An Incomplete but Informative Observational Report
NZIX - was previously NZGate, but changed to NZIX
in 1996.
NZIX - maintains several hispeed links to USA
(2 mBps) and 128 kBps to Australia.
Barely relevant statistic:
One week in Feb of 1996, (5th to
12th), out of 20 visits from New Zealand to the University of Queensland
Journalism web pages, 13 were through Nzgate. (UQ Stats) 7
New Zealand's first link to the Internet was between
The University of Waikato in Hamilton and the University of Hawaii, using
undersea analogue cable.
Although NASA provided generous support for the
costs at the U.S. end of the link, no subsidy was provided by the New Zealand
government, so all the link costs had to be recovered by charging the users.
The New Zealand end was paid for by six New Zealand universities, the US
end paid for by NASA as part of the Pacific Communications programme (PACCOM).
Costs are paid by the ISP on a "committed traffic
volume" basis, where Volume charging for NZGate was begun late in 1990
using metering software developed at Waikato University, running on a 286-based
IBM PC. The metering has been progressively improved since
then, and by 1995 was done on a Sun SPARCStation.
Aside
Re spam (Dec1994)
"Another potential problem was that of paying
for unsolicited incoming e-mail. As an example, a user at Auckland had
a colleague in the U.S. who e-mailed him a 200 kbyte file. The remote system
kept on aborting after sending about 150 kilobytes, and did this every
half hour over a three-day weekend.
By the time we realised what was happening many
tens of Megabytes had been received, which we had to pay for. We don't
have a good answer to this - after all we have no control over systems
outside New Zealand - but in more than four years operation it hasn't happened
often enough to be worth worrying about." - New Zealand's Internet Gateway
8
NZGate began in April 1989 with the 9600 bps analog
cable link to Hawaii. Connectivity inside New Zealand was provided by PACNET
(Telecom's public X.25 service) and Coloured Book software at each of the
universities.
PACNET access speeds were mostly 9600 bps.
The Kawaihiko network began in April 1990, using
9600bps leased lines to provide TCP/IP communication among seven unis.
By 1992, most of the lines had been upgraded to 48kbps. 8
In early 1992 New Zealand had three research and
education networks.
DSIRnet was a leased-line network linking sites
in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR).
MAFnet was a private X.25 network linking Ministry
of Agriculture and Fisheries sites.
These were interlinked with the universities'
Kawaihiko, providing a single TCP/IP network known as Tuia.
In 1992 the government restructured the DSIR and
MAF, creating eleven partly-independent Crown Research Institutes (CRI's).
In that year major upgrading was done, with a
new Tuia network built, linking all universities, the CRI's, the National
Library and the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology.
This network was built around a frame relay backbone,
with digital leased lines to smaller sites.
The increased capacity reflected in increased
traffic through Internet link to the outside world, by this time provided
by a 128kbps satellite circuit to NASA Ames research centre in California.
NASA ceased to fund the US half at the end of
1993.
By then, revenue to the gateway's operators was
sufficient that no change in service (extra charges) was needed.
Each customer of the international service paid its own way, so the later addition of commercial users was simple. They were treated in exactly the same way as educational or research customers.
Early Signs - Free Internet?
"User pays" for internet might be expected to
cause less use than if services had been provided without charge to the
end user.
"The only attempt" (Jan '96) "made in New Zealand
to determine the extent of this effect 9 failed to find consistent evidence
from total traffic figures that the effect even existed. It is interesting
to
conjecture to what extent demand might have been
constrained by restricted performance resulting from limited availability
of funds for capacity increases. " 4
Or conversely, how far costs to the end user
can drop with good management and commercial encompassment.
"In an environment where more efficient use of
available bandwidth will produce a direct financial reward to the user,
it is to be expected that significant interest will be shown in means of
providing such efficiency."
Hmmmmm.
"Certainly such interest has been shown in WWW
caching software." 4 (Harvest Object Cache)
It is also important that where customers are accustomed to paying by traffic flow, it is easy to establish a basis for charging for the use of a caching server, and for the provision of WWW caching as a self-supporting or even potentially profitable service.
