"It's a cost-effective solution and this is one of the reason businesses are going for it," she told ZDNet Australia.
The high cost of Internet bandwidth is due to the structure of the Internet, which was initially designed for military use, according to Michael Johannessen, MD of infrastructure provider NEXTEP. -The Internet was designed for e-mail basically, so it is humongously complex. You have people sitting at routers, having to update every time a new ISP is added."
Johannessen sees a future where end users may have several Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) running into their computer alongside their Internet line. The VPNs will run to another system that the end user has regular and heavy traffic with, which will be available at a much lower cost because expensive routers won't be needed.
Over half of large corporations have virtual networks in place, and Johannessen believes SMEs will be the growth sector over the next few years. -There are half a million SMEs that could start doing networking," he told ZDNet Australia. -At the moment penetration is at three percent, but that's changing rapidly."
Wholesale broadband provider Request is taking a similar approach to NEXTEP. -We built our entire network on the basis of delivering multiple services through the connection, so users can get the grade of service they require," CEO Philip Sykes said.
According to Sykes, the key to this service is having both a layer 2 (link between the customer and the electronic boxes) and a layer 3 (IP-based) network, and most providers only have a layer 2 network.
Sykes illustrates the benefits of multiple service networks using Victorian Libraries as an example. In this case, all the libraries are linked to one another over a VPN so they can search each other's databases, and they have separate Internet access, although on the same wire. The database indexing VPN is high performance, while the Internet is best-effort.
Due to infrastructure restrictions, howeve, it will be a while before residential users will be able to benefit from this service. While business broadband is heading towards multi-service capabilities, Sykes believes residential broadband is heading down the -lowest possible cost" route.
Johannessen also believes that it will be several years before VPNs become common for residential users, but doesn't rule out a future move into that market.
-We want to get it right in small business first, that's a tough market," he said. -We can then take these lessons and apply them to the residential space."
why is it cable is so expensive here in australia as opposed to the USA for example.
It would be more profitable for servers to lower their cost to suit the australian market as there would be a larger amount of users this way, dnt ya fink