Three down, Telkom to go: MWEB peering progress

Paul Hjul said:
I suspect that Telkom will find itself having to revisit its peering attitude to MWeb as soon as it wants to roll out video over IP which seemed to have been quitely mentioned with todays announcement. Basically the moment Telkom wants to bring out Telkom media it is stuffed if it can't sell its product to consumers on MWeb and other ISPs following suit. I suspect that without any fireworks Telkom will quitely freely peer with MWeb about a week before fireworks in which MWeb brings out a new range of consumer products which are heavily bundled and launched with massive fireworks (eg a landline with free calls, router, 5 gigs (internation) data a month, 50 gigs local data, 3g router and 500 megs a month, unlimited Facebook and other selected social networking sites, an 8ta contract and phone with free calls and call forwarding from the 8ta phone to the landline, a DO music and video store (with downloads not using your cap) and Telkom Media- for about R500 a month on a 24 month contract)
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IBIWISI
 
Veneficus said:
Potion are you using MWEB for your ADSL or Telkom?
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I'm using MWeb ADSL.

And yes, my network performance to my MTN hosted servers is now considerably better, but not sparkling.

Connecting to any of my clients' SAIX-connected servers remains a nightmare. Can anyone recommend an ADSL access provider that offers great performance irrespective of the destination network? I imagine there must be a few astute business folk out there who can capitalise on this Mexican standoff!

I support the MWeb cause, albeit vicariously — I'm no martyr!
 
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lol. I'll bet you MTN backtracked pretty quickly when their largest customer (Hetzner) started bitching about their unwillingness to peer for free locally... that is why some services aren't routed locally and others are.

The power of money hey...
 
icyrus said:
...idea about how this industry works...
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This has prompted me to try and find out...

1. Where can I find a comprehensive ISP matrix showing who is peered with whom? Directly or through CINX/JINX/other ISP, through off-shore INX, or not at all?
2. Where can I find a map or schema showing the physical SA internet topology: interconnection points, latency and bandwidth?

It wold be nice if there was wiki somewhere with all this info. My online searches have found wonderful illustrations, tables and maps of the European and North American networks and their interconnections; not so for South Africa. Does anything like this exist?

I'm on a mission!
 
Still no news from Telkom? I'm getting impatient. I wanna see changes.
 
BTW the local peering situation is not unique. There is a similar dispute going on between Level 3 and Comcast currently ... http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=201412

Although Telkom & MWEB are both access heavy networks, MWEB is the more balanced with content (News24, DSTV, Supersport etc.) while Telkom has nothing significant. Telkom as the larger IP access only network (by virtue of its histroical monopoly) is demand fees for interconnection/peering from MWEB just like Comcast is demand from Level3.

While the nature of the local dispute is similar, the particulars are different. Where as there will be large IP traffic imbalance between Comcast & Level 3, locally it should be roughly equal, therefore Telkom's demands are pretty much unjustified.

Similarly, I think Comcast's demands are also unjustified as it is their customers initiating the traffic flows (content access) thus creating the situation where increased network (upgrade) costs are being generated (for both).
 
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Roman4604 said:
Although Telkom & MWEB are both access heavy networks, MWEB is the more balanced with content (News24, DSTV, Supersport etc.) while Telkom has nothing significant. Telkom as the larger IP access only network (by virtue of its histroical monopoly) is demand fees for interconnection/peering from MWEB just like Comcast is demand from Level3.

While the nature of the local dispute is similar, the particulars are different. Where as there will be large IP traffic imbalance between Comcast & Level 3, locally it should be roughly equal, therefore Telkom's demands are pretty much unjustified.

Similarly, I think Comcast's demands are also unjustified as it is their customers initiating the traffic flows (content access) thus creating the situation where increased network (upgrade) costs are being generated (for both).
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From a content provider perspective I don't think there is any SA company that features or peaks my interest. The net should remain neutral and not focus on who provides the infrastructure or the content. 99% of my surfing relates to international content.
 
So... anyone know whats happening here?
Any news on Telkom peering with MWEB? I want to play on SGS servers again :P
 
No news so far I'm afraid. Telkom appear to be more focused on those allegations of corruption then to finding ways of lowering their expenses (i.e. use local instead of international bandwidth).
 
voolstruis said:
I find it astonishing how selfish some people here can be. Did anybody demanding lower prices from peering even consider that maybe MWeb started selling uncapped at below cost? It's entirely possible they funded the venture using their capital. They have to recuperate costs and stopping to pay for transit is one way to do this. I suppose you will all be much happier if MWeb paid for transit and went back to capped accounts. The cheaper prices will come when smaller ISPs get entry because they don't have to pay for transit and MWeb will drop prices even further. By that time they would have recuperated their costs.

What Telkom fail to state with their "best practice" is that transit in international environments cost just a fraction of what it costs here. They can't compare a fully competitive environment with one that isn't. What would be ironic is if all content moves away from Telkom. They should then be forced to pay for transit no matter how much they bitch it is "unfair".


I don't get this. If they resell Telkom accounts they have nothing to do with peering. If Telkom refuse to peer with anybody there is nothing they can do about it.
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Hah! Telkom would NEVER pay, or at least admit to paying. They would try to make an under-the-table deal and make sure no-one finds out, or try to bully the ISPs. I do agree with what MWEB is doing here and hope it pays off for them in the long term. It would only help other ISPs as well, especially smaller ones that can't negotiate on their own.
 
bekdik said:
And now for a financial benefit to the end user?
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grand example of south african consumer thinking... we just want everything at next to nothing. how about free peering just opening up, making more things possible first and then saving for us at the end ?
 
voolstruis said:
I don't get. I can't find anything worthwhile hosted by Telkom. It seems like they are holding on to a monopoly legacy that they are entitled to payment for transit.
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I have seen SGS mentioned in the forums before, but then again, I am not a gamer, so it doesn't affect me.
 
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