Each hop adds time and well PacFibre was using direct pipe as lower latency than SC. On 1 August 2012 16:22, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

Like: http://www.commsday.com/commsday/2011/exclusive-china-telecom-huawei-units-p... ?

Main issue is protection. If you buy AKL->SYD->Rest of World then you still have to buy matching SCCN in order to protect that capacity. So, SCCN won't get cheaper as they know you have to buy them anyway. PacFibre by building both ways allowed you to protect either leg using other non-SCCN capacity.

But deep down - there's a lot of unused capacity between Australia, NZ and the USA. Next chance is when SCCN need to start replacing their network in around 2025/2030 depending on engineering life estimates.

I actually wonder if the solution is to build via various Pacific Islands. ie. North Island to New Caledonia (already has Gondwana-1 back to Sydney) then across to the various island toward French Polynesia which has cable to Hawaii.

Sure, higher cost, but probably can offset that by getting funding to light up various island. Fairly certain Solomon Islands has a project too to build to AU or somewhere.

MMC

On 01/08/2012, at 12:54 PM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

...

So if you haven't seen this;

my question is if they don't have enough money to go "all the way" to LA why not at least re-align and put some NZ to AU fibre in?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10823806

-JoelW

@aenertia +64 21 171 8049 _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

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On 01/08/2012, at 3:15 PM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

On 1 August 2012 17:11, David Robinson wrote:

...

Each hop adds time and well PacFibre was using direct pipe as lower latency than SC.

Sure, but the TBD to the US still would have been a bitch for a lot of applications, the numbers I had seen bandied about were around the 70ms mark best case. Which isn't that much better to the 130ms of the existing paths.

I think the proposed path by PF was potentially a few ms (~5-8ms) faster than the existing cable. -- James

On 1/08/2012, at 4:22 PM, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

Main issue is protection. If you buy AKL->SYD->Rest of World then you still have to buy matching SCCN in order to protect that capacity. So, SCCN won't get cheaper as they know you have to buy them anyway. PacFibre by building both ways allowed you to protect either leg using other non-SCCN capacity.

One could potentially build Auckland->Sydney and Invercargill->Melbourne, in order to get better access to Aus content. It's about 50-100km difference in distance as the crow flies. I imagine protected capacity over that (with on-land transport over existing networks) would be much cheaper than protected capacity over SCCN. That gets NZ hooked up to a large amount of content fairly cheaply and would lessen the need for capacity to the US via SCCN. Of course, I think they'd get in trouble if they so drastically altered their business plan. -- Nathan Ward

Sydney has Equinix and Global Switch which are both completely carrier neutral and very good/high quality sites. But NZ, aside from Skytower, which isn't ideal for content (ie. lots of servers), doesn't have a clear central location in Auckland to build capacity and caching servers etc into and easily connect to enough people to make it viable.

Is this lack of focal point more of an issue?

Nope - I think lack of population and what I'm calling CDN Gravity is more of the issue. I don't think that NZ has the population or demand to pull the content here. I've been suggesting that we look at aligning ourselves closer to Australia and leverage on the large CDN gravity there. Having it 40ms away is better than having it 200ms away in the US. Even if we built an Equinix in Auckland, we wouldn't get enough take-up to make an appreciable difference. But having said that, we do not have a truly carrier neutral internet exchange in New Zealand, so maybe thats something to address as well. Pacific Fibre not building another link to the US.... don't care. Pacific Fibre not building the spur to AUS. That I'm more concerned about. That's where I think we'll be getting 90% of our content within the next few years anyway. Remember, we want to be considered an Internet suburb of Sydney, not an Internet suburb of Los Angeles. Regards, Dean

On 01/08/2012, at 8:32 PM, Bill Walker wrote:

On Wed, 1 Aug 2012 19:29:24 +1200, Dean Pemberton wrote:

...

...

Sydney has Equinix and Global Switch which are both completely carrier neutral and very good/high quality sites. But NZ, aside from Skytower, which isn't ideal for content (ie. lots of servers), doesn't have a clear central location in Auckland to build capacity and caching servers etc into and easily connect to enough people to make it viable. Is this lack of focal point more of an issue? Nope - I think lack of population and what I'm calling CDN Gravity is more of the issue. I don't think that NZ has the population or demand to pull the content here.

