DATA is the Clear winner Finally an Indian Telco wakes up

Reliance Industries chairman Mr. Mukesh Ambani has announced tariff plans of much anticipated Reliance Jio (4G+ network). Customer billing is only in terms of the amount of Data used per month Voice calls are completely free.

“For Reliance... data is the new oil, and intelligent data is the new petrol”Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and MD – Reliance Industries.

 I am sure this move is about to create a big dent on other operators revenue and business plan. If you have any doubt on Reliance Jio's plan and it's business objective you landed in correct page. Let's bisect read the fine print,

Approximately 7 years ago I wrote an article about Data volume in a mobile network and its importance in capacity planning. I also mentioned about the need for an innovative business plan to harvest the effective efficiency of Data and hence increase revenue. 

Most telecom industry experts know the importance of ARPU - Average Revenue Per User. This magic word helps to forecast revenue and do capacity planning. RF architect may not directly agree with me but our common variable erlang assists to determine ARPU, which is a clear business term for ROI calculation. 

   Erlang is defined as an amount of voice traffic in an hour. .i.e Total voice minutes / 60. Total voice minutes = no.of users x Avg usage per user.

Long ago Operators have moved away from erlang. simply because Voice channel is not the only one carried by signal Data is carried together. In recent times more DATA channels are used than Voice. Erlang is history and hence should be Voice based billing

Data usage is simply growing at an exponential rate than Voice. A photo you clicked and shared, A txt you received/forwarded and every call/emoji you use in watsapp/imessage/hangout/G+ simply Data. 

Read following data points from recent article from frost, 

http://digitaltransformation.frost.com/expert-insights/viewpoints/mobile-data-usage-trends-and-operator-implications/

• An average 4G LTE smartphone consumes upwards of 2.5 GB of cellular data every month

• Connected tablets are being used more and generating approximately 2.0 GB of cellular data on 4G networks

• Connected laptops and air cards (yes these still exist!) consume more than 5 GB of cellular data every month

One more data point about DATA traffic growth from Internetworking product leader CISCO,

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/mobile-white-paper-c11-520862.html

Sorry for fooling you with slightly incorrect detail. I said SLIGHTLY remember i am building my data points for DATA. The actual truth is every voice call you make is transferred as Data, we live in 4G world your voice is actually carried as Data in Teleco's core network. Billing you by per minute is simply a way to fool you. There is nothing like Roaming, A voice call is IP datagram gets routed across state (say CA to Tx or TN to UP) mostly similar to Data (From sender (your cell) to Server and server to Receiver). So, from a Telecom infrastructure perspective, you need to build and maintain same intelligence for Data and Voice by allowing a not growing segment Reliance is marketing well to capture customers from a competitor. 

Bill your customer based on DATA usage is the way forward. Reliance Jio is making a bold move and a logical move. Good luck Jio, i am sure Reliance knows to win a customer you need to do lot more than an innovative billing. Quality metrics are very important than simplified billing. 

All the best RELIANCE JIO. 

Is this a right time to buy a home in Bay area?

I really don't want to steer away from my blog focal point, which in Networking technologies. This topic is most discussed in office and in many social gathering. I would like to record my 2 cents with this post,

DISCLAIMER: I am not an economist OR Banker OR Real-estate agent. This is not my answer to a Quora question.

US house price goes through cycle your purchase point the cycle decides your yield. IMO, at this moment [July, 2016] ]US economy is not ready for another recession. Do not expect 30-50% correction in home prices. Economy mends (oct-dec 2013 house market index corrected, may-july 2016 index corrected), It's really hard to find these drop points. Given the housing demand in bay area, It takes about 3-5 failed offer to get one successful accepted offer. 

House rents have gone up disproportionately with individual income. 2BHK apartment, which costed $1550 a month in 2010 is at $2550 today. Give Interest rates is still at an attractive rate. For the same floor plan mortgage is less than rent, since earning on cash is 1% best case. 

Few facts to substantiate my view on housing bubble timing, 

Recovery time (Down trend to the beginning of appreciation) gives a good hint about Market explode time (continuous UP trend to down). 

• 2008 recession affected housing market by 60% (CA value, not national) 
• Other corrections .com (2000), underwriting collapse (199x) impacted only by 10%
• 2007 to 2011 => Down trend, we are currently in up trend 2011 to 2016. 3.5 yrs Vs 5 years

Factors affecting house market, 

• Bubble needs Irrational fraudulent and excess greed – IMO, Three factors can make this happen: Tech valuations irrational, Post Brexit and politics
• Effect of TECH valuations footprint is limited to select pockets
• FED support to housing market. Owning a house is relatively cheaper than renting one.
• 5 years of UP trend is too short for a bubble to form. 

Find a value for money place. Look at your need, you don’t need high school rating of 10 with elementary starting kid.

