Cambridge Bandwidth Consortium makes high speed simple [Telecom]

I've just heard about a new idea that I think deserves more exposure.

The Cambridge Bandwidth Consortium is a group of heavy-volume Internet users, who have arranged to provide their members with shared DS3 access to the net, with DS1 (T1) speeds available at each member's endpoint.

Here's how it works:

  1. Each member pays 0/month for a connection to a colocated MUX and access to DS3 (45 Mbps) bandwidth.

  1. Each member pays for their own connection to the colo cage, typically via T1, which is about 0/month.

  2. Each member is free to use the bandwidth as they choose: there's no port-blocking or "traffic shaping".

Of course, ~$350/month is out of the range of most home users, but many of the participants sublet their T1's to other tenants, houses, roommates, etc.: if you had six other apartments in your building willing to pay $50/month for unfettered business-class service, it would be price-competitive with VeriCast et al.

As the major ISP's get more arrogant and more willing to intrude in their customers' Internet usage, CBC and others like it will become more and more attractive as alternatives to the usual players.

I'm curious how many other areas and organizations are doing this, and if the bandwidth is being shared between Internet and traditional circuit-switching usage, or if it's strictly IP.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Horne
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This is my point exactly. You either have to terminate that DS-3 at an ISP, or become one yourself. While I know you can obtain the requisite router hardware and software to do that (and that's more than just the two circuit types you described), you eventually need to interchange or peer with someone to send/receive your traffic to the rest of the world.

As a small community group, you don't have much leverage in negotiating peering arrangements, and purchasing connectivity from a Level 3 type company won't come cheap.

Shoot - I work for a Fortune 50 company with offices and circuits all around the world and _we_ purchase ISP connections. Given the internal pressure to reduce costs, if there was a way to do that any less expensively we would.

That's not to say you couldn't do it and provide better service than a large ISP would. I cut my chops on the old pre-Internet, CBBS/Fidonet environment and applaud your initiative. But subject to evidence to the contrary, I don't think you'll be able to do it any cheaper.

***** Moderator's Note *****

Thanks for the compliment, but it's not my initiative.

I don't know the current architecture of the Internet, but I doubt that connections to "level 3" entities are that hard to come by, and serving a DS3 is their stoke in trade. Although we could debate the exact meaning of "ISP", the CBC isn't one in the traditional sense, since it doesn't provide email service and similar functionality. Ergo, the end users become their own "ISP" for this discussion: the CBC is simply a "Pipe and Ping" connection.

More to the point, the "where" of the connection isn't a factor anymore, so it doesn't matter where CBC gets their connection from: the usual administrivia such as IP block assignments can be handled at either the ISP or the higher levels, and what counts is that the CBC isn't party to any ISP's dream of having a "data coral" around "their" users.

I think the Consortium is a great idea, not because of the (admitedly high) costs per connection (although as I said, sharing wouldn't be that hard), but rather because it's another example of how end-users are the real decision-makers in the Internet, and of how ISP's which are unable or unwilling to abide by a "Bits are bits" policy will see themselves marginalized over time.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)

Reply to
Robert Neville

I might be interested in something like that but the catch here is right in the definition of this consortium: "a group of heavy-volume Internet users." The current asymmetrical broadband access and traffic shaping model exist because the majority of users don't fit that description; they are happy to surf the web, send & receive e-mail, instant message, play videogames, etc. and, if I approached them to switch from cable or DSL, most would say that they're getting higher speeds (the finer points of that conclusion being irrelevant to them) for the same price or less.

Add to that the cost of linking the users sharing the T1 and the fact that someone in the consortium will become the de facto support technician for this group and the consortium faces some serious challenges.

Nonetheless I wish them well and look forward to hearing how their initiative is faring.

Reply to
Geoffrey Welsh

I'm sorry to follow up repeatedly, but it just hit me that there's a question that begs to be asked:

If the value proposition for the additional six users is that this is 'unshaped' bandwidth, then the users who would be interested in this kind of access are also the kind that are probably going to want to run their BitTorrent (or other high bandwidth application) 24/7.

If I'm splitting my T1 seven ways (me+6), I'm getting 1.544/7 = 220 Kbps, or just over 25 KB/sec. I saw your comment that "please remember that ADSL is usually about one-half of T1 speed, but only in _one_ direction: uploads can be as slow as 64 Kbps!" but that isn't true where I live.

I'm in Bell Canada territory and have 3rd party DSL service using Bell Canada's wholesale "Gateway Access Service." I believe that my service is rated at 5 Mbps down and 800 kbps up, so it's half of a T1 upstream but over three times a T1 downstream; the last time I downloaded a big torrent (an OpenSUSE installation DVD) I was receiving over 500 KB/sec. I have uploaded files at over 75 KB/sec. The service includes e-mail, USENET, etc. and I pay $35 a month (there are less expensive 3rd party DSL providers) and the DSL modem I bought cost less than anything I know of that can terminate a T1. In Telus territory it appears that the speeds are slightly higher. Bell Canada even offers 16 Mbps DSL (at a higher price of course.)

Recently, Bell Canada has come under criticism for imposing traffic shaping on their Gateway Access Service (peeking into the PPPoE traffic to look for P2P traffic.) Even when their shaping is in effect, I still get about 50 KB/sec (not Kbps) download speed. Sure, that's a tenth of the speed I think I should be getting, but it's still twice what I'd get from a seventh of a T1.

Getting back to your comment about DSL being half a T1's speed, I guess I should observe that there are 'slower than T1' DSL (and cable) services out there but they're labeled "Essential" or "Lite" and cost twentysomething dollars per month. But I'm guessing that almost anywhere you can get

768K/128K FastAccess DSL Lite service for $20/month, you can probably also get 6M/512K FastAccess DSL Extreme 6.0 for $43/month. Verizon's 3M/768K Power service is more reasonable (more upstream for much lower price) at $30/month.

Perhaps it's time to retire that summary of DSL speed?

Reply to
Geoffrey Welsh

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