This is the main problem, some of the CDN's I spoke to in my time at Snap needed 1Gbit of aggregate throughput transiting your AS to even consider talking to you. And most of those already had a presence in AU. The problem is that if you're a CDN/content player then there currently is no answer to:

Where do I go in Auckland to connect to most of the NZ internet? To butcher what Dean has said - You need to all not be a suburb of Sydney, you need to be all a suburb of Auckland. If there's a nice and easy meeting place for content in Auckland then you'll all get to benefit, but at the moment, from the outside the NZ internet is very splintered. NZ has a small population, so you need to focus on having as much of it available (IP wise) in one place as possible otherwise the small parts won't be enough. If you all focus on Sydney, then that's what you'll end up with, nothing in country. MMC

On 2/08/2012, at 1:04 AM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

On 1 August 2012 19:29, Dean Pemberton wrote:

...

Nope - I think lack of population and what I'm calling CDN Gravity is more of the issue. I don't think that NZ has the population or demand to pull the content here.

...

Pacific Fibre not building the spur to AUS. That I'm more concerned about. That's where I think we'll be getting 90% of our content within the next few years anyway.

I think there are several issues here that people have independently identified and then some - here is what I am seeing based on comments (in no particular order)

1) Lack of true 'public' Data centre Space in NZ

I predict the actions Chorus are intending to take in opening up their exchanges in UFB areas (or possibly wider), will start to turn that around. Jay

2) Fibre Diversity (see 1) 3) Content pushers not locating in NZ (CDN Gravity) 4) Cost rubic of National/Tasman/International transit favouring ports in AU data centres vs National (see 1,2,3) 5) Latency and other technical errata. 6) Market diversity ( or lack thereof) for NZ exiting fibre 7) That old chestnut; national peering 8) Cost of national transit (see 4,7,6)

any I have missed? _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

-- Jay Daley Chief Executive .nz Registry Services (New Zealand Domain Name Registry Limited) desk: +64 4 931 6977 mobile: +64 21 678840

http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/pacific-fibre-sunk-attention-turns-transtasman-... Some further info - and a response to my initial query wrt "why not tasman only" on NBR today.

Seconded. (as long as its not 300m up in the sky, we already tried that :p). -- Liam Farr +64-22-6107884 +64-27-5222626 Sent from my iPhone On 2/08/2012, at 11:27 AM, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

On 02/08/2012, at 8:05 AM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

...

...

...

1) Lack of true 'public' Data centre Space in NZ

I predict the actions Chorus are intending to take in opening up their exchanges in UFB areas (or possibly wider), will start to turn that around.

Chorus exchanges are not ICT centric in most places, i.e have lots of DC stuffs, not so much AC stuffs, and not so much(if any) Data-centre rack space in the smaller locations.

As Nathan pointed out, having a south Island Landing point and a decent South Island Datacentre would make a lot more sense (may I suggest **NOT** Christchurch) for diversity and Datacentre options.

Whilst this maybe good for diversity, it doesn't solve the "single location" to pickup all or most NZ routes.

I'm quite serious that a single location where I could put equipment that I could build private, public peering and obtain decently priced connectivity to the outside world with services I expect done properly (eg. remote hands available 24x7 etc) would enable people to build in NZ.

It's not saying that you won't have to connect to SYD for somethings, but it'd help a lot.

MMC

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On 2 August 2012 11:45, Jay Daley wrote:

TIA-942

Heh, I understand it has been agreed that is what is **going** to happen; I was purely commenting on existing. MMC> I disagree that we need to appear as a suburb of Auckland, the population split last I looked was something - finger in the air - something like 60% Potential customers in Urban Auckland and 40% combined total rest of the country. That is only something like 2-3 million people in a position to use data services total and 1 million odd of them are in Auckland. I also don't really care about having to go to AU for "stuff" so long as there are options to get there. There is an obvious Need for an NZ located Public Cloud for Govt and Data privacy reasons, yet another reason to have Geo-redundant links North and South, I am more convinced this is a better line of resaoning to pursue than " We need another big data-centre in Auckland" line.

Rather than trying to justify having these tiny pockets of population because of North/South rivalries that are only actually important inside NZ how about trying to show some national pride and say "hey content people, here's the place to be in NZ" and demand that it gets delivered inside your country.

