One of the most arduous tasks that KC has been recently involved in has been
the ongoing negociations with suppliers of international bandwidth.
Up until this month KC's main internet connection has been a 512K
wideband DDS link from Auckland to the NZ Internet Exchange at Waikato
University. KC has been a customer of Netway, a Telecom subsidiary, and
has been paying for internet connectivity on a per-megabyte traffic basis.
With the growth of systems connecting to KC, especially ISPs, over the
last six months, the monthly data bill from Netway has risen from just
below $20,000 per month to over $50,000 per month.
Paying this sort of monthly sum for data through a 512k link just did not
make any sense when the quotations for a 1 Megabit link from some
suppliers was in the $50,000 per month range and actually lower cost than
the monthly traffic bill.
What was badly needed was a fixed price link from a supplier.
In early July talks started with Netway over providing such a fixed link,
however these very quickly bogged down when it became clear that Netway
were unable to provide an exclusive international link. With KC already
having a Cisco 4500 located on the NZIX at Waikato, the same network the
Netway routers are connected to there was apparently no way to 'cut out'
and exclusive chunk of international bandwidth for KC. In fact the only way
that Netway could suggest providing a fixed bandwidth service was for a
serial port in KC's router to be connected to a serial port on a Netway
router and Netway could then clock the port at the required speed to
provide a fixed bandwidth gateway. Simple in theory but all it does is
limit the use at the NZIX and in no way guarantees that the clocked bandwidth
would be available right over the international circuit to USA.
Altogether these various factors were not making a positive impression as
the steady decline in international link capability was very evident.
Eventually after a long two month delay without Netway coming up with
any suggestions about providing guaranteed international bandwidth, a
futher meeting was convened in late September.
Despite all of these talks with Netway the end agreement is still vary far
away from what KCCS needed when the talks were started.
The ultimate goal was to have a 1Mbit DDS link between KCCS in Auckland
and to an ISP site in USA. By paying for this complete link the availability
of _all_ of the bandwidth would be guaranteed.
During this period of dealing with Netway, Telstra have become another
option for Internet connections in Auckland. With service delivery in
Auckland _and_ extremely competitive pricing it is impossible to ignore
the services they are providing. A different attitude in negociations is
also evident in that you deal only with one person and that person is
able to make decisions during the dicsussions. It is difficult to explain
the completely different attitude one has after leaving a meeting with
Telstra when compared to dealing with a group of people at Netway, none
of whom have the authority to make decisions during the meeting. With a
standard answer of "we will get back to you on this one" most meetings
tend to finish with a feeling that nothing definite has actually been
achieved.
So withing the last few months of this year KCCS will have two 512Kbit
Internet connections, one via Netway, the other via Telstra.
With the current growth pattern one of these will be 1Mbit early next year.
Investigations into getting a direct DDS link to USA will continue.
In any case there was evidence to show that the international link resources
Netway already had in place were just not coping with demand in the 8pm
to midnight daily time frame. A situation that had become more obvious
since Telcom Xtra ISP had come on line and added further to the existing
traffic load.
Although Netway stated they were committed to adding additional link
resources the time
scale in adding an E1 circuit was as long as three months and predicting
NZ Internet growth was too risky for Netway to advance order several very
expensive
E1 circuits without being fairly positive that there was a use for them.
Now the situation was becoming more urgent as KC's link capacity was
becoming a major concern and the prospect of data bills exceeding $60,000
was a real possibility. Netway could definitely NOT offer any form of
fixed international capacity. They insisted on sharing the international
capacity amongst all of their customers. The option of connecting KC's
Cisco 4500 at Waikato via a serial port to a Netway Cisco router was
discarded as impractical. The only option remaining was that Netway service
deliver a 512K data pipe to KCCS in Auckland and then the actual point of
entry into NZ was irrelevant and did not concern the KC router at Waikato.
This would mean KC's link between Auckland and Waikato would only be
needed to support the ISPs and others currently connecting to it at the
Waikato end.
Since this was the only semi practical option from Netway and with an
existing contract valid through to March 1997 this option was agreed to.
KCCS is now going through the contract checking phase of this new
agreement.
This is NOT the case with the current agreement. The situation of a
declining performance service every night starting from about 8pm through
to 11pm has not been positively addressed and certainly not resolved.
The addition of Xtra to these limited resources has, as expected, reduced
the level of performance available to everyone else.
This remains a most unsatisfactory situation yet one that any customer of
Netway has to accept.
The outcome of talks with Telstra is that KCCS is initially going to
obtain a 512Kbit link from Telstra. This will be routed via Australia.
One extremely important point in dealing with Telstra is that they have
stated they will not be entering the ISP market in New Zealand while they
provide services to existing ISPs. The exact opposite of both Telecom NZ
and Clear, the other major providers of connectivity to NZ ISPs.