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April 5, 2003

Transit Exchange: Defining the Problem (Part 1)

Cheap Internet bandwidth is a problem now and in the future for all of these networks. Users on these broadband networks will have 50-100 times the bandwidth of the dial-up connections they have today. If only 10% of Utah's dial-up users migrate to high-speed Internet connections, Utah will increase overall bandwidth needs 5-10 times.

UEN is deploying a network upgrade this sumer with (initially) 10 times more capacity in the backbone and 6 to 600 times the capacity to the edge. This will ensure that the 100% annual Internet bandwidth growth we've experienced the last four years will continue or increase, at a time when we are unlikely to get any new funding for Internet service for a while. Other high-speed networks have similar needs to lower costs even as their networks continue to grow.

Utah has had a regional peering exchange for over a decade, and it continues to grow and become more successful. With the network growth anticipated in the next year throughout the state (metro-area Ethernet, UEN's GigE network, UVCN and UTOPIA municipal networks), regional peering will become more and more important to Utah. Regional peering can reduce Internet costs somewhat (more as more regional networks peer), but it has a more significant impact on network performance, supporting high-speed and low-latency applications.

The major factors that can drive down Internet bandwidth costs are: proximity to the Internet "backbone" (the places where major Internet networks are); open and aggressive competition with low barriers to select/change carriers; a variety of choices to reach the outside world and other networks (ie transit, paid peering, free peering, local peering); large amounts of bandwidth being peered, bought and sold; economies of scale through leveraged and shared infrastructure.

These factors also contribute to an important part of Utah's network future: the development of better network infrastructure within Utah, within the intermountain region, and to the rest of the nation.

Tomorrow: How a Transit Exchange could support Utah's network future.

Posted by pete at April 5, 2003 1:12 PM