[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose

[John Pettitt <jpp@cloudview.com>]

Brett Glass wrote:
> > > I know that BitTorrent's primary use is to infringe copyrights and 
> > > deprive folks like me of compensation.
> >
> > I would be careful making statements like this, I'm fairly sure 
> > BitTorrent Inc wouldn't appreciate it.
>
> BitTorrent, Inc., like the "old" Napster and Sharman, appears to know 
> exactly what its software is used for and apparently turns a blind eye 
> to the fact that it is primarily used for illegal purposes.

Timeout -  I can say with a high degree of certainty (I used to work 
there) that BitTorrent Inc. is very much focused on legitimate uses of 
the protocol.  Unlike Napster et al. BitTorrent doesn't include content 
discovery in the client - it's simply another transport protocol.  This 
was an intentional move to keep the protocol neutral.   If you been 
following you'll know that BitTorrent Inc. has deals with major studios 
to deliver their content using BitTorrent.   When you block that traffic 
you will start getting calls from users who want to know why you are 
blocking the movie they paid for ... (and as I'm sure you know if 
bandwidth is expensive support calls are even more expensive).
> Wholesale bandwidth is in the range of 5-10 cents a gig for 
> bi-directional traffic.
>
> Wholesale bandwidth is not sold by the gigabit; it's sold in megabits 
> per second per month.
Yep.  95th percentile billing, normally with a minimum.
> At 50 gigs/mo this works out to $2.50 to $5.00 on a $40/mo plan. Of 
> course this isn't last-mile bandwidth, but it seems to be the apples 
> you're comparing.
>
> Not correct. If you assume a steady state rate, 100 gigabytes per 
> month equals about 384 Kbps continuously, including overhead. Given 
> that bandwidth at wholesale costs $100 to $500 per megabit per second 
> (and if you can get it for me for less, I'd very much welcome it -- go 
> ahead and try!), this works out to $26 to $128 per month. And in 
> reality, you need more than this because there are "rush hours" when 
> demand goes up by a factor of 8. So, to support a quota of 50 
> gigabytes, you'd need to charge more than $40 per month just to cover 
> your bandwidth costs.
>
> I invite you to get into this business. You'd be a great competitor. 
> We'd send you all the P2Pers and within months, you'd be bleeding money.
That's interesting an 8 to 1 peak ratio is way off from the web sites 
I've run where we saw 2x or 2.5x peaks.     Tier one bandwidth was about 
$28 per megabit per month (95th percentile) and tier two was around $10 
last time I had to negotiate a multi gigabit deal (about 12 months 
ago).    Granted if you are a DSL ISP and you are having to pay back 
haul ATM charges from the local phone company that adds a lot to the 
cost - but that's an artifact of your infrastructure. 

At $28 your 384k (100GBytes) costs about $11 a month or around 11 cents 
a GB.  If you go with the cheap provider it falls to 3.5 cents per 
GB.     Add a factor for peaks and the costs go up to 22 cents a GB and 
7 cents a GB respectively  (keep in mind BitTorrent traffic is less 
peaky that web traffic). 

John
(P.S. Brett - I can't name the ISP's in my example on list but if you 
ping me off list I'll point you in the right direction).