Why can't ISP's split local/international?

H

headstrong

Expert Member
Joined
May 10, 2006
Messages
1,099
Reaction score
0
Hi guys

I remember a while ago somebody explained to us why ISP's cannot differentiate local from international traffic...Does anybody have a link to the explaination?Coz I dn't beleive that it cannot be done

Thanks
 
Um, I think it is a physical limitation of the fiscal generator matrix.
 
I do know that my ISP sells me a "Telkom Local" product... and just renames it.
It seems that the ISPs just route the stuff and don't check where it's going. I don't see how hard it can be to redirect it through either local or international based on IP...
 
I know it can be done coz I did it at my house in a test scenario..I suppose money is a big factor
 
To my knowledge, Telkom report to the major isp's only data usage (upload & download) in 50-60min intervals, not its destination, meaning, IS for example, have no idea what percentage of the usage reported is local or international, they can only put you on local only once you reach x softcap, then kick you off once you reach y hardcap.

There was a "movement?/volley?/whatever" when the adsl regs came out that local must not count towards the cap and telkom was told to comply and enable that isps can tell the difference.

Telkom said they would comply by a certain date, then turned around and said they were not the ones responsible for local/international distinctions and passed the buck onto the isp's.

If i recall correctly, they still say telkom & SAIX are separate, even though they have the same vat number ....
 
Well I do know that IS has a tendency to um.... borrow packets and reassemble them now and then.
/admits to have been contacted
 
headstrong said:
I know it can be done coz I did it at my house in a test scenario
Click to expand...
At your house you're tracking the usage of 2 logically independant Internet connections. The fact that one is intl and the other is local only, is immaterial from an accounting perspective.

The difficulty lies in segregated accounting for local & intl on a single logical connection.
 
Roman4604 said:
At your house you're tracking the usage of 2 logically independant Internet connections. The fact that one is intl and the other is local only, is immaterial from an accounting perspective.

The difficulty lies in segregated accounting for local & intl on a single logical connection.
Click to expand...

Ahh yes...But I had 2 pppoe servers...a single connection from my PC to a pppoe server-A and then 2x pppoe connections from pppoe server-A to pppoe server_B....That way it looks like the client has 1x connection but you are correct, it is 2x logical connecetions...
 
Last time I looked into this the following was revealed:
1 - Traffic being sent from the ADLS modem/router gets flagged at the DSLAM wether it's international / local.
2 - It is then routed according to that flag through SAIX, directly after the DSLAM.

This means that you have to go to the DSLAM and record the local/international packets individually, once it's left the DSLAM, the opportunity to "count" is gone.

More information was not made available.
 
If we were up to international standards we wouldn't have to worry about all this international and local cap nonsense. We'd all have uncapped :/
 
headstrong said:
That way it looks like the client has 1x connection but you are correct, it is 2x logical connecetions..
Click to expand...
Now with your discreet local & intl path, imagine if (hypothetically) you had an additional ~500 000 PCs on your LAN and you had to maintain a local & intl counter for each (and you bloody better not mix up traffic counting between the PCs). That's the task at hand.

EDIT: PS forgot to mention the 500 000 PC are using (hypothetical) DHCP so you cant use the source/destination address in the packets to determine which PC to count the traffic toward.

stoke said:
1 - Traffic being sent from the ADLS modem/router gets flagged at the DSLAM wether it's international / local.
2 - It is then routed according to that flag through SAIX, directly after the DSLAM.
Click to expand...
Naah, the determination of whether a packet is destined for local or intl is not know at the DSLAM or even the ESR (big ass routers all the DSLAMs connect to). That happens further upstream so no easy way to distiguish & count outbound local & intl traffic at that point.

At the point in the network where you can distinguish local from intl you no longer have anything in the packet/path telling you which one of the ~500 000 possible ADSL users the packet should count toward (you have to retrospectively figure it out).

Just works out very unviable from a cost and unscalable from a technical perspective.
 
Last edited:
Roman4604 said:
Now with your discreet local & intl path, imagine if (hypothetically) you had an additional ~500 000 PCs on your LAN and you had to maintain a local & intl counter for each (and you bloody better not mix up traffic counting between the PCs). That's the task at hand.
Click to expand...


Well ISP don't charge businesses per PC on the businesses intranet...each business will have a modem that pppoe' out to the ISP...But I understand what you are trying to saying

How does the ISP fit into the whole scenario? I understand that my modem makes a pppoe to the ISP's pppoe server...who has the radius if the ISP is reselling adsl accounts ( assume IS)? telkom or the ISP?
 
But then how come we sometimes get int on local only accounts from IS??
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X