© XchangePoint 2001 Growing Your IP Business by Addressing Your Customers’ Broadband Content Needs Keith Mitchell Chief Technical Officer Global IP Carriers Conference 19th April 2002

© XchangePoint 2001 Overview  Customer Needs and Drivers  The Kendra Way Forward  Broadband Capacity and Connectivity  Case Study:  XchangePoint’s Interconnect Platform  Conclusions, Questions

© XchangePoint 2001 Customer Needs and Drivers

© XchangePoint 2001 Growing Your IP Business  Your Broadband Content Customers:  Small/Medium ISPs  Hosting Providers  Content Providers  Content Distributors/Aggregators  ASP, Portal, Domain Name Providers  Corporates/Enterprises  Consumers

© XchangePoint 2001 The Business Needs of Broadband Content Customers  Revenue generation  Meet existing business models  Cost reduction  Quality of service, backed up by SLAs  Supplier choice and diversity  Flexible contracts  Stable relationships  Fast provisioning

© XchangePoint 2001 Technical Needs of Broadband Content Customers  High resilience and availability  Low latency  High throughput  Efficient content distribution  via caches  via multicast  System and network security  Optimal mixture of peering and transit connectivity

© XchangePoint 2001 Where are your Broadband Content Customers ?  Neutral co-location facilities  Carrier co-location facilities  Close to established Internet Peering Points (IPPs)  Corporate data centres  Close to off-line content industry centres  On the end of an ADSL/Cable Modem/UMTS connection  This discussion will focus on first 3 (highest volume) categories

© XchangePoint 2001 Why do Content Customers cluster ?  Choice of ISPs who locate backbone nodes in single building operated by co-location provider  Cheap in-building connections  to IPPs  over point-to-point private interconnections  Interconnect operator need not be same organisation as co- location provider  MAN bandwidth much cheaper and faster than WAN  Improved throughput and latency performance  Critical mass of suppliers in single location creates competitive market in provision of capacity, transit and services

© XchangePoint 2001 Drivers for Growth  Growth in the number of customers connected to Internet may have tailed off  But their demand for bandwidth is getting broader:  faster end-station connections  bandwidth intensive applications such as video  Web and application hosting  permanent connections  Looks like 200%/year traffic growth is not unrealistic  Successful providers need to cope with and exploit this

© XchangePoint 2001 A Key Growth Driver - Traffic Source: LINX

© XchangePoint 2001 Observations  Key to survival and success in current market conditions is to address users’ service requirements  This does not need to be complex  Internet broadband capacity is crucial  Revenue will grow, even if not at same %age rate as traffic  Cost-efficiency of bandwidth provision very important

© XchangePoint 2001 Meeting Broadband Consumers’ Needs  Give them the content they want and are prepared to pay for  Make it easy for them technically  Improve viewing experience  Open standards  Make it easy for them commercially  Don’t constrain payment models  Compatible payments standards and systems

© XchangePoint 2001 Meeting Content Providers’ Needs  Deliver their content efficiently over your network  General purpose delivery tools  Multicast  Application-neutral caching architecture  Use public IPPs  Give them flexibility and a good deal  Interconnect platform  Enable them to obtain revenue from selling content  This pays your bills too !

© XchangePoint 2001 The Kendra Way Forward

© XchangePoint 2001 The Kendra Initiative  Research project investigating transport layer for distribution and delivery of high bandwidth content over the Internet  Promotion - bringing together content creators/owners and specialists from industry and academia  Running trials - global content distribution system

© XchangePoint 2001 The Kendra Initiative - Vision  Provide: n Consumers n Content Creators/Aggregators n Service Providers n Hardware/Software Vendors with a framework that will allow these organisations and individuals to be rewarded for their efforts n Create an open and freely available content delivery architecture with no barriers to participation in its creation n Build a system that allows users to pay for content n Provide an alternative to the current spate of old-Napster type peer-to-peer systems

© XchangePoint 2001 The Kendra Initiative: Current Status  Discussion lists up and running  Promotion continues through Kendra  Participants speaking at trade events  Network Trial up and running  Aims to enable interoperability between different content delivery networks

© XchangePoint 2001 The Kendra Initiative & Multicast  Multicast is a key technology for enabling efficient distribution of content over Internet  Technical solutions exist, but need to drive this to production deployment  Important component of The Kendra System's content delivery topology  Wrapping multicast up as a component of a viable content delivery business model

