Informer 281: 26 August 2015

We carefully monitor all the links within our Ethernet aggregation network to identify any approaching peak utilisation, we’re now undertaking to share this report online with you. 

What's Happening?

From today we will be publishing a fortnightly network capacity view online highlighting any links within the Chorus Ethernet aggregation network that exceeded a peak utilisation above 90 percent at any point in the preceding week. The report is available on our customer website at Network Capacity Report. You can subscribe to receive notification of updates to this report by going to My Subscriptions and selecting "Network Capacity Status Report"

What's the detail?

Chorus’ Regional Ethernet Network (REN) consists of approximately 300 aggregation switches in more than 100 locations interlinked by over 500 fibre connections. The utilisation of each of these links is carefully monitored.

Previously, we have seen aggregated bandwidth growth within Chorus' copper network, grow by about 50 percent each year. In the first half of this year, we saw a 58 percent increase in traffic, believed to correlate to the uptake of consumer, high definition (HD) online video services such as Netflix, Sky's Neon and Spark's Lightbox.

While we were prepared for a reasonable uptake of HD consumer video services we, like others in the industry, did not expect such a massive spike in traffic. In response we moved swiftly to add additional capacity where necessary and practicable. However, some augmentation activity has required more work with a longer lead time.

We’ll continue to be proactive in the way we manage traffic across our network and will work with you to relieve any pressure points on broadband performance in the network. Your help in letting us know your traffic growth expectations in the medium-to-long term would be much appreciated.

Who do I contact?

For more information, or to share your feedback on the report, please contact your Service Delivery Manager.