Ovum warns of public Internet meltdown

Global advisory and consulting firm Ovum is warning that public Internet-based services are at risk of suffering service degradation as network operators run their networks hotter to avoid infrastructure spending.

John Mazur, principal analyst for Network Infrastructure at Ovum, points to a 20% decline in service provider spending on switches and routers in the first quarter of 2009, compared with 2008, and reports of robust IP traffic growth by those same network operators. Mazur cites Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, which forecasts Internet traffic will hit 667 exabytes by 2013.

“We attribute some of the recent router market decline to recession-induced postponement of strategic IP transformation projects, but service providers are also delaying short-term investment to shore up financial results. The result is that operators are running IP networks hotter,” Mazur said in an email.

Where service providers normally run their networks at 40% to 50% capacity, Mazur said, they can comfortably run them at 60% to 70% but by 80% capacity, investment in additional routing and switching infrastructure is needed.

“IP traffic continues to grow by all measures, but many network operators are postponing capacity upgrades and thus running IP networks hotter, which means they are increasing traffic throughput without upgrading equipment,” Mazur said.

IP networks are built to survive but performance will suffer during traffic peaks, Mazur said, and peaks will occur more often with increased router traffic. As a result, there will be “performance impairments [including] delay or jitter and out-of-order packet delivery,” Mazur said. More impairment will require more packets to be retransmitted, which will increase congestion over a longer period of time, extending traffic peaks.

All of these problems are most likely to impact best-effort Internet services, Mazur said. “We don’t believe service providers will allow serious service degradation to occur for their premium IP services,” Mazur said. “But we do believe public Internet–based services are at risk of suffering from service degradation, with the result that end users’ quality of experience may plummet – particularly in North America with its intense competition and minimal regulation. More centrally controlled countries such as Japan, South Korea and France have higher-performance Internet networks mainly due to greater regulatory oversight. But North American ISPs don’t want greater regulatory oversight so they find themselves on a slippery slope.”

Mazur does warn that net neutrality proponents “unconcerned about funding infrastructure upgrades” could be in for a rude awakening, when best-effort VoIP or video services suffer from core network congestion.

Ovum’s advice to end-users is to “not put too much faith in the Internet” particularly for critical applications.