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%).

The Hengchun Earthquake : A Flashback to the Networking Disaster

On one side, it is no doubt that network reliability is important. But on the other side, "important" is something that can be understood differently. Thus, network reliability might be implemented variously according to some tradeoffs. What portion given to reliability aspects depends on the owners' strategy and policy. Let's consider an example.

MIC-1

The MIC-1 (Moratelindo International Cable - One) is a new undersea optical cable owned by the youngest national backbone operator Moratelindo (Moratel). It links Batam to Changi (Singapore) and was scheduled to start the service by Q1/2008. Moratel's partner at SG side is ViewQuest (does anybody know about this company?). An SG-partner other than SingTel is rare :-) ! Moratel is a quite progressive backbone operator. Its market share of revenue would possibly be larger than ICON+ for this year.

SMS : A 23 Years Old Cash Cow

Want to know how rich are the cellular operators todays ? Let us make some calculations! For simplicity, we only consider Short Messaging Service (SMS) offered by the largest domestic operators: Telkomsel (TSEL), Indosat (ISAT) and Excelcom (XL).

The SMS production rate of these operators is quite fantastic. As of 2007, together they produced more than 400 mn SMS each day on average. Peak SMS production rates, which may happen in some special occasions, could be in the range of 1.5 to 2.0+ of the average rate. Detail average production rate for each operator can be seen in the picture.

Broadband : Penetration & Pricing

There might be several definitions for the term "broadband". Here I use this term to refer to services which run on channels / infrastructures other than those utilized by traditional voice services. Usually it should be faster than 64 kbps. Practically it denotes services using xDSL, FTTx, Cable/HFC or novel state-of-the-art wireless technologies. Some numerical data presented in this post are taken from Point Topic and REACH. Those are actually rather outdated (2004). But some characteristics concluded from those might remain similar and could be used as an approximation for our current situation.