© xchangepoint 2001 growing your ip business by addressing your customers’ broadband content...

© XchangePoint 2001

Growing Your IP Business by Addressing Your Customers’ Broadband Content Needs

Keith MitchellChief Technical Officer

Global IP CarriersConference19th April 2002


Overview

Customer Needs and Drivers

The Kendra Way Forward

Broadband Capacity and Connectivity

Case Study: XchangePoint’s Interconnect Platform

Conclusions, Questions


Customer Needs and Drivers


Growing Your IP Business

Your Broadband Content Customers: Small/Medium ISPs Hosting Providers Content Providers Content Distributors/Aggregators ASP, Portal, Domain Name Providers Corporates/Enterprises Consumers


The Business Needs ofBroadband Content Customers

Revenue generation

Meet existing business models

Cost reduction

Quality of service, backed up by SLAs

Supplier choice and diversity

Flexible contracts

Stable relationships

Fast provisioning


Technical Needs of Broadband Content Customers

High resilience and availability

Low latency

High throughput

Efficient content distribution via caches via multicast

System and network security

Optimal mixture of peering and transit connectivity


Where are your BroadbandContent Customers ?

Neutral co-location facilities

Carrier co-location facilities

Close to established Internet Peering Points (IPPs)

Corporate data centres

Close to off-line content industry centres

On the end of an ADSL/Cable Modem/UMTS connection

This discussion will focus on first 3 (highest volume) categories


Why do Content Customers cluster ?

Choice of ISPs who locate backbone nodes in single building operated by co-location provider

Cheap in-building connections to IPPs over point-to-point private interconnections

Interconnect operator need not be same organisation as co-location provider

MAN bandwidth much cheaper and faster than WAN

Improved throughput and latency performance

Critical mass of suppliers in single location creates competitive market in provision of capacity, transit and services


Drivers for Growth

Growth in the number of customers connected to Internet may have tailed off

But their demand for bandwidth is getting broader: faster end-station connections bandwidth intensive applications such as video Web and application hosting permanent connections

Looks like 200%/year traffic growth is not unrealistic

Successful providers need to cope with and exploit this


A Key Growth Driver - Traffic

Annual CAGR%

0%

50%

100%

150%

200%

250%

300%

350%

Source: LINX


Observations

Key to survival and success in current market conditions is to address users’ service requirements

This does not need to be complex

Internet broadband capacity is crucial

Revenue will grow, even if not at same %age rate as traffic

Cost-efficiency of bandwidth provision very important


Meeting Broadband Consumers’ Needs

Give them the content they want and are prepared to pay for

Make it easy for them technically Improve viewing experience

Open standards

Make it easy for them commercially Don’t constrain payment models

Compatible payments standards and systems


Meeting Content Providers’ Needs

Deliver their content efficiently over your network General purpose delivery tools Multicast Application-neutral caching architecture Use public IPPs

Give them flexibility and a good deal Interconnect platform

Enable them to obtain revenue from selling content This pays your bills too !


The Kendra Way Forward


The Kendra Initiative

Research project investigating transport layer for distribution and delivery of high bandwidth content over the Internet

Promotion - bringing together content creators/owners and specialists from industry and academia

Running trials - global content distribution system


The Kendra Initiative - Vision

Provide: Consumers Content Creators/Aggregators Service Providers Hardware/Software Vendors

with a framework that will allow these organisations and individuals to be rewarded for their efforts

Create an open and freely available content delivery architecture with no barriers to participation in its creation

Build a system that allows users to pay for content Provide an alternative to the current spate of old-Napster type

peer-to-peer systems


The Kendra Initiative:Current Status

Discussion lists up and running

Promotion continues through Kendra

Participants speaking at trade events

Network Trial up and running

Aims to enable interoperability between different

content delivery networks


The Kendra Initiative & Multicast

Multicast is a key technology for enabling efficient distribution of content over Internet

Technical solutions exist, but need to drive this to production deployment

Important component of The Kendra System's content delivery topology

Wrapping multicast up as a component of a viable content delivery business model


Multicast Applications

Multicasting is, as yet, an un-tapped opportunity!

