Curious about Israel's ISP market? Tomer Zedel, Internet Gold technical manager speaks about how the company uses IP Planet's satellite services to connect to the world.

by Alex Goldman ISP-PlanetAssociate Editor [January 5, 2001]

Internet Gold claims that it is Israel's top ISP when ranked by the number of subscribers served. As of September 30, 2000 the company provides Internet access for more than 279,710 subscribers, including 2,000 business accounts.

Company chronology
Internet Gold inked a deal with MSN in October 1999 to create an Israel portal and Hebrew-language Web search service for the software giant. At the time, the agreement allowed Internet Gold to focus on developing content and e-commerce services in preparation for the next millennium.

Now that it's the next millennium, it's time to check in with Internet Gold and see how the ISP is doing.

A recent survey by iGuide concluded that Internet Gold hosts more .il domains than any other Israeli Internet service. Internet Gold is the Web home for more than 3,465 of 26,716 .il domains, which means the company hosts about 13 percent of the .il market.

Internet Gold started as Golden Lines, a CLEC whose investors include Telecom Italia and SouthWestern Bell.

Its primary competitor, besides the incumbent carrier Bezeq, is Barak—a telecom company that owns about 28 percent of the international calling market in Israel. Barak's investors include Sprint, SBC, Deutsche Telekom, and France Telecom.

Hybrid service
Internet Gold uses IP Planet's international backbone, which allows the ISP to tap into a satellite-based Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) connection to the US (details and network maps are available here).

Tomer Zedel, Internet Gold's technical manager, discussed what it takes to operate a profitable satellite Internet service.

[Alex Goldman] How is the ISP market in Israel different from the market in the U.S.?

[Tomer Zedel] I'll answer your question from my point of view—the technical point of view.

Israel is still an emerging market. Of course we are experiencing steady growth, both in the number of users and in total bandwidth consumption. But, for example, residential broadband in Israel is still at the experimental stage.

We do expect commercial broadband to be available soon, and expect the availability of commercial broadband to have a significant impact on the ISP market.

About 75 percent of traffic accesses web servers which are abroad. Since overseas bandwidth is relatively expensive, our bandwidth costs are probably higher that the average ISPs. On the other hand, our technology is the same as that used in the United States. The backbones in Israel use T3/E3 links, OC-3, and Gigabit Ethernet.

I suspect that dialup users consume more 'physical' bandwidth since 56K v.90 and ISDN 128 are very common in Israel.

One important technical difference is, of course, the quality of service. Due to the latency factor in accessing US servers, our SLAs, which are mostly for business customers, who use E1 or greater bandwidth, allow for a certain delay and certain reserved bandwidth while accessing servers abroad.

As a leading ISP in Israel, we maintain our network and technology to assure the best service possible for our customers by keeping a threshold of bandwidth to ensure burstable capacity at any time. With IP Planet's 'Bandwidth on demand' service, it is very easy for us to buy more bandwidth in a single day.

[AG] Does Internet Gold use different equipment?

[TZ] ISPs in Israel use much the same equipment as in the rest of the world. Basically, we are using the same high-end Cisco routers, such as 7513, VXRs, and the best technology, such as ATM, VPNs, and of course state-of-the-art servers and system equipment.

[AG] How are prices different? Are telco costs higher? Is there an incumbent phone company?

[TZ] Bezeq is the incumbent telco.

Telco costs are a little higher as far as I know. For example, Bezeq charges about $1,500 per 10Mbit ATM Unspecified Bit Rate (UBR). Constant Bit Rate (CBR ) is about twice the price. Most ISPs need to use CBR services.

Since Israel is a small country, an advantage for layer 2, or digital backbone customers in Israel, is the distance. You can get a very good deal for E3, or E2 'transmission' which is sold per kilometer, which can be as low as about $2,000 a month for for 34Mbit direct service, if you are not too far away. Thus, Internet Access prices are slightly higher.

[AG] What did you have to learn about satellite and digital video broadcast services?

[TZ] As an IP Planet customer, I needed to learn only the basics, and some technical matters such as protocols and overheads.

[AG] Can you talk about network troubleshooting? Have there been weather problems?

[TZ] IP Planet connections react to sun spots that can take the service out for couple of minutes—about two times a year. Bad weather, mostly on the US side, such as snow, can cause problems. Rain or dust storms can also ruin low-power microwave transmissions. But they are very rare.

As to troubleshooting, IP Planet can change the power parameters to quickly improve service.

[AG] Given the latency of satellite systems, are there any Web services that cannot be delivered to your users over the satellite network?

[TZ] No, Web services from abroad are working fine with the satellite delay, actually a half sat delay since the outgoing link has an optic link.

The delay limitations do not apply to dial-up users. Actually, you'll only notice it if you have more than 512K of bandwidth, but these are generally business customers who connect a full-scale network with many hosts, so they do not use all the capacity on a single TCP connection.

[AG] Do you use any content delivery network?

[TZ] We are setting up Akamai.

Conclusion
Countries such as Israel that are distant from the main backbones should benefit disproportionately from content delivery networks. Anywhere there is a satellite backbone or thin pipe connecting one nation to the rest of the world, bandwidth optimization strategies will be especially important.

Many nations still have a higher percentage of data going through copper, as opposed to fiber, than nations closer to the main backbone such as those in Western Europe and North America.

In summary, IP Planet's satellite digital video broadcast services have brought the Internet to Israel. With exceptions noted, the hybrid satellite-microwave connection to the United States enables Internet Gold to focus on the day-to-day technical issues that are very similar to the issues faced by any other dial-up and Webhosting ISP—anywhere in the wired world.

—End