The ISP Cat and Mouse game and CDNs finally benefiting out of it.

Politics and policies are everywhere. They say policies are made to govern us and I say many of those are there for inertia - resistance to change. The big and powerful want to be so, always and do not want others to get there. This is well known and very much a cliche. But what has this got to do with ISPs in specific? Here we go:

ISPs are the people who sort of own the "Internet network" physically. It is they who actually connect the various computers by physical cables. And yes, that is why we pay them. For getting us connected to the rest of the world. Now there is no single ISP who has his cables connected to all the computers in the world. In fact there is no one who can even boast about a majority stake in the market. So obviously when the data travels through the internet, it goes through the infrastructure laid and maintained by different ISPs. A simple example will illustrate this :

Let's say a user is connected to the internet via Bharti Airtel connection and he is trying to access, say Indian Railways website, which is hosted on a machine connected to internet, for the sake of illustration, via BSNL connection. So the path of the request from client to the server would involve, both Airtel network path and BSNL network path. The client sends the request to the Airtel server. The Airtel network will route the data in its own network to the extent possible. At one point it needs to request BSNL network to take up the data and then give it to the destination server machine. Now at this cross-over point, Airtel is requesting some service from BSNL. Essentially Airtel is making use of the BSNL's network infrastructure to carry its data. Now there is no point in BSNL giving this for free. So obviously it charges Airtel some amout of money. Airtel does not mind paying it as it mostly gets translated to user charges. This is not really the issue. Problem would arise when BSNL will refuse to take the request and Airtel will have find some other alternate path, which generally ends up to be very very long. Consider this:

Clinet -> Last Airtel machine (router) -- m number of hops
Last Airtel machine -> Destination machine in BSNL network (Direct path) -- 4 hops.
Last Airtel machine -> Destination machine in BSNL network (Indirect path via some other ISP or via some other cross-over point) -- 20 hops

So totally the data has to do m+4 hops if BSNL takes up the request from last Airtel machine. At a time when BSNL is experiencing some heavy traffic in the region where the Airtel-BSNL crossover is happening, it would not be willing to accept more data, that too from a different ISP. So they follow two techniques here:

1. Simply drop the data packets, which will result in bad experience for the end user.
2. As routing happens based on least number of hops, the first BSNL server at the crossover point, will tell the last Airtel machine that the number of hops to the destination machine is actually 25 hops even though it is totally wrong. As a result the last Airtel machine will instead choose the indirect path with 20 hops. This will obviously slows down the internet and again result in bad experience for the end user.

Now you see how policies and profits affect technology. This is, as stated by an electronics professor at my college SJCE, TECHNO-POLITICS.

The solution for this would be to make the data available in every ISPs own network. And that is precisely what the CDN - Content Delivery Network - companies do. These companies have a huge number or servers placed in various parts of the worlds. In most cases they are placed in the data centers of these ISPs. It is symbiosis. With CDNs placing their servers in ISP's data centers, the ISP has a lot of data in its own network, even though the original website (or content owner) might be using a different ISP. This avoids a lot of requests to different ISPs and there by reduce costs significantly. In return the CDN companies get a very sweet deal for the rack space for their machines

A search engine nearing extinction

Ask.com turns over its online mapping business to Microsoft - BloggingStocks

I am not sure how many companies have gone out of business ever since Google has started creating waves in the internet industry, specifically in the search area. Today I happen to come across this news. This was a pretty big one but has been losing market share ever since the biggies like Google and Microsoft entered the space. This domination is something which will not be good for any of us except the company promoters. Dominance will reduce growth and quality improvement. As the saying goes: "Its only the competition that brings out the best", the fear of being outdone by an competitor will always keep the companies at their toes and forces them to innovate and come up with newer and better things. With dominance, I feel, will creep in a sense of complacency. The so called "Market Leaders" will start setting the rules. And any error or not so desired thing that they come up with will become the standard. We will not be able think beyond. These dominating companies will become our horizon beyond which we will not even care to think. But of course there has to be a winner always. I am fine with that. Its just that I want the winner to change often.

The best thing to happen is another company coming up and overthrowing Google and Microsoft and becoming the market leader. Then after a few years yet another company comes up and overthrows this one and this saga goes on to make the world a better and better place to live. Because as our teachers said: "There is always scope for improvement".

I wish good luck to all those budding researchers and entrepreneurs in the several universities of the world waiting to take over the mighty "leaders".

-- Brahmana.

WaterWays - An amazing way of transfer

Water ways - The most cost effective transport system:

This is the outcome ofyet another discussion with Doddappa(Uncle). We were actually about varied careers and how one can be successful and not be yet another engineer or a doctor. Though we came up with a lot of options like being a scientist after doing a masters in pure science or may be be take up journalism and many more, but the one that stood out as an extremely lucrative one was Merchant Navy. Then my sister asked the typical youngster question: "What do these people at Merchat Navy do??!!". That was what my uncle was precisely waiting for, an opportunity, and he started the gyaan transfer.

Though most of what he said was known to me, there was one thing which struck me like anything. He said that a large part of mass-goods transfer i.e actual large scale business hapened through water-ways because it was the cheapest mode. Though I knew this bit of fact the reason for this interested me more than anything. It is very simple. For roadways we ave to "maintain roads", for railways we have to "maintain rails", for airways though we do not have to "maintain air" its really a costly affair to maintain airports, the air traffic control and hence makes air-transport an ultimately costly choice for transfer of all regular mass usage goods. But with waterways there is no such thing at all. Ships move on waters and seas and oceans take care of that. Traffic control is a lot easier than airways. From what I know fuel is also much cheaper compared to the extremely high quality air-fuel. (So much of comparision with airways is because the others cannot be used for transport across the globe)

So all that we need to worry about is ports/harbours. i have heard about natural harbours and hence I guess even those costs are partly taken care by Mother nature already. This and so many other things make water ways the obvious choice for shipping large amounts of goods. may be other modes of transport will make transportation charges itself more than the actual cost of the goods being transported.

Now there might be some environmental considerations that need to be taken care of. Because recently when some American or French ship was coming to Gujarat port for scrapping there was a lot of opposition as it was hazardous and leading to pollution big time. But still cost stands a big deal. I hope our good scientist fellows will soon find a less hazardous and pollution-free shipping ways. :-)

So businessman and would be businessman, watch out for your shipyard. And also learn how to swim, just in case, you know. ;-)
Hail Water-ways, Hail mother Nature... (Thank god I can swim :P )