Michael's Insight

Survey says that majority of upstream Internet traffic is P2P

61% Of All Upstream Traffic Is P2P [Broadband Reports]

Sandvine, the company that manufactures network management equipment and software, has released a survey detailing Internet usage in the U.S. The key finding in the survey is that 61% of all upstream traffic on the Internet is peer-to-peer file trading. P2P applications compose 22% of all downstream traffic on the Internet.

“Bulk bandwidth applications like P2P are on all day, everyday and are unaffected by changes to network utilization,” said Mr. Caputo [of Sandvine].  “This reinforces the importance of protecting real-time applications that are sensitive to jitter and latency during times of peak usage.  Effective network traffic optimization techniques use sophisticated policies that balance network capacity, application requirements and subscriber quality of experience in real-time.”

Storm Aftermath -- Still Recovering, One Week Later

Believe it or not, we still have 30,000 customers in our service area who still are without electricity, phone or cable.  The damage by last Sunday's surprise hurricane-force windstorm has been shocking. 

Friday morning, power was finally restored at our Network Operations Center.  Two huge generators kept our network up and running for 5 days, nonstop.  Those generators ran the equipment but the building was largely without lights or air conditioning.  Even though the generators kept the systems powered, it still took people showing up to work, every day and every night, in sometimes sweltering heat, to monitor our storm-stressed network and keep it working as best we could.

WOW! Where's our Workforce?

A while back we were given the opportunity to hire a number of experienced customer service representatives who were looking for new positions.  Why?  Because their jobs were eliminated when their employer and our competitor -- WOW -- closed one of their local call centers.