back to article Telcos' revenge is coming as SDN brings a way to build smart pipes

Telcos, terrified of being consigned to eternal status as ‘dumb pipes’, keep coming up with crazy ideas for over-the-top (OTT) high-value services. In America, they’re buying entertainment properties. Comcast, easily that nation’s most hated company, purchased NBCUniversal so that they’d have something to transmit over all that …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And we will all be introduced

    to a new and exciting world of flexible and inventive multi-tier differential pricing so you can pay the same no matter what you would like to have. I assume they will advertise free Internet access that is worthless if you don't buy some expensive packages that never seem to fit entirely what you need.

    Each time I read about something "smart" I can't stop but wonder how dumb can we all be.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And we will all be introduced

      to a new and exciting world of flexible and inventive multi-tier differential pricing so you can pay the same no matter what you would like to have.

      Actually, no. The unremarked cleverness of multi-tiered pricing and bundling is to minimise what economists refer to as consumer excess, by getting as many people as possible each to pay as much as they are willing to. If you had true flat pricing, then either some people would be unable to afford the service, and since it has a low marginal cost that's a loss of income to the vendor. Equally, at the higher end, flat pricing means people who would be willing to pay more for the same product get it for far less. Rather than selling different things for the same price, the magic is to sell much the same thing for different prices.

      This is why Philips offer a zillion models of shave, each infinitesimally different from the adjacent ones, often by trivial differences like an additional low battery LED, or a pointless LCD display. Or why grocery retailers flog 40 different types, sizes and packages of baked beans. In the mobile phone market there's not only the whole aspect of how many minutes, texts and MB your contract offers, but variations on handset contributions. And even for exactly the same deal there's always ways of differentiating the skinflints from the spendthrifts, so that the skinflints still buy, but the seller doesn't have to give the same deal to those willing to pay more - by "web exclusives", discount codes, complicated cashback offers, or tying the best deal (eg) to a small handset contribution in a market where most people mistakenly think that "free" means free.

      If you shop carefully (as the skinflints do) this huge choice is better for you, although this means forgoing whatever trinkets of differentiation are used to get other people to pay more. If you don't shop carefully (or believe you "need" full Premier League TV coverage, or all the latest US shows) then the implication is you are happy or indifferent to paying more. Industry maximises profits, consumers maximise choice.

      1. nijam Silver badge

        Re: And we will all be introduced

        @ Ledswinger

        Ummm ... only if this is not a monopoly market. Lots of companies make/sell shavers, so that's an example of a non-monopoly market. Network services, not so much. If I want to watch (say) Archery, Badminton, and Curling, but have no interest in premier league football, tough - I get all or nothing on a sports bundle, and almost all that money is going on the pointless football coverage. For example.

        My personal definition, BTW, of a monopoly market is one where any supplier has more than 30% of the market. I realise that's not a widely agreed definition, but I think it gives a fairly good representation of whether or not there is genuine consumer choice.

      2. Mark Price

        Re: And we will all be introduced

        Theoretically.... It also leads to lost sales & revenue.

        In my case I would pay for some sports, some US TV etc, but cannot find the paqckage that supplies my wants at a price I am willing to pay. The outcome? I don't attempt to satisfy my wants in this area (oh well) and the supplying company doesn't maximize its revenue. The market has failed, and it is an economics lose/lose. Why does the market fail? Because of the disproprotionate power of the individual seller to the individual buyer. There is nothing I can do to influnece the seller to change their product or pricing.

  2. P. Lee

    Confusion Reigns!

    I'm not sure Mark has this right.

    >Within a few years, every data centre worth the name will be supported by a complex, powerful and fully configurable SDN.

    I know it isn't the same, but how many organisations have a really detailed and comprehensive QoS policy? Why not? It is too hard to track all the apps on the network and quite frankly, it doesn't matter too much. VoIP gets a boost, but often that's on its own hardware too. Its easier to run a couple of gb cables and then we know how much capacity we'll use.

