[cooperation-wg] "How the Internet works and ..."
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Roland Perry
roland at internetpolicyagency.com
Sun Mar 23 09:35:04 CET 2014
In message <A71A4D42-3FA7-4A9E-9A77-C57574885140 at gmail.com>, at 21:29:44 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014, Gordon Lennox <gordon.lennox.13 at gmail.com> writes >"For most of us, the internet is what you’re looking at right now—what you >see on your web browser. Which is fine for content on a web page, but you and I are looking at emails "right now". >But the internet itself is comprised of the fiber optic cables, the >servers, the proverbial series of tubes, all owned by the companies >that built it. The content we access online is stored on servers and >transmitted through networks owned by lots of different groups, but the >magic of the internet protocol lets it all function as the integrated >experience we know and, from time to time, love." > >http://qz.com/187034/how-the-internet-works-and-why-its-impossible-to-know-what-makes-your-netflix-slow/ > >Well maybe sort of... It's more of a "where might the bottlenecks be", and focusses too much on a US-Centric view of national connectivity architecture. And the whole idea of "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" is so 1990's. One part they leave out is contention (or under-capacity) *inside* the ISP at the end of the 'last mile'. Here in the UK it's that bit of the network which matters too. My connectivity has a 'last mile' (unusually it is about a mile, for many subscribers it's more) over legacy copper, and I can pay to have better technology applied to squeeze more data down it; but then there's a '15 miles' to a regional hub and a '50 miles' to London, both of which are still *inside* my ISP and both of which affect the speed I observe [anecdotally it's how much the ISP spends on provisioning that '15 miles' which is most crucial]. These three bottlenecks (1, 15, 50 miles) are an extra layer that affects all content of course, before we start wondering if there's a priority between that router in London and servers run by YouTube, Netflix, or BBC iPlayer. -- Roland Perry
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