SEACOM unused capacity

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Greylor

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I was looking up SEACOM on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_African_cable_system ) and see that it has a 1.28Tbit/s design capacity that is only running at 100Gbit/s. Thats less than 10% capacity.

Is that still true? Is the article just out of date? If it is true, does anyone know why? Given all the speed issues that people are having, I would think that the capacity could be well used.
 
Your wikipedia link is incorrect, should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_(African_cable_system).

1.28Tbit/s is the theoretical limit, but not all of the fibres in the cable have been 'lit'. In any case the fibre itself is a small fraction of the total system, with expensive equipment (and contracts) at landing stations needed to process the data onwards. There is no point in installing extra capacity that isn't going to be immediately used.

Accoring to the SEACOM press release on MyBB in July 2009, the initial capacity was 80Gbps.

Given that traffic at the Joburg Network exchange (JINX) is currently running below 1Gbps, the figure of 100Gbps seems enough for current needs AFAIK.

The current capacity of SAT-3 is listed as 120Gbps, with plans to increase this to 340Gbps (may have already taken place).
 
Murmaider said:
jinx only shows the peering traffic between the connected ISP's over the jinx link, it is not a true reflection of the bandwidth utlization of the country as a whole.
Click to expand...

I know that. I was just using is as one of the few publicly available traffic graphs, the rest are not public AFAIK...
 
There is no point in installing extra capacity that isn't going to be immediately used.
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I think there are plenty of shaped and throttled people who would be quite happy to use it :P

So what you are saying is that the capacity is there, but they havn't turned it on fully because they either havn't got the infrastructure in place to use it yet and/or don't feel the need for it yet?
 
Greylor said:
I think there are plenty of shaped and throttled people who would be quite happy to use it :P

So what you are saying is that the capacity is there, but they havn't turned it on fully because they either havn't got the infrastructure in place to use it yet and/or don't feel the need for it yet?
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Don't forget the cost. They still have significant costs to recover on their initial investment.
 
Greylor said:
I think there are plenty of shaped and throttled people who would be quite happy to use it :P

So what you are saying is that the capacity is there, but they havn't turned it on fully because they either havn't got the infrastructure in place to use it yet and/or don't feel the need for it yet?
Click to expand...

SEACOM is dependent on SEA-ME-WE 4 for onward transit (as we have all discovered this weekend). So, even if they lit all the fibres, it would achieve precisely nothing at this stage...
 
Greylor said:
I was looking up SEACOM on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEACOM_African_cable_system ) and see that it has a 1.28Tbit/s design capacity that is only running at 100Gbit/s. Thats less than 10% capacity.

Is that still true? Is the article just out of date? If it is true, does anyone know why? Given all the speed issues that people are having, I would think that the capacity could be well used.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't rely on Wikipedia for up-to-date info on the uptake of capacity regarding undersea cables. Not all deals struck by business are made public immediately. Capacity on the cable has been sold though, but everything has not been lit up yet.

Hilton Tarrant - Moneyweb: Bandwidth explosion = cheaper broadband
"Ironically, despite the lack of interest in Seacom capacity at launch, the entire allocation of capacity has been sold out. Neotel's executive head of technology Angus Hay confirms that the operator is in discussions with Seacom to have more capacity lit up."
Click to expand...
 
Srack0verflow said:
is that 80gigabit just for us, or the whole of east-africa?
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South Africa is the largest user of bandwidth south of the Sahara AFAIK.

An article on MyBB in July 2009 indicates that TENET-DFA purchased 10Gbps bandwidth on SEACOM:
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/8919.html

I can't guess what amount of bandwidth MWeb and other ISPs have purchased.

Edit: The wikipedia article on SEA-ME-WE 4 indicates that its capacity is 1.28 Tbit/s, but this serves a huge number of countries, and tens of millions of users. The article on SEA-ME-WE 3's capacity (built in 2000) states its capacity has been upgraded (2007) to 48X10 Gbit/s.
 
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A bit of a late reply, but someone from TENET (SA Universities Tertiary Network) posted this very useful graph, showing their real-time bandwidth usage on SEACOM:
http://monitor.net.tenet.ac.za/cacti/graph_view.php?action=tree&tree_id=6&leaf_id=874

Traffic is currently hovering around the 1GBpbs. This one connection is their primary connection to the rest of the world.

Edit: If all of the universities and tertiary institutions in SA together are currently using 1Gbps, that gives you some idea of the total usage in South Africa, relative to the capacity of SEACOM. I hope that (plus the DFA-TENET press release) answers your original question!
 
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