    Then there's the SLAs. The number one thing about service is that you don't mess with operational systems, especially if they are high-value to the organisations. Seriously important stuff often gets its own kit - switches, even firewalls, cabling and servers. This is because software/people which/who do lots of different dynamic things are more likely to foul up, be it through user error or simply code complexity. Switches move finite, (almost) fixed size blocks of data, so they tend to be very reliable, running one software instance for months even years. A web browser running flash with lots of dynamic content, not so much, even on a good day.

    SDN brings dynamic reconfiguration across the network. Certainly, the actual reconfiguring of kit doesn't actually take long, so SDN does two things: it cuts out that annoying change control and means you don't need those expensive techies to reconfigure kit. That leaves two questions: (1) is your change control serving a useful purpose? and (2) do you have anyone left who actually understands your network when it all goes pear-shaped? There's actually a third question - how do you troubleshoot something which is that dynamic? Do you log every flow?

    There is another major issue with the article's premise: the data centre is not the same as a carrier network. Data centres have short distances and very cheap network capacity upgrades. The carriers' problem is that running cable over the wide area is enormously expensive. That is why we still have copper and not fibre everywhere. Its hard for the telco to recoup costs - not the fibre costs, but the fibre laying costs. The fibre itself is possibly cheaper than copper and offers more service capability.

    In a data centre I can over-provision and use SDN to allocate the use. I can run fast backups overnight, I can configure up new databases and give them priority over MS updates for W10. I can provision new web-servers and out-allocate connectivity. Actually, I can do all of this without SDN, but that's another issue.

    The carrier problem is that the Melbourne to Sydney fibres are running at capacity. Without digging a 900km trench I can't do much to add new capacity. SDN doesn't fix my capacity problems, it just virtualises my configuration targets. If the network is overcommitted, no amount of reconfiguration is going to fix it. I could add new services, but everyone encrypts everything so unless they really trust me and we do an encrypt/decrypt function to allow "the network" to understand the traffic we're pretty much out of luck. Personally, I'd be running VPNs across the carriers' networks as a matter of policy. I don't need them accidentally treating my voice UDP traffic as torrents, thanks.

    Really, I don't want a "smart" network. I may want a high-capacity network, but that is different. I want a network which does what I've asked it to do, reliably. Intelligence leads to complexity, and I've already got 99 problems without that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Confusion Reigns!

      I agree with P.Lee completely about enterprise and about long-haul. A couple of comments to add about the last mile...

      As seriously heavy duty CDNs become the real battle ground of the future (particularly for net neutrality -- neutral access to carrier CDN, at reasonable prices, is going to be a big fight), more of the heavy network loads will be local. Even the Olympic access will mainly be a local issue (each CDN will have one connection to Japan and will then provide fan-out to local users, much as over-the-air broadcasting works).

      SDN is not a game-changer for this. Various forms of bandwidth-on-demand have been around for decades (since the first ATM and Frame Relay networks). And mobile networks have been increasingly deploying policy control systems that allow different users and different apps to receive different levels of service over the same air interface, using well established technologies.

      It is only recently that consumer fixed broadband has become fast enough that it is really worth differentiating different levels of service (and tying it to backhaul service levels). Again, this can be done today but SDN may make it slightly easier to manage. But configuring (almost static) consumer virtual pipes to the CDN is not what SDN was invented for -- it was invented for a much more dynamic enterprise environment. And best of luck with using SDN to have any impact on latency (which is dominated by speed-of-light delays, that CDNs can't do anything about, for gaming).

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Higher and higher resolution

    Why??

    I mean, I understand why some might want/need high resolutions for certain reasons, but mass broadcasting of athletics in stupidly high resolutions?

    It's depressing how the spectacular advances in communication speeds and capacities are being negated by dumping higher and higher resolution crap down the pipes.

