MWEB secures SAT-3 bandwidth: details

“We pick up the capacity at Telkom’s Barrack Street Exchange in Cape Town and then backhaul it to our Data Centre in Parow, over a Telkom Next-Gen fibre link,”

Wouln't using the technology make it current gen? Pfft.
 
Qwikslver said:
Wow. Soooooooo many details.
Click to expand...
It contains more details than the initial report and also answers a few questions we posed there.

1.
Derek Hershaw, CEO of MWEB ISP, explains that they use Telkom’s network to carry traffic from the Melkbosstrand SAT-3 landing station, eliminating the need for MWEB to co-locate and invest in infrastructure at the landing station.
Click to expand...

2.
“We pick up the capacity at Telkom’s Barrack Street Exchange in Cape Town and then backhaul it to our Data Centre in Parow, over a Telkom Next-Gen fibre link,” Hershaw says.
Click to expand...

3.
MWEB does not have immediate plans to use this service to make SAT-3 bandwidth available at their Johannesburg node.
Click to expand...

4.
“For now the plan is to use it just to service the requirements of our Cape Town IPC node customers, but in the event of a failure on SEACOM we can use it to service our customers out of Johannesburg as well,” said Hershaw.
Click to expand...
 
YAPOC said:
“We pick up the capacity at Telkom’s Barrack Street Exchange in Cape Town and then backhaul it to our Data Centre in Parow, over a Telkom Next-Gen fibre link,”

Wouln't using the technology make it current gen? Pfft.
Click to expand...

How many telco's (world-wide) have a full NG-SDH network? (i.e. fully migrated)
 
Le^stat said:
So let me know when its worth going to mweb...
Click to expand...

I am still on mweb uncapped and in CT, my gaming has been REALLY good, direct downloading is really good as well(400+kbps), torrents are slower at the moment but local torrents should run fine(i have NO local torrent accounts so thus i need to download from int sites :( ). Overall my experience has been good now for the past few weeks on 4meg uncapped....
 
MickeyD said:
How many telco's (world-wide) have a full NG-SDH network? (i.e. fully migrated)
Click to expand...

Not many, but mostly because NG-SDH is OLD technology, just a way to claw back some return on investment on SDH backbones. Real next gen operators have moved on to Ethernet directly over DWDM or fibre.
 
Well done to M-Web for finally waking up. It's not really a proper network yet, but at least M-Web subscribers can now pretend they're in London (except for the snow of course).
 
I am really happy abput this, I finally have an ok int ping, can play online again.... FINALLY...

Although currently its just black ops, and thats on Mwebs network so ping is great!!!!!!

Well done mweb.

Capetown rules
 
ads said:
Not many, but mostly because NG-SDH is OLD technology, just a way to claw back some return on investment on SDH backbones. Real next gen operators have moved on to Ethernet directly over DWDM or fibre.
Click to expand...

Feel free to add a little more info, been hearing about telkoms next gen network since the football
 
ads said:
Not many, but mostly because NG-SDH is OLD technology, just a way to claw back some return on investment on SDH backbones. Real next gen operators have moved on to Ethernet directly over DWDM or fibre.
Click to expand...
Telkom has national DWDM backhaul rings... supplied and installed by Nokia-Siemens.
 
ads said:
Well done to M-Web for finally waking up. It's not really a proper network yet, but at least M-Web subscribers can now pretend they're in London (except for the snow of course).
Click to expand...

I guess it too a while for MWeb to tweak their shaping (and AUP) before they felt comfortable letting users loose on SAT-3 bandwidth! This feels like a partial vindication for 9 months of lousy pings for CT users (routing via Jhb and SEACOM).

So, we now have 2 separate classes of MWeb users, those (like me) in CT on SAT-3 24/7, and those in Joburg (etc) on SEACOM. I'm sure that business users have had the SAT-3 routing for some time.

Several tracerts indicate that all international traffic from CT goes via SAT-3, even to the Far-East and India, which would logically be shorter via SEACOM.

IMO the first real test of this setup will occur when one of the cable links break (local or London leg), and MWeb try to redistribute traffic. That could be interesting...
 
if Mweb`s not using the SAT 3 capacity but paying for it can i use it in the meantime ... i promise to stay under 1.5 tera a month :-)
 
Gordon_R said:
So, we now have 2 separate classes of MWeb users, those (like me) in CT on SAT-3 24/7, and those in Joburg (etc) on SEACOM.
Click to expand...

Any sensible international architecture should look like this. Joburg and CT are 30ms apart, and there's no reason why the Atlantically-challenged should get the benefit of short international pings.

Gordon_R said:
Several tracerts indicate that all international traffic from CT goes via SAT-3, even to the Far-East and India, which would logically be shorter via SEACOM.
Click to expand...

That's the basic flaw in M-Web's approach. AFAIK, both routes go to Europe, and they connect to the rest of the world there. I'm not on M-Web, so I can't check. It all depends on who their transit providers are. Even with SEACOM, you can't actually get further east than India, but it's certainly better for getting to the east. During the last major SEACOM outage (which was actually in the Med), M-Web transited in Mumbai.

Gordon_R said:
IMO the first real test of this setup will occur when one of the cable links break (local or London leg), and MWeb try to redistribute traffic. That could be interesting...
Click to expand...

My guess is that everything is static to one place currently, and all that would happen is that the traffic would move to one cable. Balancing across multiple dynamic routes during a failure is much more interesting, but gets better results...
 
ads said:
<<snip>>

During the last major SEACOM outage (which was actually in the Med), M-Web transited in Mumbai.

My guess is that everything is static to one place currently, and all that would happen is that the traffic would move to one cable. Balancing across multiple dynamic routes during a failure is much more interesting, but gets better results...
Click to expand...

I remember MWeb-SEACOM transiting in Mumbai, it made for some very interesting tracerts ;-)

Realistically, there is very little outside Europe and America that generates much traffic in SA. I also suppose that given the cost of Telkom IPC capacity, it is more cost effective for MWeb users in CT to go via SAT-3 than Jhb-SEACOM.

My guess is that MWeb has something like 1-2Gbps on SAT-3, and 5-10Gbps on SEACOM, so that if there was a failure on SEACOM (which has historically been more common), service would be very congested (better than the previous scenario anyway).

The balance would shift if MWeb got bandwidth on EASSY and WACS, but this may only happen late in 2011 or 2012. I also hope the SAT-3 (and other capcity) keeps pace with demand. MWeb usage seems to grow rapidly, with increments in capacity alternating with periods of congestion in the last 9 months.
 
Gordon_R said:
I remember MWeb-SEACOM transiting in Mumbai, it made for some very interesting tracerts ;-)

Realistically, there is very little outside Europe and America that generates much traffic in SA. I also suppose that given the cost of Telkom IPC capacity, it is more cost effective for MWeb users in CT to go via SAT-3 than Jhb-SEACOM.

My guess is that MWeb has something like 1-2Gbps on SAT-3, and 5-10Gbps on SEACOM, so that if there was a failure on SEACOM (which has historically been more common), service would be very congested (better than the previous scenario anyway).

The balance would shift if MWeb got bandwidth on EASSY and WACS, but this may only happen late in 2011 or 2012. I also hope the SAT-3 (and other capcity) keeps pace with demand. MWeb usage seems to grow rapidly, with increments in capacity alternating with periods of congestion in the last 9 months.
Click to expand...

I would bet that Mweb has struck a deal with Telkom so they can temporarily increase their bandwidth on SAT 3 when Seacom goes down.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X