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The Changing World of IP Transit

In the business world, we rely heavily on the performance of the network to ensure processes stay the course, communications are supported and business can continue in a revenue-generating direction. Two important considerations for the high performing network are latency and bandwidth. The ideal network relies on IP transit with low latency and high bandwidth. The reality, however, is not always ideal. 

The concept of the ideal IP transit was the focus of this recent post in the U.K. Register. And, while the ideal network is generally sought, the reality is that some applications simply don’t care about latency. As a result, it doesn’t really matter how long the packets in an FTP file transfer take to get from A to B. What is really important in this IP transit is the aggregate bandwidth. 

In other situations, there may be a need to transmit small to moderate amounts of data that need to move as close to real-time as possible. VoIP data is known to be sensitive to latency issues, much like multiplayer video gaming and RDP. There are simply just two solutions to IP transit where both kinds of protocol live on the same network – you have to traffic manage them, or build out enough bandwidth that you can effectively handle peak demand. 

This is the key dilemma facing Internet service providers today. These ISPs tend to feel that the growth in demand for bandwidth has successfully outstripped their ability to provide capacity. As a result, they are rapidly turning to traffic management to either supplement additional network build-outs, or as a way to delay these build-outs for as long as possible. Some carriers are managing this IP transit change well, while others are failing. 

At the end of the day, traffic management is bad for high-bandwidth services. When you regularly engage in shuffling around the bulk quantities of data, traffic-managed ISPs could pose a problem. Businesses, especially SMBs, are slowly gravitating towards storage and backup services offered online, flocking to Dropbox (News - Alert), Mozy and iDrive, simply because they are so easy to use and readily available. 

IP transit can be upset once again by government attempts to control the Internet. This is especially true in the United States. In some nations, data that is transmitted wirelessly has a different legal status than data remaining on the wired network. Corporations and individuals have to take a close look at whether or not they want specific traffic moving across networks housed in nations with unfriendly legal frameworks. 

Such elements introduce a whole new approach to thinking about virtualization, cloud computing and any other approach to IP transit that takes data outside of the standard network. The simple days of the single link are gone, putting more pressure on businesses and individuals to understand their IP transit options for secure sharing and an overall optimized experience.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny

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