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HD Video Could 'Choke the Internet'?
richdun writes "Yahoo! is carrying an AP story explaining how ISPs are worried large streaming videos could 'choke the Internet.' This is used as a yet another reason for tiered pricing for access to content providers." From the article: "Most home Internet use is in brief bursts -- an e-mail here, a Web page there. If people start watching streaming video like they watch TV -- for hours at a time -- that puts a strain on the Internet that it wasn't designed for, ISPs say, and beefing up the Internet's capacity to prevent that will be expensive. To offset that cost, ISPs want to start charging content providers to ensure delivery of large video files, for example."
Please. As if Bittorrent and P2P isn't already boosting internet traffic. Either people will watch the streaming downloads, or they'll download the movies another way. Looks like yet another cash grab.
This is preaching to the choir, but bits is bits.
What the providers really fear is that people will actually start using what they've been told they already have.
They've got giant pipes running into everyone's houses, and business models predicated on the fact that most people don't use them. So they tell everyone 'unlimited bandwidth!' when in fact they cannot provide this.
The tiered-internet thing is just a way to punish the people who actually use the bandwidth they were already sold. And an attempt to enact a tax on those who dare to actually provide data that's interesting enough that lots of their customers want it, all at the same time.
There is already so much Dark fiber overcapacity that I think the ISP could easily supply bandwidth to grow with the demand.
No, I could understand paying per gig or meg (look at cellphone providers!). The problem is, they've said "Unlimited Bandwidth! High Speed DSL!!!" to get customers. Now that people are actually trying to use what they've bought, the ISPs are trying to back out of it.
So, The large corporations are now backstepping. Wait
when we ran all of those small companies out of business by
undercutting them and promising the world (and providing something much less) we were actually ruining another business model?
They are in year long contracts now with people who had a expectation of a service. Since most isp's haven't constantly been upgrading capacity as their client base grows, there is going to be a huge thunk when people realize
that there has been a lot of pocketing profits. Profits that should have gone
into improving the network.
The thunk is comming
multicast. Why oh why don't more ISPs support multicast?
That is, on the ISPs' customer side business, there are different speeds you could connect to the internet, from dial-up to DSL, from Cable to the Tx connections. If a user wants to be streaming big media in a constant stream over their cable lines, they could subscribe to a more expensive, higher speed connection. And the ISPs need to keep upgrading their bandwidth to allow for these people who want access to streaming big media.
This "choking the internet" complaint seems to be a cop-out for the laziness of the ISPs toward getting off their butts and really competing to bring a smooth connection to its subscribers.
Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. -Orson Scott Card
...proclaiming what could "kill" the Internet... sigh.
From TFA: "The solution, of course, is to make the pipes connecting to the Internet fatter."
No, no, no. The solution is solid multicasting. So what if everyone is watching American Idol and Survivor and Lost and whatever other crap is on TV at once. Content should be limited by the pipe/hardware itself (something that's measurable and predictable), not the erratic behavior of customer.
sig
Think of local cacheing farms. You can download the content, then when it's time to broadcast, it emerges from a local/home cache to be played.
Otherwise, there just isn't a way to do IPTV unless broadcasters (think the guys with antennas) figure out an alternate method.
The backpressure put on the Internet will one day be able to handle it. But until multiple lambda inter-regional distribution networks using SDH or equivalent methods become available, even OC192 becomes a bottleneck.
Think regional cache. Google, RU listening???
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As someone who is well informed as to how the Internet operates, I'm not even going to bother yelling "bullshit!" It's obvious. I'm sure there will be a hundred posts here going into great detail as to why this latest little ploy the telcos are trying is based on flawed logic.
The real issue is that these big companies will be whispering these ideas to the politicians, who of course have no clue about how the Internet works.
Even non-US citizens should bring this issue up with their government representative and inform about the real facts, and what your views as a voting citizen are. Make insistent phone-calls. Mail well-worded letters.
