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erol · 23-12-2003, 12:37

Personaly I do not think allowing those that want, to not have to use the proxies will increase NTL's cost.

Firstly external bandwidth is a small to tiny fraction of the overall cost of provision that NTL pays. Of course these figures can be argued about till the cows come home but I have sppent some considerable time doing my best to understand the costs of provision of BB in the UK.My belief / best estimate is that external bandwidth represents between 1-5% of the cost of provision for NTL.

Secondly any savings that NTL make on external bandwidth have to be balanced against the cost of the proxy sw and server and more importantly the cost of staff to maintain them and the cost in support dealing with customer problems caused by them. The cost of external bandwidth is falling at a vast rate (again you can argue about how much / how quickly forever - but it is falling year on year). The cost of staff to maintain the proxies and support staff is not falling anywhere near the same rate as external bandwidth. So even if they do save some money for NTL now they will not at some point.

As for not forcing people to use the proxies 'messing up' NTL's routing - this is just not so, at least as I understand things (and I am happy to have someone explain to me why / how it would if I have misunderstood it). Many ISPs do not use forced proxies and users are free to specify one or not as they choose (either the ISPs if they offer one or someone elses if they do not) and it does not mess up their routing at all.

It seems to me that 'asking' for the _option_ to not be forced to use these proxies is about as reasonable request as can be made. It would imo be good for customers and NTL.

There is one possible way in which such choice would affect users - those that did choose to use keep using the proxies. Assuming that less people decide to use them then for any given page request there is less chance the proxy will have that page cahced locally. So I accept there is some potnetial downside to users that want the NTL proxies. However I stil feel that overall giving users the option to use the proxies or not will result in net benefits over all , for both users and NTL

23-12-2003, 12:37	#18
erol Inactive Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: cyprus Posts: 510	Re: NTL's Poxy Proxies Personaly I do not think allowing those that want, to not have to use the proxies will increase NTL's cost. Firstly external bandwidth is a small to tiny fraction of the overall cost of provision that NTL pays. Of course these figures can be argued about till the cows come home but I have sppent some considerable time doing my best to understand the costs of provision of BB in the UK.My belief / best estimate is that external bandwidth represents between 1-5% of the cost of provision for NTL. Secondly any savings that NTL make on external bandwidth have to be balanced against the cost of the proxy sw and server and more importantly the cost of staff to maintain them and the cost in support dealing with customer problems caused by them. The cost of external bandwidth is falling at a vast rate (again you can argue about how much / how quickly forever - but it is falling year on year). The cost of staff to maintain the proxies and support staff is not falling anywhere near the same rate as external bandwidth. So even if they do save some money for NTL now they will not at some point. As for not forcing people to use the proxies 'messing up' NTL's routing - this is just not so, at least as I understand things (and I am happy to have someone explain to me why / how it would if I have misunderstood it). Many ISPs do not use forced proxies and users are free to specify one or not as they choose (either the ISPs if they offer one or someone elses if they do not) and it does not mess up their routing at all. It seems to me that 'asking' for the _option_ to not be forced to use these proxies is about as reasonable request as can be made. It would imo be good for customers and NTL. There is one possible way in which such choice would affect users - those that did choose to use keep using the proxies. Assuming that less people decide to use them then for any given page request there is less chance the proxy will have that page cahced locally. So I accept there is some potnetial downside to users that want the NTL proxies. However I stil feel that overall giving users the option to use the proxies or not will result in net benefits over all , for both users and NTL