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Video Usage Creates Traffic Jam Worries
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has an article talking about worries over the increase in video downloads in the last year. Free video hosting and the popularity of iTunes is blamed for this phenomenon." From the article: "This is far from an academic issue. Whether the new companies can deliver on their promises could have a profound effect on how the Internet operates--and it could hit consumers in the pocketbook. Business and entertainment content worth billions of dollars now flows over ordinary ISP networks. Internet voice calls, which can be garbled by any network congestion, are increasingly common. Serious online hiccups could be as irritating, and potentially economically damaging, as persistent L.A. traffic jams."
Internet voice calls, which can be garbled by any network congestion, are increasingly common.
I call my solution POTS and I have submitted a patent to cover it.
Remember when dialup and fax transmissions completely destroyed the telephone network?
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This sounds little more than the usual doomsday stuff. In the US there is plenty of unused fiber that covers the entire country. Even companies like Google are interested in tapping this resource. This isn't so much a problem as it is an opportunity for a company to fullfill the demand.
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This is simply the way technology works. From the begginning the web has been needing speed upgrades because of its content. And once the speed catches up to support the newest content, the content evolves and requires greater speed. Why worry about this natural process of innovation. If content is limited out of bandwidth concerns, then bandwidth won't improve.
This just adds ammo to ISP's push for tiered internet. Scarry ....
ISPs are not concerned with traffic "jams". They are concerned with their overselling of bandwidth and people beginning to actually use broadband the way it was intended to be used -- not to replace dialup for speedier POP e-mail and a couple of websites.
One of the ways thsi could potentially be alleviated is through the intelligent use of a cache/proxy server. I know of one small ISP back in the day (admittedly long before downloadable video was at all common) that elected to invest in just such a server, rather than significantly upgrading their bandwidth. They analysed their traffic and found that there were large swaths of data that were requested by many people (for example today that might be the most popular 20 Google videos, or the images on the Slashdot front page or whatever). By caching these locally, they were able to dramatically cut down on their bandwidth usage to their data provider. The ISP-to-user bandwidth was much cheaper, so this was a great way for them to increase their effective bandwidth without having to pay for massive data pipe upgrades.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Is this just another "The Internet Sky is going to FALL!" episode? Any excuse to charge another buck for bandwidth on the presumption that things are gonna get really bad if they don't.
My humor is probably your flamebait
Internet voice calls, which can be garbled by any network congestion, are increasingly common
And this is exactally why I do not subscribe to the VOIP bandwagon yet. ComCast's service is so hit-or-miss sometimes, I can't trust a phone service on it. Hell, I can't even trust an uninterrupted game of Q2 deathmatch. Mind you, this isn't exclusive to ComCast. It's a trend propogating through all broadband ISPs as they meet a level they can't serve.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Did anybody else read this and immediately check to see if zdnet is owned by AT&T?
Maybe I'm paraniod, but it's a perfectly healthy attitude to have in this country.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
This is so profound. I am simply staggered with this depth of reasoning involved with this. Companies that depend on the availability of a resource will be affected if that resource is unavailable. Amazing!
In a related story, high tech companies are concerned that they may lose money in the event of a power outage.
Expect a lot of stories that logically lead to a tiered Internet in the next few months. First there were stories about the telecom companies considering tiers. Now there will be stories about how the current internet structure is threatened by certain applications that require high bandwidth. Then the excuse will be that they HAD to go to tiered service because the infrastructure just couldn't handle the strain without causing riots, plaugues and famine.
Insert pithy comment here.
Serious online hiccups could be as irritating, and potentially economically damaging, as persistent L.A. traffic jams."
That's a really interesting analogy. It's taken us (the U.S.) fifty years to figure out that if you build more, and higher-capacity, roads, it alleviates congestion temporarily but ultimately results in...more traffic and more congestion. Does something similar apply to networks? Adding more bandwidth may be expensive, but unlike roads, (i) usage is easy to monitor and thus charge for, increasing companies' incentive to invest, and (ii) the many damaging externalities (i.e., costs like air pollution that traditionally aren't factored into the "price" of roads and cars) seem to be absent for computer networks.