Reference sites,

http://www.paragon-re.com/3_Recessions_2_Bubbles_and_a_Baby

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble

http://www.economist.com/node/2461875

Quantifying traffic policer rate with Burst-Size value - test method and calculation

Quality Of Service (QoS) dictates how a packet or flow is handled in networking world. Task is not as simple as the sound of this magic three letter word. Many functionalities of QOS work together to accomplishes this trivial task.  QoS complexity is dictated by number of modifications performed to return intended result, QOS  concepts are hard to perceive for many networking professionals.

Let's add one of QoS functionality "POLICING/RATE-LIMITING"

Traffic policing is one of the commonly used QoS feature. Policer/rate-limiter helps to allow only defined packet rate for interested flow. Various other sub-tasks like set queue.no or mark  a specific bit in packet for violated and conformed actions are also possible.

Typical traffic policing configuration looks similar to.

 Police cir 100 mbps bc 200ms pir 200 mbs bc 20 ms conform transmit exceed set-dscp 3 violated drop

above config allows traffic rate  of 100kbs, sets dscp value 3 for flow between 100mbps to 200 mbps and drop any further traffic.

Most networking engineers don't really know that traffic is not actually policed at 100 mbbs, there is more to it, BC helps to define it.

What does "BC - Burst Count" do?
Why my actual policer rate is more than defined rate?
How does it helps on practical traffic flows?

Let's find answer here.

Burst count helps to adjust policer rate to absorb traffic burst. Real world traffic flow is bursty in nature. Handling burst help to have handle on policer rate without increasing the traffic drop point.
 very rare to see a constant rate of data flow, even if you observe high traffic rate, it is definitely constituted by several mice flows than one giant elephant flow.

BC in time representation translates to Bytes based on port speed.

for a 100mbps policer rate  200 ms BC
Policer bandwidth in Bytes is,

(100 x  1000 x 1000 )  bps x 0.2 Sec  = 2500 KBytes
--------------------------------------------
  8 bits in a byte

On a 10gbps port speed this translates  (2500 KB / 10gbps)to, 2msec of burst duration.

Bandwidth rate in 2msec on 100mbps link becomes 0.2mbps. Effective policer rate is 100.2 Mbps


Typical BC metrics are either in time (ms/micro-sec/sec) or in Bytes. Now that you know the conversion. effective policer rate can be easily determined. 

Data Center Switch Market - Black magic in White Box

Deploy, Manage and operate Data center switches similar to the way you operate a server. Buy commodity hardware and run operating system you like. These two ideas gave birth to WHITE BOX switches to Switching market.

In campus networking and Data Center  networking Top of Rack (TOR) or Leaf switches are the most deployed networking infrastructure. Every network interconnect should go through LAN switches, In Data Center networking TOR is the 1st server interconnect point. Every server gets a link to a TOR switch through direct or indirect extended links. White box evolution is promises to make a big impact on TOR market with low priced commodity switches. Data Center switching has made a giant stride in recent time, Switches are specially built instead of using general-purpose switches. There has been a quantum jump in amount of traffic handled by data center switches. I have used 100Mbps port-speed switches to connect server, Gone or the days!

White box echo system consists of,

• Merchant silicon companies - Networking ASICS - Ex: BRCM, xpliant, NxP, Intel
• Bare Metal Switch providers -  Ex: Quanta computer Inc, Pic8, Accton, Celestica
• Network OS Ex: Cumulus, Pic8, Big Switch Networks, Juniper, Dell etc

ASIC, HW and OS together makes a switch. Choice for each one of these through various vendors makes life easy for all customers. This Healthy competition is laying founding stones for the fruitful future of White box switches. 

I am neither a support nor an opposer to White box solutions. My data center domain expertise only puzzles me with following questions. 

1. Server OS != Switch OS. I couldn't accept this point.
• x86 architecture has been there for a while. hypothetically Ever since computer industry has evolved into mainstream.
• Server OS is a Very very big market to keep different providers busy.Desktop, Application hosting environment, Cloud, Campus, cellphone and lab)
• Networking processors have to go through multiple sprints to get the maturity equivalent to PC processors. Evolving protocols needs newer capabilities in ASIC.
2. Support Onus - Asic, Switch Manufacturer and OS, Out of these three pillars who will take ownership for any issues.
3. Catch-Up with standard - Networking giants like Cisco, Juniper and Brocade have edge over Merchant silicon vendors in many new protocols.
4. Support cost is directly proportionate to  knowledge base. New Box/OS - means new training cycle for IT engineers

Certainly WHITE BOX solutions is an important catalyst for SDN and NFV evolution. Data Center and enterprise networking is going through a big consolidation phase. White Box battle will certainly make a big hole in existing networking vendors revenue. I am sure they will have plans to sail through this head wind. 

Open standards is must to increase innovation and hence tackle digital divide across the globe. Only time can reveal the effectiveness of this black magic.