This really isn't about North and South Rivalry. It makes sense because of Geographic features, we would be stupid to put it in to Wellington (Earthquakes), Auckland sits on a Volcanic field and already has both landing sites. Hamilton is in-land? Invercargill hell, even Westport on the other hand would make for good landing sites, and create a demand for better national connectivity.

a) The data centre is a very good quality one with lots of power and people who are clueful and sane commercially (ie. don't act like d**ks because your _THE_ site to go). b) It has good onsite services so that my NOC guys can call up and get stuff done 24x7 c) It has *freaking awesome* connectivity to *EVERY* provider in NZ that matters, including TNZ, TC, Vodafone etc so that one deployment can pickup almost all of NZ and that access to the landing stations or connectivity out of NZ is cheap and easy. d) Less importantly it's easy to get to from Auckland airport, it's got a good hotel nearby and some nice food.

As long as a,b and c are met then people will start appearing. Build it and they will come.

MMC

Soo.. a) rules out Auckland then. Power situation in Auckland is not good and due simply where the power sources in NZ are is more points for South centre. I think someone jokingly said something about creating a "Green" Data centre run off Lake Manapouri @ Nethui... I like this idea. But I think that the follow up comment was "The Megaupload case has ruined the chances of that happening" wrt strategic/competitive advantage of NZ based hosting. I do agree that it doesn't really matter where it is, so long as it meets some set of criteria are fullfilled. Although the main factor being the Elephant in the room is Cost. If someone was to propose a data centre and set of accompanying national cable roll-outs that allayed my concerns about pinch points on the national transit comming out of Auckland (perhaps a marine cable via Corromandel?). Then I would be happy to see it happen. If however we are going to postulate on ideals, I support Nathan's notion more.

On one hand you say "we're not big enough" but then you spend all the time making grand plans suitable for countries many, many times bigger and wonder why they don't work. Break that behaviour. Group together, solve THIS problem.

I work for a big vendor, and know this attitude well. I couldn't agree more, let's just take over a floor of the bloody convention centre that the government is getting Sky-City to build for them, and run extension cables... ;-)

On 02/08/2012, at 11:44 AM, Sid Jones wrote:

On 2/08/2012, at 1:45 PM, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

...

On one hand you say "we're not big enough" but then you spend all the time making grand plans suitable for countries many, many times bigger and wonder why they don't work. Break that behaviour. Group together, solve THIS problem.

That's been my problem with the "carrier-neutral" arguments as well.

The industry here just isn't big enough to have enough degrees of separation from one vested interest to another to build anything truly neutral.

That's my vested interest opinion anyway ;)

Need to get a non-carrier to build. Equinix, Global Switch, etc are non-carrier and very neutral (they charge everyone!). Maybe someone needs to tap Bevan at NextDC on the shoulder and ask nicely if they can build in Auckland? MMC

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 8/2/12 3:31 AM, Simon Lyall wrote:

I agree with Matthew here.

We are rapidly going from "The cheapest place to deliver traffic to NZers is California but the performance is slow" to "Sydney is getting pretty cheap and the performance is okay".

For those looking at building into AU/NZ, Auckland is same (actually shorter) distance from Sydney then Perth is. Given no one is rushing to build to Perth (Western Australia is about half the population of NZ), NZ would be still further down on the list to build to. Draw a circle with Sydney as the Center, covering all of AU, and you see what I am looking at. (http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=2000nm%40SYD%0D%0A&PC=red&DU=mi&SU=kts&RS=best&RC=navy) A cheaper piece of elongated glass to Sydney will make things a lot better. - -gaurab http://www.gaurab.org.np/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.16 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEUEARECAAYFAlAaDJgACgkQSo7fU26F3X1qHwCg0QpgCIUenzFHPXMDD5hNSDlB 6IQAmNnMng2lrV/bRP6qo+N4SX7xG/8= =cSM0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On 2 August 2012 14:09, David Hooton wrote:

On 02/08/2012, at 11:20 AM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

...

a) rules out Auckland then. Power situation in Auckland is not good and due simply where the power sources in NZ are is more points for South centre.

In my experience electricity companies love to charge customers who use lots of electricity lots of money...

Yup, BUT load issues aside (lets assume that that is a matter easily solved with infrastructure). My concerns generally are around pinch-points in and out of the City. We have seen Auckland Blacked out due to lines failure in the past; and that risk has only marginally been improved.

As someone who's previously looked at building into NZ, I can't explain how real MMC's comments are for parties who are looking to invest in or build into NZ.

Heh; yup. I hear you.

On 2 August 2012 14:20, David Hooton wrote:

On 02/08/2012, at 12:17 PM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

...