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
Wow, its almost as if the ISPs were trying to say that people would have to pay more if they wanted thier packets routed with a high standard for delivery time. Where have I heard that recently?
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
Very popular audio podcasts can cause some issues for small ISPs also. I own one such ISP that hosts a website with a podcast that has become very popular. Being able to deliver that much content to so many people hasn't yet maxed out our bandwidth, but it definately is using a majority of the total that we see right now.
The other day I overheard a fellow at a local game store chatting with a cop about getting better speeds on BitTorrent(!). (Disclaimer: Always remember that there *are* legal uses for BitTorrent.) At this point, BitTorrent and other P2P downloads have become so widespread that they are using a significant fraction of the Internet's resources. I don't see how adding more legal video downloads is going to create a traffic jam above and beyond what we already have. In fact, it's quite likely that many of the legal downloads will replace either illegal or amature-produced downloads. Thus the net effect, IMHO, would be undoubtedly far less than expected.
If service providers feel they actually have a reason to be concerned about the matter, then they should see it as an opportunity to sell more server class bandwidth to customers. Assuming they're not undercutting themselves (???), they should be able to use the sales to increase their bandwidth infrastructure to meet the needs.
Honestly, I think the question is, who is raising the concerns in the article and why? The answer seems to be, "the service providers" and "so they can sell the idea of tiered service". Will they just get over it? No one is buying the tiered service idea.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well, let's see...
If Application X (games mostly) was too much for your system, what did you do ?
Try to improve on the application engine, request code rewrites and wait for patches ?
Duuh, nope. YOU GOT UP AND BOUGHT A FASTER MACHINE.
If you knew NY traffic was going to be awfull, do buy a faster car ?
NOPE. Actually, you could SELL the car.
And you will use the subway, or in case you can't, get a cab.
Or, if you're the mayor, put a huge "car usage price" and get the freaking streets empty (and the city rich) at the same time.
So... is your ISP (you being a big company) having problems with your traffic ?
Well... get a better "pipe" plan, or switch ISPs.
AS LONG AS YOU ASK FOR MORE BANDWIDTH, and you do it for "long term", somebody, somewhere is going to be more than happy to provide it for you.
So the answer is not "limit usage", but "build better roads".
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How about if the major ISPs finally get their act together and allow Multicast on their networks? For podcasts and videopodcasts with thousands subscribers, this would cut bandwith costs by huge factors.
The Future Of The Internet (TM) is going to be varying levels of service depending on how much you (and/or the content providers) want to pay. The specs are mostly there for providing multi-tiered Quality of Service (QOS), but the implementation is still some years away. As we know, there is also some controversy involved here.
As an example, if a given company (can anyone say "Google"?) wanted to provide VoIP telephone service with a guaranteed, deterministic, bit-rate allocated to each connection, they would sign a contract with a particular ISP and pay certain licensing fees and so on. The controversy arises because we could reach a point where a large chunk of bandwidth is dedicated to these paid-for streams, and the rest of the world is left with a best-effort attempt at whatever's left over. This would of course leave the smaller companies out in the cold. If CNN.com pays the premium to provided guaranteed QOS for it's streaming audio, and another, smaller site does not, well, guess who's video is going to look better?
At the moment, there is still a lot of dark fiber and unused bandwidth in the backbone, such that the real bottlenecks, if any, are in the last mile to the house, so it's not an issue. Yet. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out, but it's not hard to envision a future where the days of all internet sites being equal are long gone.
My guitar chord generator.
Most big ISPs (comcast, verizon, etc.) charge a typical flat rate for monthly service. So Bobby checking his email pays the same as Grandma downloading those high-quality Frank Sinatra mpegs.
But maybe there's another way to do this- monthly fees based upon data transfer. I pay it now as the host, but maybe the consumer should pay some metered/scaled/tiered rate?
It's easy enough to compute transfer rates per account (they do this now in a limited way so they can send warnings to people consuming too much bandwidth) and the ISPs would relaize more revenue (so their stock holders would like it).