1994 - work on links between NZ and major commercial backbone providers, with NSFnet routing ending on 25 April 1995.
While a small amount of commercial traffic was
carried on New Zealand's international links early in 1995, the volumes
involved only became significant from May of that year.
By the end of 1995 research and educational institutions
accounted for only half of New Zealand's international Internet traffic.
Commercial international traffic was roughly half Tuia network and half on other links to the Hamilton gateway. (nb this needs to be clarified, when you look at the details - re Barely relevant statistic - not all commercial traffic was in fact commercial, but I dare say the reverse is true as well. BH - theres never enough time to look at everything)
1995 (end of) - the highest-capacity connection on the Tuia network was the 512kbps link from The University of Waikato to Vic U Wgtn. Most links were at 64kbps or 128kbps.
A major reason for the volume of commercial traffic
on the Tuia network is that most universities
Other than Waikato have in the past acted as
commercial ISP's. Another reason is geography. New Zealand is a long, thin
country, with centres located so that links form a logical backbone.
There is no apparent advantage to the construction
of a separate commercial backbone to mirror the Tuia network.
Some ISP's operate long-distance links between
particular cities, and a few ISP's operate their own international links,
but in early 1996 the overwhelming majority of traffic to and from New
Zealand continued to flow through the Hamilton gateway, now the New Zealand
Internet Exchange (NZIX).
NZIX - Ram Management's system configuration...
1) Ram Management has a leased line to a NZIX (New Zealand Internet Exchange) at Waikato University. This line currently has a 192-kbit per second capacity plus compression.
2) A Cisco 2511 Router / Access Communications Server at Ram Management. This router has:
- 2 Synchronous Serial Ports
- 16 Asynchronous Lines (Up to 115,200 Baud)
- Ethernet Connection
3) There are 4 dedicated servers running 24 hours a day.
1. Unix Mail Server.
2. Unix News Server.
3. Unix Web Server for web hosting.
4. NT Server for hosting web sites.
4) Ram Management has a number of aerials set up around Hawke's Bay. Microwave aerials can transmit data at theoretical speeds of 1.6 megabits per second. The speed in real terms is around 70 Kbytes per second - very fast !!.
5) A 50 pair phone line has been run into Ram Management office.
6) There are 16 Dial Up phone lines connected to 16 x 33,600-baud modems.
References
1 Internet access in NZ FAQ http://www.faqs.org/faqs/internet-access/new-zealand/
2 NZ ISP Directory
http://www.wiredkiwis.co.nz/isps/globenet.htm
3 The Internet Index homepage http://new-website.openmarket.com/intindex/index.cfm
(Return to Early Signs - Free Internet? )
4 Fifth Int. W W W Conference May 6-10 1996 Paris
France - The Harvest Object Cache in NZ
http://www5conf.inria.fr/fich_html/papers/P46/Overview.html
(NB - I found this site well worth taking the time to read)
5 WWW Caching on JANET http://wwwcache.lut.ac.uk/caching/janet/
(Return to WWW caching software)
6 Wired Kiwis http://www.wiredkiwis.co.nz/
7 UQ Stats - Access statistics for the Journalism
web pages.
http://www.uq.edu.au/stats/journalism/1996-02-12-00-53-20.html
(Return to Barely relevant statistic)
8 New Zealand Experiences with Network Traffic
Charging
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/net/Accounting/nze.html
(Return to Aside )
9 Carter, M. and Guthrie G. Pricing Internet: The NZ Experience, Discussion Paper9501, Dept of Economics, U Canterbury, Jan 96 ftp://ftp.econ.lsa.umich.edu/pub/Archive/nz-internet-pricing.ps.Z (Return to Early Signs - Free Internet? )
10 Tech stuff
http://www.ramhb.co.nz/technical.htm
11 Some of this material has been drawn from
articles on the internet which may have had copyright notices. However,
the one instance where I found this had been observed and a copyright notice
was present, was at http://www.infotech.co.nz/homemay/oxtime.html
So thanks to Paul Reynolds, who lives in Auckland
(1996), is co-author of The Internet - A New Zealand Users Guide, and included
-
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1996, All rights reserved.
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