Yup, BUT load issues aside (lets assume that that is a matter easily solved with infrastructure). My concerns generally are around pinch-points in and out of the City. We have seen Auckland Blacked out due to lines failure in the past; and that risk has only marginally been improved.

That is still infrastructure.

I knew someone would call me on that... yeah - just read it as the reason I am disturbed. So far, we haven't had the investment required in either the Power or the Fibre for whatever econo-political reasons; to solve for it. We have had several blackouts, several fibre cuts, and god knows how many near misses due to either fibre or power pinch in and out of Auckland. So the track record of 'infrastructure' investment/development on these issues has not been congruous to your proposition.

On 2 August 2012 14:40, Nathan Ward wrote:

On 2/08/2012, at 2:27 PM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

...

On 2 August 2012 14:20, David Hooton wrote:

...

On 02/08/2012, at 12:17 PM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

...

Yup, BUT load issues aside (lets assume that that is a matter easily solved with infrastructure). My concerns generally are around pinch-points in and out of the City. We have seen Auckland Blacked out due to lines failure in the past; and that risk has only marginally been improved.

That is still infrastructure.

I knew someone would call me on that... yeah - just read it as the reason I am disturbed. So far, we haven't had the investment required in either the Power or the Fibre for whatever econo-political reasons; to solve for it. We have had several blackouts, several fibre cuts, and god knows how many near misses due to either fibre or power pinch in and out of Auckland.

So the track record of 'infrastructure' investment/development on these issues has not been congruous to your proposition.

Given that everything goes through Auckland right now, building such a DC in Auckland isn't going to be any worse.

Agreed so the Key [hur hur] question is really how many more pokie machines do Sky City want for a floor of the Convention Centre dedicated for Data-Centre purpose. ngā mihi -JoelW @aenertia

...

So the track record of 'infrastructure' investment/development on these issues has not been congruous to your proposition.

Given that everything goes through Auckland right now, building such a DC in Auckland isn't going to be any worse.

This seems like a silly thing to be debating though, one in somewhere that's less than ideal is better than none, and, we're unlikely to be the sole people involved in this sort of decision. A good DC seems like a great idea. Let's figure out how to get one, then people can snipe about where.

Might be a good opportunity to give you all an update on our plans. We (Vocus) have been pretty unhappy with the interconnect situation in AKL pretty much since we entered the market. We looked at building a decent DC in the CBD but building codes and power proved to be an issue for the scale (and power density) we wanted. This is the reason we ended up buying Maxnet, we loved the DC but it had been historically too expensive to get capacity there from the Skytower/CBD. With all your regulatory changes, fibre capacity there ended up making sense and that was the last problem we needed to solve. Our goal for the maxnet site is to expand the facility (we haven't announced it yet but we'll be building another ~50% DC space in the coming months) and turn it in one of the better places to interconnect in AKL, already it has a lot of content / sites, hosting companies and ISPs so it already has a reasonable start. Vocus now has a diverse fibre loop from Albany via both SX landing stations to the CBD and I believe the guys have just ordered the optical gear (Cyan kit which is really cool stuff) to light it, so hopefully we have solved the connectivity problems. I can also confirm we'll be operating the DC as carrier neutral, you won't have to take any Vocus connectivity/transit if you don't desire. If people have interesting ideas for content aggregation or would like to see services there or things we could do to enhance the site for interconnection, please let me know off list.

-- Nathan Ward

-- James

On 02/08/12 14:09, David Hooton wrote:

On 02/08/2012, at 11:20 AM, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote:

...

a) rules out Auckland then. Power situation in Auckland is not good and due simply where the power sources in NZ are is more points for South centre.

In my experience electricity companies love to charge customers who use lots of electricity lots of money. I've got a suspicion that New Zealand power companies are similar. If someone arrived with a credible plan that required their cooperation to deliver appropriate power, they would consider any location for the right return on investment. The wonderful thing about infrastructure is that it can be built given the appropriate conditions, in this case enough power and a willing customer.

As someone who's previously looked at building into NZ, I can't explain how real MMC's comments are for parties who are looking to invest in or build into NZ. Getting to NZ is easy, getting data distributed inside NZ is too painful for anyone but those who operate inside the market on a day to day basis and I suspect too hard even for some of you. Nobody wants to have their expensive international pop at the top of a tower with glass windows, heat, dust, no remote hands, wild amounts of RF and an incomplete view of the local internet. The more you can aggregate your local access networks and the easier you can make it for someone to deliver you content, the more you will get.

