Cell Life

On the subject of Net Neutrality, the editorial team at Telephony Online (www.telephonyonline.com) wrote an interesting note on “traffic shaping”, or the practice by telcos to inspect packet traffic and do bandwidth prioritization. User-generated content or P2P traffic like Video (YouTubes of the world) are congesting the global network and telcos want to control this kind of traffic and police it. The telephonyonline article can be accessed at :

http://telephonyonline.com/software/commentary/dpi-p2p-traffic-0519/

Editor Carol Wilson at telephonyonline.com writes “By enabling ISPs to identify P2P traffic and employ “traffic shaping” that prevented that traffic from taking over available bandwidth during times of congestion, DPI was supposed to give ISPs greater control over the quality of their networks.” DPI stands for “Deep Packet Inspection” or an ability to inspect data traffic and apply throttle control above certain loads. “Latency-sensitive traffic such as voice and video would get one level of QoS, best-effort data another, and P2P another. “, according to Wilson.

Wilson gives example of BCE, Canada which resorted to traffic shaping causing a headache for various ISPs. This has angered independent ISPs whose traffic is being policed by BCE.

Network Congestion and Traffic Shaping are vexing problems with great ethical and regulatory implications. We feel telcos should be able to recoup their heavy return on investment in the core network and have a right to resort to some bandwidth control eg we disagree with the idea that a couple of apps like YouTube and others should hog the bandwidth on the internet and all other low volume apps are left hanging high and dry with regards to bandwidth availability. But a balance is needed via regulation where carriers cannot control the internet traffic to the extent that they inhibit internet from functioning and end up throttling innovation instead.

MT

Attended a webinar today on Mobile backhaul networks conducted by Wireless Week magazine (www.wirelessweek.com). There is plenty of debate on what kind of backhaul works best for emerging 4G wireless techs ie WiMAX or LTE. Folks from Juniper and France Telecom/Orange and some others argue that an IP/MPLS (Multi-protocol Label Switching) backbone is a great solution for a broadband mobile backhaul. Their reasoning :

• MPLS is good mobile back haul for 2G, 3G,  LTE and WIMAX with both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic
  • Supports flexible connectivity and configuration models
• MPLS is future proof due to its flexibility
  • Can support whatever 4G networks come up with
• Mobile backhaul requires flexibility due to other reasons as well
  • Many technologies co-exist
  • Multiple deployment scenarios co-exist

MPLS has delivered in landline networks. It is adaptable and hence a good candidate for mobile backhaul. One does not know how mobile backhaul evolves so it is better to position a flexible tech like MPLS for mobile backhaul to accommodate the various configurations which 4G folks come up with.

Our take - Juniper and similar firms have invested heavily in MPLS equipment, so this standard fits them naturally. If we talked to the WiMAX equipment folks, they would like a wireless WiMAX-based backhaul. Fiber manufacturers would like a predominance of a fiber-based backhaul. Really, all of these are viable backhaul solutions.

MT