Finally, the companies could make many confusing, multi-tierd plans and market the bejesus out of them like the cell phone companies do. Whoa.. think I just hit the ugly part...
Cogito Ergo Sum
Oh no, a problem! We're the press. We don't know anything about anything. How can this problem possibly be fixed! What's to be done!? Are we all doomed?
People who solve problems instead of hyping them understand that if there's a shortage of something (bandwidth, or QoS in this case), you go get more of it. And the problem is solved.
When you read Borland's article, keep in mind that his argument about video streaming creating unfair expenses for ISPs, without compensating them as much as the content providers, is the reason that telcos like AT&T and Verizon are demanding different charges for accessing competitors like Google. The telcos want a "2-tier Internet", with more expensive "premium" fees for fast, reliable access to content competitors like Google and Time Warner, just as the telcos start competing with them with their own video streams. But Borland doesn't mention that aspect of his argument, even though it's hot news.
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make install -not war
I can just see the excuses now.
Employee: Sorry I was late for work boss. My telecommute was delayed in a "traffic jam". Traffic was moving well down the backbone, but when I pulled off at the Cisco exit it slowed down to a crawl due to a collision at the next router. After so long in traffic I was running low on gas and headed for the nearest repeater, unfortunately I didn't make it and my 'car' was dropped off the road.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Exactly. Consumers actually becoming empowered is the biggest fear that corporations and our government has. Witness the debates on Bloggers rights, P2P trading and communication, etc. It's all about keeping the consumer marginalized and making sure they A) don't post information your trying to hide, *cough* Bu$h *cough*, and B)they don't develop alternative means of developing entertainment and communication that circumvent traditional Media monopolies.
It's all about control, and the fear of losing it.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I've been using asterisk for nearly 6 months now, doing all voip. My only grip is that even though my upstream provider will allow IAX2 termination, they will only let me use ulaw codec, rather than gsm or speex, which would significantly reduce the throughput needed.
I'm in the process of getting some IAX2 servers in place in our data center so I can use some leaner codecs, the trick here is that in practice this is all transcoding...I'm doing the equivalent of wav -> mp3 on all of that audio in real-time, which is the reason my upstream provider won't allow it, and I can't realy blame them in that regard.
If you work with someone that knows their stuff, gives you a properly prioritized connection, and you minimize latency to them, VOIP will just beat the living tar out of POTS. The problem is that companies like Comcast won't give you that kind of personalized attention. If I want to provide cheap sip or iax2 termination, I can do it, but I can't support you that well. If you're willing to wrestle with it yourself, absolutely.
We're heading into an area where high tech must be supportable, and not just throw out there.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I mean, look at Jack Bauer! He can get anywhere in L.A. in less than 15 minutes, all while carrying out complex functions on his super cell phone and running over countless terrorists!
I have a dynamic IP address, you insensitive clod!
Watch the ISP's start to throttle people ala Netflix.
"Sure you can have unlimited rentals for $14.99, as long as you limit it to less than 5 a month, otherwise we'll throttle you to a limit of our choosing."
"Sure you can have 1Mbps up/down, as long as you don't try to use it, otherwise it will be 128Kbps."
How do they keep getting away with this. If I were to say, "sure I'll agree to pay you $14.99/mo for the service as long as it's only for one month, otherwise I'll just pay you $1.99/mo" I'd get service interrupted and a big splap on my credit history. We need consumer unions to protect ourselves. When one person drops the service, they'll be glad as it's just someone using the service to the advertised terms (instead of much lower than that), but if a thousand subscribers do it at once they'd notice.
Then there's a plug for "Itiva", which has some technology they call "Quantum Streaming" (tm). Itiva's web site is vague, but this seems to be more about DRM than transmission: "Itiva enables publishers and media content owners to monetize media content. The technology protects copyrighted material, supports embedded advertising, and defines the future direction of video publishing over the Internet." Itiva has done a demo, one that basically demonstrates that if you have 5.5Mb/s to the user, streaming works reasonably well.