A bit of background first, the Internet is really just a loose connection of networks (Inet Service Providers, universities, military, content providers, etc.) that connect together and agree to exchange traffic.
In the early days of the Internet, the place where these networks connected together were in the US and 2 of the earliest were known as MAE EAST and MAE WEST (see what they did there, MAE stood for Metropolitan Area Ethernet).
In the UK it all started in 1994 where at the time the Internet was just starting to grow. There were 4 providers in the UK, Demon Internet, PIPEX, UKNET and UKERNA (which was the UK academic network). They all connected together in a star network i.e. each network connected to everyone else’s network and a lot of traffic went through the US to connect to other networks.
The BT came along and wanted to offer its own Internet services and they started talking to the 4 other networks, which for them meant 4 new network connections one to each.
It was decided that maybe they should all connect to a central location (i.e. one connection each) and they would all exchange traffic with each other there and LINX (The London Internet Exchange), though originally it was managed by PIPEX who had donated a Cisco Catalyst 1200 switch with EIGHT 10Mb/s ports and it was located in a very nearly empty new data centre Telehouse.
At first LINX was maintained by techies and it just worked, with no formal agreements between the networks, but in 1995 LINX proper was formed as a company limited by guarantee and on a non for profit basis so it was run for the benefit of its members and profits would be used to improve the infrastructure.
The meant that as new members joined, LINX would just connect them to their network and each network would negotiate what’s known as a peering agreement with the other networks they wanted to exchange traffic with.
A lot of networks just agree to exchange traffic for free (like UK ISPs), but there are also commercial peering agreements with networks that, say carry traffic to the US, where they charge for any bits flowing into or out of their network.
LINX has grown ever since and in 2000 it was the first exchange to introduce 10Gb/s operation. Moving to 2012 and LINX started supporting 100Gb/s ports (with BT the first to connect at that speed).
LINX now has several locations in London, one in Scotland, Manchester, Cardiff and LINX NoVA which spans 3 sites in the North Virginia/Washington area.
London also has a second exchange LONAP which was initially started for smaller providers who couldn’t afford the LINX fees, but has also grown rapidly.
Apple connect
Apple used to utilise other networks to provide content delivery services to all and sundry (like Akamai). However recently they’ve started to put BIG connections into LINX and LONAP.
Last week they installed 160Gb/s of connection into LONAP (as 4 x 10Gb/s + 4 x 10Gb/s + 4 x 10Gb/s + 4 x 10Gb/s), which makes up about 25% of ALL connectivity there (even the BBC only have 2 x 10Gb/s, Google have 4 x 10Gb/s, Microsoft 2 x 10Gb/s and Netflix 3 x 10Gb/s).
That’s just at LONAP, they already have 460Gb/s at LINX which they seem to be upgrading to 1.6Tb/s.
Unfortunately Apple doesn’t say where that bandwidth is connecting to, but that’s a LOT of connectivity being put in.
Apple have always caused traffic surges on the Internet when they released a new version of iOS or MacOS X as all the fanbois rushed to download their new shiny operating systems, but this is a MAJOR jump.
Apple Pay is about to launch in the UK which may account for some of the demand, though much of that traffic will go through the payment processors.
There’s also Apple Music which is also launching next month and Apple obviously expect a very large uptake, that potentially 1.7+Tb/s of connectivity should support a large number of users streaming music.
However it could also signal more services coming on-line soon, maybe the fabled Apple TV is really on the way too.
Why Net Neutrality hurts ISPs
As an end-note, Net Neutrality is a politically correct motivation to have and networks should have to carry traffic from other people if their customers want it.
People pushing for it are mainly content providers such as Apple, Google, Netflix etc. Pretty much all their traffic is out of their networks with very little in-bound to them.
Exchanges like LINX and LONAP charge everyone the same, a port charge based on the speed of connection (so if you have 1 ports it’s a certain cost and 4 ports is 4 times that cost).
Apple’s massive connectivity is going to push a lot of traffic into those (and presumably other worldwide) exchanges and the ISPs then have to deliver that traffic to their customers and pay for the connectivity to get it to them. ISPs would like content providers like Apple to pay to deliver their content as it can put a huge strain on the ISP network.
Net Neutrality doesn’t allow that, which eventually may mean higher pricing for customers as the ISPs will have to install more connectivity to pay as more and more services go on-line.
While a customer is sitting there browsing the web, they’re not actually using that much bandwidth, and web browsing is pretty choppy in that a bit of data is sent to the customer, they view it and then request some more. That works for ISPs as all the chunks of data fit in with other chunks being viewed by other users.
When streaming services come into play, that changes thing considerably and the user is now sucking a steady stream of data which has to be delivered in a timely manner, can’t be split into chunks and mixed in with everyone else and that’s why the ISP has to put more infrastructure in.
The future will be more interesting, but potentially more expensive for the end user.