* Reader questions a recent claim by MCI
An astute reader of this newsletter noticed a statistic about MCI’s IP network traffic that seemed wrong, and he asked me to look into it.
Our reader noted that in a 10-K form MCI filed with the SEC for the year ended Dec. 31, 2003, MCI said the following about its network:
“We operate one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated networks for Internet, data and voice communications. On a typical day, our network processes billions of messages including 700 terabytes (equal to 700 trillion bytes) of data and over 370 million telephone calls consisting of approximately 1 billion minutes of voice communications.”
Our reader questioned the 700-terabyte figure for MCI’s data traffic. He wanted to know if that figure included all of MCI’s data traffic worldwide because it is about half the amount of IP traffic that AT&T claims to carry each day in North America alone.
Here’s the official response from MCI:
The 700-terabyte figure refers to MCI’s North American IP traffic only. It doesn’t include Asia, Europe or Latin America. The figure does not include frame-relay, ATM, private line or VoIP services. For network engineers familiar with autonomous system number assignments, this traffic data is for MCI’s AS701 network only.
MCI points out that no standard technique exists in the ISP industry for counting IP traffic. This makes comparing IP traffic numbers from one ISP to another the same as comparing apples to oranges, MCI says. As an example, MCI says it counts its IP traffic in one direction only, so that MCI’s figures may appear to be smaller than that of ISPs that count traffic in both directions.
In contrast, AT&T says its IP network handles 1.3 petabytes of data traffic per day in the U.S. AT&T officials say they count traffic in one direction only.
If you’d like to learn more about the various metrics that ISPs use to measure the size and performance of their IP networks, turn to this two-part series published recently in Network World:
The Rules are Fuzzy in IP Numbers Game: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0517specialfocus.html
Performance Means Many Things for ISPs: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0524ispnets.html