“natural” users of multicast > high bandwidth requirements

“conferencing” applications make stringent demands of network resources / capabilities

“distribution” applications, e.g. Internet TV, multiple site file updates, etc. are very effective over multicast

Important to note the increase in current network efficiencies as a consequence of implementing Multicast

Too much emphasis has been placed on broadband media rich content


Broadband Capacityand Connectivity


Ways of ObtainingBroadband Internet Capacity

Transit: One provider agrees to give another’s customers access to the whole Internet they always charge for this !

usually volume and/or capacity based

typically across private interconnects, with SLA

Peering: Two providers agree to provide access to each others’ customers commonly no money changes hands: “settlement free”

barter of perceived equal value

simple commercial agreements

traditionally across public peering points, no SLA

Other models exist


What Are Optimal Connectivity Arrangements ?

How many Transit providers ? 1 is not resilient enough 4 is probably too complex - non-deterministic routing and

failure modes use bandwidth brokers or transit aggregators ? do they have a stable future ? how easy is it to change providers ?

Is Peering worth doing ?

Public or Private interconnection ?

Best insurance is to be able to have flexible interconnect arrangements with multiple providers


Public and Private Interconnect

Public Interconnect

Internet Peering Point (“IPP” or “IXP” or “NAP”)

multiple parties connect to shared switched fabric

commonly Ethernet based

many-to-many connectivity

Private Interconnect

single circuit dedicated between two parties

typically used for transit

Virtual Interconnect


The Evolving Interconnect Market

Peering Transit

PrivateHigh Volume

QoSNorth America

Traditional

Public Traditional Opportunity


Advantages of Virtual Interconnect

Lower cost than WDM/SDH private interconnect

Easy migration path from public peering through to private interconnect

Can mix public and private services on same port

Ability to combine and present multiple services on same port

Faster provisioning of services

Greater flexibility


XchangePoint’s Broadband Interconnect Platform


Architecture Overview

Present at multiple co-location sites per city

Dark fibre metro ring connecting all sites in city

Ethernet switches at all sites

DWDM equipment at major sites

Gigabit Ethernet between switches and sites

10-Gigabit capable


Ethernet Switches

2Black Diamond/Alpine Ethernet switches at each site

All switches are non-blocking

Each switch at each site connected to one of two separate wavelength overlay networks


DWDM Configuration

system supports 32 protected wavelengths () per fibre ring

Initial configuration 8 3 for backbone

5 for customer OPIs

Remaining can be used to increase backbone or OPI capacity in 1Gb/s or 10Gb/s increments


Interconnect PlatformAdvantages for Content Customers

Improves Internet connectivity resilience and bandwidth

Reduces provider to consumer hop-count, latency

Simplifies the IPP joining procedures allows content providers to interconnect efficiently

Creates ready market for buying capacity/transit from carriers/ISP in single location


Service Status

London network has been live for over 10 months

Service trial completed successfully

Now 25 customers, generating revenue Peaking >150Mb/s traffic Have met SLA targets throughout

Paris and Frankfurt planned during 2002


Conclusions, Questions


Conclusions

There are growth opportunities with content customers, but the technical and commercial models need to evolve

Kendra is one vision of how to do this

Internet broadband capacity is key

Cost-efficiency of bandwidth provision very important

Multicast important element of this

More open standards work needed on both content distribution and payment systems


Conclusions

Address broadband content customers’ needs via:

Addressing their service quality requirements Flexible interconnect arrangements Single presentation of combinations of

interconnect services Virtual interconnect services Sell transit via interconnect platforms


Questions ?


Contact Details

Keith Mitchell

www.xchangepoint.net

[email protected]

+44 20 7592 0370

Daniel Harris

www.kendra.org.uk

[email protected]

Presentation: http://www.xchangepoint.net/info/GlobalIPcarriers.ppt

Paper: http://www.kendra.org.uk/documents/

kendra-an-introduction-draft-current.html

© xchangepoint 2001 growing your ip business by addressing your customers’ broadband content...

Documents