Bandwidth management: the clash of demand and supply |21 May 2010

In countries such as South Korea, which has the world’s highest percentage of population online, customers are used to near instantaneous access to all online services, and ISPs’ IT departments have vast amounts of bandwidth available to juggle their demands.

But in countries such as Seychelles, where all the ISPs rely on a satellite connection to the internet backbone, the problem becomes one of making the most of a limited supply, heightening the need to develop effective bandwidth management strategies.

“Internet users in Seychelles who have surfed online overseas will probably notice a slower internet response, even on the best packages available locally, because the satellite connection limits the service the ISPs can offer.

 But within the constraints of the satellite link, a smart ISP can maximise available bandwidth,” said Kokonet technical department manager Colin Bastienne.

“The most basic technique is simple download capping. An ISP will tell a customer that they can download a fixed number of gigabytes per month, and if they go over that limit they will be charged penalty fees. The fees incurred are generally so large that the customer will take great care to ensure they stay within their monthly download limit.

“At Kokonet we’ve taken the opposite approach and looked for more intelligent ways to mitigate the bandwidth limitations, without hitting our customers with exorbitant penalty fees.”

Learning from best practices by ISPs facing similar bandwidth restrictions elsewhere in the world, Kokonet has introduced a range of bandwidth maximisation techniques, designed to match up demand and highs and lows of supply.

“We start by managing our contention ratios. These are the number of individual customers on a specific connection,” said Mr Bastienne.

“So, for example, if we have a 10 to 1 contention ratio, we will split the group into five residential users and five business users, because we know that the businesses will be online between 8 and 4 and the residential customers after that, so in effect we achieve a 5 to 1 ratio.

“Kokonet also has a fair use policy, whereby we prioritise or deprioritise bandwidth access according to type of service and time of the day.

For example, we know when there is heavier demand for peer-to-peer downloading, so we can increase the portion of our bandwidth dedicated to this when we know demand is higher.
 
“Billing customers for exceeding download limits is certainly one way to even out the peaks and increase your revenue, but we believe that the customer deserves better.

 At Kokonet we decided that we have the technical expertise to manage our bandwidth to maintain maximum useable connectivity at all times, without compromising on customer service.”

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