of video (61%), audio (11%) and other formats (27%).

Intra-Asia IP Traffic

This post is closely related to the previous one, except that here we discuss about Internet traffic not about bandwidth capacity. I found an interesting statement given by a REACH official:

"In 1998, 100% of IP traffic between countries in the APAC was transmitted via the US. In 2004 it was around 30% (estimated)."

Intercontinental Internet Bandwidth

Recently, Telegeography has published some information and facts for the telecommunication's world in the last year. One of the facts is related to the international IP bandwidth as given in the picture (at the top).

Domestic Bandwidth Price

According to APJII, the Indonesian ISP Association, this year the price of international Internet bandwidth in Indonesia tends to decrease (reported by detik.com on 29/January/2008). Last year the price was in the range of USD 2.200 - USD 2.500 for each Mbps. But since early 2008 it has been reduced to around USD 1.800 for fiber access and around USD 1.300 to USD 1.500 for satellite links.