Dave _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

[I don't understand these list filters. It seems what I consider appropriate trimming of what you're replying to is reason for rejection. Isn't it just netiquette? Would mention of beer have got my message past?]

In my experience electricity companies love to charge customers who use lots of electricity lots of money.

Really? I was under the impression that the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, one of if not the biggest electricity user in the country, also got the best deal - way better than the rest of us - due to stability of demand. Admittedly I don't see a data centre requiring that much. Richard

On 2/08/2012 1:09 p.m., Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

Ultimately you can place it where ever you want.

Agreed. All the natural disaster FUD really does seem like stuff that has to be 'managed' where ever you go.

It doesn't matter much as long as:

Christchurch. - Our ground is now better understood than any other place in the region.

a) The data centre is a very good quality one with lots of power and people who are clueful and sane commercially (ie. don't act like d**ks because your _THE_ site to go).

Power is something we can do here. My last 18 months we've had two short outages and given the quakes we've had, that's just amazing. People are people where ever you go but I totally agree with you that it's really important to keep the team grounded and focused.

b) It has good onsite services so that my NOC guys can call up and get stuff done 24x7

Moving around Christchurch is just quicker and easier than other locations. So even if staff aren't on site (which I do get you want them to be), it just doesn't take as long to get them to the site. Because the city is smaller, the chances of the key staff living further away is less.

c) It has *freaking awesome* connectivity to *EVERY* provider in NZ that matters, including TNZ, TC, Vodafone etc so that one deployment can pickup almost all of NZ and that access to the landing stations or connectivity out of NZ is cheap and easy.

Having 'Enabled Networks' with fibre over the whole city means that getting to the other providers should be simpler.

d) Less importantly it's easy to get to from Auckland airport, it's got a good hotel nearby and some nice food.

Christchurch has a fantastic international airport which is very close to a number of industrial parks which would make sense for such a DC. It's got good hotels with in 10 minutes range of said industrial parks.

As long as a,b and c are met then people will start appearing. Build it and they will come.

I do understand that 1/3rd of the population is in Auckland, but at present much of the data is only travelling south. I wonder if it would be more cost effective to use the 'back load' capacity heading back up the country? Where are the major content produces such as TVNZ and Media Works hosting their servers currently, Auckland? Further, their are currently a growing number of Christchurch based investors who are about to be paid out by insurance companies for buildings that have (or are about to be) pulled down (blown up). Landing a cable in Westport would make sense to me because we could then serve Christchurch based content out to Australia --> the world, we can use the back haul capacity back up past 2/3rds of the country to Auckland, we get redundancy, what have I missed? So: A - We understand the ground. B - We have an IX and great fibre connectivity. C - We have 'back load' capacity. D - We have people with investment money to spend. MMC > Before you bash me for the north v's south thing, I totally agree with you, we need to stop that rubbish and just focus on getting the job done. In presenting these arguments I'm thinking about the technical issues and key points you raised. It seems to me that there should be resource at this end of the string that could be used to achieve the outcomes you're driving at. D -- Don Gould 31 Acheson Ave Mairehau Christchurch, New Zealand Ph: + 64 3 348 7235 Mobile: + 64 21 114 0699

Donald Neal Senior Network Engineer Direct: +64 9 929 2958 Mobile: 0278081023 Fax: +64 9 929 2959 -----Original Message----- From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Matthew Moyle-Croft Sent: Wednesday, 1 August 2012 7:05 p.m. To: Nathan Ward Cc: nznog; Joel Wirāmu Pauling Subject: Re: [nznog] Pacific Fibre to Cease Operations - cites not enough investment. On 01/08/2012, at 4:21 PM, Nathan Ward wrote:

Sydney has Equinix and Global Switch which are both completely carrier neutral and very good/high quality sites. But NZ, aside from Skytower, which isn't ideal for content (ie. lots of servers), doesn't have a clear central location in Auckland to build capacity > and caching servers etc into and easily connect to enough people to make it viable.

Is this lack of focal point more of an issue?

No. The decision to build in someone else's data centre or to build your own data centre in leased or bought floor space is mainly a choice between capital and operating cost. Even given more choices of neutral sites, operators might well continue to build their own. It's also perfectly viable to lease space in a date centre with no intrinsic association with the Internet and pay separately for fibre to where you want to communicate with. - Donald Neal All opinions mine only.