Characterization of ISP Traffic: Trends, User Habits, and Access Technology Impact

In the recent years, the research community has increased its focus on network monitoring which is seen as a key tool to understand the Internet and the Internet users. Several studies have presented a deep characterization of a particular application, or a particular network, considering the point of view of either the ISP, or the Internet user. In this paper, we take a different perspective. We focus on three European countries where we have been collecting traffic for more than a year and a half through 5 vantage points with different access technologies. This humongous amount of information allows us not only to provide precise, multiple, and quantitative measurements of "What the user do with the Internet" in each country but also to identify common/uncommon patterns and habits across different countries and nations. Considering different time scales, we start presenting the trend of application popularity; then we focus our attention to a one-month long period, and further drill into a typical daily characterization of users activity. Results depict an evolving scenario due to the consolidation of new services as Video Streaming and File Hosting and to the adoption of new P2P technologies. Despite the heterogeneity of the users, some common tendencies emerge that can be leveraged by the ISPs to improve their servic

The case for "Open Access" communications infrastructure in Africa : the SAT-3/WASC cable - a briefing

This study examines the impact the SAT-3 fibre optic submarine cable has had on telecommunications in four African countries has found that the potential of the cable has not been properly exploited. Instead, ownership of the cable by telecoms incumbents in the countries researched has reinforced their market positions. The study analyses the effect ownership of the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3/WASC) has had on the communications markets in Angola, Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal. It focuses on the 'Africa section' of the submarine cable -running along the west coast of Africa down to southern Africa- with a specific emphasis on access and cost

On Factors Affecting the Usage and Adoption of a Nation-wide TV Streaming Service

Using nine months of access logs comprising 1.9 Billion sessions to BBC iPlayer, we survey the UK ISP ecosystem to understand the factors affecting adoption and usage of a high bandwidth TV streaming application across different providers. We find evidence that connection speeds are important and that external events can have a huge impact for live TV usage. Then, through a temporal analysis of the access logs, we demonstrate that data usage caps imposed by mobile ISPs significantly affect usage patterns, and look for solutions. We show that product bundle discounts with a related fixed-line ISP, a strategy already employed by some mobile providers, can better support user needs and capture a bigger share of accesses. We observe that users regularly split their sessions between mobile and fixed-line connections, suggesting a straightforward strategy for offloading by speculatively pre-fetching content from a fixed-line ISP before access on mobile devices.Comment: In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 201

A five year perspective of traffic pattern evolution in a residential broadband access network

In this paper we describe a systematic study on long-term evolution of residential broadband Internet traffic covering 5 calendar years from June 2007 to May 2011. The traffic evolution is characterized both in the term of the total traffic volume, as well as the traffic volumes and shares for different application categories (file sharing, video streaming etc.), with the focus on comparing the traffic on the per IP user basis and among different broadband subscription groups. The results show that the average daily total traffic generated by each private end user increased only by about 33 % during the past 5 years. Further, the results show that the P2P filesharing has been dominating the network total traffic, but the daily file-sharing traffic volume per end user largely remains the same. Also, the daily streamingmedia traffic volume per end user has increased dramatically by over 500% during the studied period of time. In the meantime, the daily web-browsing traffic volume per end user has increased by about 300%. Finally, a further investigation among 4 different FTTH broadband subscription groups with 1, 10 , 30, and 100 Mbit/s symmetric access speeds shows that the lower the access speed, the more diversified the end user traffic tend to be

YouTube Traffic Content Analysis in the Perspective of Clip Category and Duration

In this work, we study YouTube traffic characteristics in a medium-sized Swedish residential municipal network that has 2600 mainly FTTH broadband-connected households. YouTube traffic analyses were carried out in the perspective of video clip category and duration, in order to understand their impact on the potential local network caching gains. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time systematic analysis of YouTube traffic content in the perspective of video clip category and duration in a residential broadband network. Our results show that the requested YouTube video clips from the end users in the studied network were imbalanced in regarding the video categories and durations. The dominating video category was Music, both in terms of the total traffic share as well as the contribution to the overall potential local network caching gain. In addition, most of the requested video clips were between 2-5 min in duration, despite video clips with durations over 15 min were also popular among certain video categories, e.g. film videos

The impact of organisational culture on WiMax adoption by Saudi SMEs

Although there is some research that examines Worldwide Inter-operability for Microwave Access (WiMax) adoption, the role of the organisational culture by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has not been studied in the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This paper presents the outcome of a study carried out to examine the impact of organisational culture on the WiMax adoption by SMEs in the KSA. Based on Cameron and Quinn's Organisational Culture Assessments Instrument (OCAI), 63 questionnaires were distributed to different SMEs in Saudi Arabia. The results showed that there is a relatively low level of WiMax adoption by Saudi SMEs. Findings stated that Saudi SMEs are dominated by the clan culture where people are less innovative than the people in adhocracy culture

Competition, Regulation and Broadband Diffusion: the Case of New Zealand

AbstractNew Zealand offers a through-provoking case study of the effects of different competition and regulatory policies on broadband diffusion rates. Despite having one of the highest rates of Internet connection and usage in the OECD widely available broadband infrastructure and low prices broadband uptake per capita languishes in the bottom third of the OECD. Whilst low uptake has typically been attributed to competition and regulatory factors associated with New Zealand's 'light-handed' regulatory regime this chapter proposes that the most likely reason is a combination of legacy demand-side regulations in particular the tariff options for voice telephony and limited value being derived by residential consumers from the small range of applications currently necessitating broadband connections. The New Zealand case illustrates the effect that legacy regulations can have on the diffusion of new technologies and indicates a need for more research on the effect of telecommunications industry regulations on demand-side uptake factors

The Mobile Broadband and Fixed Broadband Battle in Swedish market: Exploring complementary or substitution

The mobile broadband (MBB) in Swedish market has become a more attractive opportunity for service providers, with growing demand for ubiquitous broadband connectivity after the mobile operators got 3G license in 2000. MBB seems to have more advantage compare to Fixed broadband (FBB) in term of mobility, compatibility and quality of service. This paper aims to explore the current broadband situation in Swedish market, in particular whether the mobile broadband is a complementary or substitute by using descriptive analysis. The data is collected from the Post- och telestyrelsen (PTS) Survey and the secondary data from PTS during 2002-2009. The findings indicate that the MBB and FBB subscribers remain growing, but the issue of complementary and substitution between MBB and FBB cannot be given an answer at this stage. The crucial problem of comparing MBB and FBB is the different units of measurement. Also, the potential of avoiding regulation by service providers is discussed since the market participants in FBB and MBB services are the same players. The rapid growth of MBB together with a lower degree of regulation in mobile services may attract the market player to put their effort more in MBB market. Moreover, the gap between broadband infrastructure coverage and the usage of this service is huge. Thus, the inefficiency of BB infrastructure utilization becomes another issue that NRAs could consider. --Mobile broadband,Fixed broadband,Complementary,Substitution