    It mirrors the waste of processor advancements over time, I suppose.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Higher and higher resolution

      I mean, I understand why some might want/need high resolutions for certain reasons, but mass broadcasting of athletics in stupidly high resolutions?

      So, I can paraphrase you as saying that 625 lines PAL should be enough for anybody?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        625 lines

        Ha ha, I suppose I should be thankful you didn't also mention monochrome or 405 lines.

        Perhaps a few more than 625, but I can't see these massive resolutions being useful enough except for really large screens.

        1. AndrueC Silver badge
          Meh

          Re: 625 lines

          Wasn't there a survey a while back that reckoned less than a third of UK households sat close enough to their TV to benefit from even HD?

          And anyway I know quite a few people (most actually) who don't care enough to even ensure they have selected the HD version of a simulcast channel.

    2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      3D Broadcasting

      Time will come when you have a virtual model of the Olympic Stadium on your coffee table at home. You sit at the end of the table to see the sport that interests you, the rest of the family sit around the other edges to watch what they want to watch.

      Remote Controls will be a thing of the past, unless you use it to spin the table round so that you get the comfy chair.

  4. David Roberts

    Net Neutrality?

    So there is a big punch up going on about paying the carrier extra for preferential services.

    This article is bigging up SDN as a method of implementing this kind of service, such as paying extra to get high resolution video or low latency gaming.

    Is the only difference that the consumer pays for access to all high resolution video, not just Netflix, and the providers are not allowed to buy preferential access on behalf of their customers?

    Some possible grey areas here.

    1. rh587

      Re: Net Neutrality?

      "Is the only difference that the consumer pays for access to all high resolution video, not just Netflix, and the providers are not allowed to buy preferential access on behalf of their customers?"

      I think that is the general idea yes. You can choose to subscribe to a particular network product - a highly asynchronous pipe for streaming down 4K, a symmetric or up-biased pipe for backups, low-latency gaming or VOIP, etc, etc.

      Whether a customer with a streaming-profile is accessing BBC iPlayer or Netflix, or uses their gaming profile with PSN or XBL makes no difference - one service is not gaining an advantage over the other, but the network is better optimised for either of them than it is for pushing backups offsite or up into the cloud.

      Very nice in principle. Making it work, and ensuring people get the right product (I'm thinking of all those users who "get their Internet through Internet Explorer") is quite another...

      Probably easier and more reliable to just poke us all a symmetric 1Gbps Fibre connection and stuff some QoS in the exchange to ensure VOIP, Streaming protocols and Gaming all get preferential treatment for low-latency.

    2. Preston Munchensonton
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Net Neutrality?

      Given the Title II status of ISPs now in the US, they won't be able to just introduce this as another tier of service. They will have to comply with the dictums of the almighty FCC and whether whims they may listen to.

      Frankly, nothing to see here at this stage. SDN will have no impact until all the appropriate palms are greased.

  5. sjiveson

    SDN?

    Hmmm, nice to see a steady flow of networking articles on the Reg but there is absolutely no definition of what they mean by SDN. It means many things to many people; it might be helpful if an author provided at least a loose definition. At the moment, the only concrete example I've seen in white box switching and Cumulus.

  6. Number6

    Telcos, terrified of being consigned to eternal status as ‘dumb pipes’, keep coming up with crazy ideas for over-the-top (OTT) high-value services.

    As far as I'm concerned, that's all I need from the telco in the first instance and is all I rate them on. I don't use any other internet service from them.

  7. Kev99 Silver badge

    What I don't understand is why, other than greed, the speed the telcos deliver is so much less than cable or fibre. The main pipes in the 'net are copper, not fibre or cable. Bell Labs developed a GaAs based modem in mid 60s that was capable of 500 - 600 Mbps+ over copper but it was never put into the market. Curiouser and curiouser.

    1. Aitor 1

      Pipes are fibre

      Nobody uses copper for main trunks, it just makes no sense.

      As for high speed copper, yes, possible, but only a short distance.

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