© XchangePoint 2001 Multicast Applications  Multicasting is, as yet, an un-tapped opportunity!  “natural” users of multicast > high bandwidth requirements  “conferencing” applications make stringent demands of network resources / capabilities  “distribution” applications, e.g. Internet TV, multiple site file updates, etc. are very effective over multicast  Important to note the increase in current network efficiencies as a consequence of implementing Multicast  Too much emphasis has been placed on broadband media rich content

© XchangePoint 2001 Broadband Capacity and Connectivity

© XchangePoint 2001 Ways of Obtaining Broadband Internet Capacity  Transit: One provider agrees to give another’s customers access to the whole Internet  they always charge for this !  usually volume and/or capacity based  typically across private interconnects, with SLA  Peering: Two providers agree to provide access to each others’ customers  commonly no money changes hands: “settlement free”  barter of perceived equal value  simple commercial agreements  traditionally across public peering points, no SLA  Other models exist

© XchangePoint 2001 What Are Optimal Connectivity Arrangements ?  How many Transit providers ?  1 is not resilient enough  4 is probably too complex - non-deterministic routing and failure modes  use bandwidth brokers or transit aggregators ?  do they have a stable future ?  how easy is it to change providers ?  Is Peering worth doing ?  Public or Private interconnection ?  Best insurance is to be able to have flexible interconnect arrangements with multiple providers

© XchangePoint 2001 Public and Private Interconnect  Public Interconnect  Internet Peering Point (“IPP” or “IXP” or “NAP”)  multiple parties connect to shared switched fabric  commonly Ethernet based  many-to-many connectivity  Private Interconnect  single circuit dedicated between two parties  typically used for transit  Virtual Interconnect

© XchangePoint 2001 The Evolving Interconnect Market

© XchangePoint 2001 Advantages of Virtual Interconnect  Lower cost than WDM/SDH private interconnect  Easy migration path from public peering through to private interconnect  Can mix public and private services on same port  Ability to combine and present multiple services on same port  Faster provisioning of services  Greater flexibility

© XchangePoint 2001 XchangePoint’s Broadband Interconnect Platform

© XchangePoint 2001 Architecture Overview  Present at multiple co-location sites per city  Dark fibre metro ring connecting all sites in city  Ethernet switches at all sites  DWDM equipment at major sites  Gigabit Ethernet between switches and sites  10-Gigabit capable

© XchangePoint 2001 Ethernet Switches  2 Black Diamond/Alpine Ethernet switches at each site  All switches are non-blocking  Each switch at each site connected to one of two separate wavelength overlay networks

© XchangePoint 2001 DWDM Configuration  system supports 32 protected wavelengths ( ) per fibre ring  Initial configuration 8  3 for backbone  5 for customer OPIs  Remaining can be used to increase backbone or OPI capacity in 1Gb/s or 10Gb/s increments

© XchangePoint 2001 Interconnect Platform Advantages for Content Customers  Improves Internet connectivity resilience and bandwidth  Reduces provider to consumer hop-count, latency  Simplifies the IPP joining procedures allows content providers to interconnect efficiently  Creates ready market for buying capacity/transit from carriers/ISP in single location

© XchangePoint 2001 Service Status  London network has been live for over 10 months  Service trial completed successfully  Now 25 customers, generating revenue  Peaking >150Mb/s traffic  Have met SLA targets throughout  Paris and Frankfurt planned during 2002

© XchangePoint 2001 Conclusions, Questions

© XchangePoint 2001 Conclusions  There are growth opportunities with content customers, but the technical and commercial models need to evolve  Kendra is one vision of how to do this  Internet broadband capacity is key  Cost-efficiency of bandwidth provision very important  Multicast important element of this  More open standards work needed on both content distribution and payment systems

© XchangePoint 2001 Conclusions  Address broadband content customers’ needs via:  Addressing their service quality requirements  Flexible interconnect arrangements  Single presentation of combinations of interconnect services  Virtual interconnect services  Sell transit via interconnect platforms

© XchangePoint 2001 Questions ?

© XchangePoint 2001 Contact Details Keith Mitchell Daniel Harris Presentation: Paper: kendra-an-introduction-draft-current.html