59Box Web Hosting - Shanghai, China, Singapore, US, India

Not too long ago I made a comment on a blog about China bandwidth and also responded to a number of questions from clients about the network and bandwidth in China.

So this post is a compilation and putting down my thoughts on this topic. I must say after a few years in the hosting business in China, we are still learning and trying to understand the network and environment better.

China is perhaps quite unique in the sense that it has a really huge internet population and there are huge demand for reaching content outside and inside of China.

According to CNNIC, the international bandwidth is 640,287 Mbit/s (Dec 31, 2008). Wikipedia has a list that shows the number of users in China is greater than the EU. I have not found data about EU international bandwidth but I suspect that with most EU countries having their own international bandwidth, the total is probably more that China.

Therefore is doesn’t matter if you are connected to a huge pipe at either end. If you are coming in or going out, there is a narrow congested pipe in the middle.

The US has the advantage that the Internet start there and they whole world is connecting there. But there will probably come a time that the world want to connect to China and India (which from the Wikipedia data is just 7% of population but already the top 4).

An area we have yet look into is private transit and bandwidth, so if you have any insight into that I would love to learn more about it. We are also venture more into this area as well and hope to bring some exciting products that meets the requirement of customers in China.

Internally, the China Internet network is also unique and interesting as well. Other than the US and maybe India coming up, there isn’t another country that need to network so many people and cities.
My guess is that at the present moment, the network in China is not as well developed as in the US. No hard data here but I think it is easily a good guess.

Then there is the also problem that the two major network providers don’t like talking to each other. Well things has gotten better over the last few few years. It used to be that going to sites on the other provider is even slower than going to the US.

Guess all these are what makes things really interesting for us. An interesting, challenging and growing environment that is China.

If you have information or experience, perhaps share with us in the comments.