Teknovis

I noticed that INEX had record traffic levels last Wednesday afternoon of approximately 8.7Gbits/s according to the INEX traffic statistics.

I assume that this record was due to people watching the Irish Minister for Finance announce the annual budget for 2010 online thanks to RTE.

Hourly Graph (aggregate/bits) (Copyright INEX)

I described the previous INEX records in Record Traffic For Irish Budget 2009 Announcement and Record Traffic For Second Irish Budget 2009.

Yearly Graph (aggregate/bits) (Copyright INEX)

Tags: INEX, Ireland, Peering, RTE

Last October I described the format of the Irish budget, and how it is broadcast online by RTE, in Record Traffic For Irish Budget 2009 Announcement. At that time INEX had a record throughput of approximately 5.3Gbits/s.

Last Tuesday the Irish Minister for Finance had to announce a second annual budget for 2009 because he got the first one wrong. (I will not comment on his incompetency on this blog ;) It appears that this caused a new record throughput of approximately 7.2Gbits/s according to the INEX traffic statistics.

I should have thought of putting a copy of the Day Graph here earlier in the week :(

Tags: INEX, Peering, RTE

Traffic shaping is the practice of examining IP packets (but not the payload), and treating them differently, based on their characteristics. This usually consists of assigning packets priorities which determine how efficiently they are processed by networking equipment.

Traditionally, all packets within the network have been treated as equals. This worked fine when most traffic required only a small amount of bandwidth for a short durations, as is typical in web browsing and email exchange. So most ISPs were relatively happy to peer together, and carry each others traffic for free.

However, as the Internet has developed people are requiring and consuming greater amounts of bandwidth. Often this bandwidth is required across multiple ISPs’ networks, and ISPs and the intervening carriers, are increasingly charging based on the amount of traffic being exchanged. One of the main causes of significant bandwidth being required is P2P applications.

I read an article recently describing how a Canadian court granted the country’s largest ISP permission to apply traffic shaping on its core network. In particular, the court granted the ISP permission to traffic shape P2P traffic. This will effect both the retail customers and the smaller ISPs who buy wholesale services. The full article is Regulators back Bell Canada choking indie ISP traffic.

As far as I am aware, no Irish ISPs currently do any traffic shaping. However, I might be wrong about this!

My opinion is that traffic shaping will become increasingly necessary in the future to ensure that a minority of customers do not consume the majority of resources to the detriment of the majority of the users. However, I am very concerned about the prospect of traffic shaping being used by ISPs to prevent competitive services such as VoIP being used.

Would you be happy if you knew that your ISP was traffic shaping?

Tags: ISP, P2P, Peering, Traffic Shaping

Last Tuesday the Irish Minister for Finance publicly announced the details of the 2009 budget for Ireland. The format of this announcement is that the Minister reads a long speech, containing all of the budget details, in the lower house of the parliament. It was a widly anticipated event this year, due to the current economic downturn.

The speech was broadcast live by the state broadcaster RTE on television, radio, and online. RTE peer at INEX, which is the main Internet Exchange in Ireland. The INEX traffic statistics are available online, and they clearly show a massive peak in traffic corresponding to the speech on Tuesday afternoon, in week 42. The maximum throughput during this time was approximately 5.3Gbits/s. I believe that this is a record for INEX!

It is not a surprise that the speech caused a new throughput record, because a new record was also set during the speech last year. (Last year this occurred in early December).

In general, the throughput appears to be influenced most by RTE broadcasting major sporting events online. For example, the peaks in June 2008 and August 2008 coincide with the European Football Championships and the Olympics respectively. It is also possible to see the distinction between the first and second halves of Champions League football matches on the daily graph.

Tags: INEX, Peering, RTE