And something anyone can do instead of talking about the Net Neutrality issue to their fellow nerds, is bring the issue to the non-tech public. Tell the E-mailing Moms and Pops what could happen when they try to download photos their family members have sent, tell the teenagers what could happen to their MySpace access or their Skype connection.
The future of the Internet is at stake, dammit, and no citizen of any country is safe until we have widely recognized, firm laws that make sure the public, global Internet belongs to the people and their free speech!
You mean the telcos might have to invest their huge profits into improving their infrastructure, instead of just giving their executives huge bonuses?
Oh, the horror!
The nerve of those pesky customers, trying to make full use of the "unlimited" bandwidth their ISP promised them!
Exactly.
There seems to be a common misconception that since cable/DSL customers are only paying ~$10/megabit for bandwidth, that that's what the ISPs are paying. That's simply not true.
For ISPs, overselling bandwidth is the ONLY way they can sell it to end-users cheaply. I know there are some people who are paying $50/month for 8Mbps cablemodems. Do you realize that 8Mbps of bandwidth is costing your ISP THOUSANDS (maybe hundreds, if they're in a big city) of dollars?
Bandwidth just isn't as cheap as everyone seems to think it is. So yeah, there is NO WAY an ISP can afford to supply every one of their users the gobs of non-bursty bandwidth necessary to make HDTV downloads on a massive scale work.
Aside from the immense technical challenges of upgrading all the routers along the path, I'd guess encryption. They probably want the data key'd to each user's account.
It's quite suprising that the current traffic fits down the wires we have. Billions of Joe Six packs watching video is obviously going to be an issue. Problem though is that internet costs (to the user) are too low, and there's not a lot of money to be made from providing bandwidth so there's very little motivation to improve the situation.
Roads essentially have, or have had, the same issues. These are funded by state/federal taxes and/or toll roads or some other per-use charges. Perhaps a model like this could work for the internet too.
No, it's like saying "we can't provide service at the cost we're charging our customers, so we're going to charge our content providers instead." Like TV set manufacturers charging cable companies to access their sets because they refuse to charge enough for the set itself. Or airliners charging the state for the "priviledge" of having air commerce take place there.
And it doesn't address the biggest bandwidth user on the internet: P2P. You can't squeeze money from the fileserver if there isn't one.
The solution is that some ISP's are going out of business, some are going to raise prices on their customers, and some are going to adapt new business plans and procedures and thrive. Attempting to charge content providers (The things people are actually paying you to access) is foolish. Fix your business, don't shoot it in the foot.
The ______ Agenda
And if EVERYONE went to the bank together to withdraw their savings- would you expect the bank to have it on hand for EVERYONE in cash?
BTW, if a run occurs on the bank, what do you think the FDIC does? sends over an armored car?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Unlike TCP, where the end-points do all the thinking, multicast requires that the routers are involved in the transactions. They are the ones who have to make decisions like, "does this address get bits, or not?"
The session management protocols of multicast are defined, but there are a few to choose some, and most have some kind of serious drawback associated with them. One of the ones that sticks out in my mind is the one where there's no way to "detect" if a multicast IP is taken, or any more security/authentication than knowing what the address is.
To properly support multicast, we need a session leader, and every router involved in the minimum-cost spanning tree must also know who else is involved. This means the routers have to be able to build the tree, and tear it down as clients join and leave.
Replacing or upgrading routers is hard because a lot of them are fire and forget. They'll place a router in a wall with PoE, and then leave it inside. They'll be on the bottom of the ocean, repeating traffic that goes along a trans-oceanic link. They'll be on top of wireless towers, miles from other people. Most of them were not designed to be remotely upgradable via software, because routers were always meant to be as cheap to produce as possible.
This is also who IPv6 is only really deployed in places where IP space ran out a long time ago (such as Japan). Until it really starts to break, traditional structure will be "good enough" for most people.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Multiple concurrent instances, even multicast, will choke the backhaul.
I want this show, someone wants to watch another, and someone ordered a movie upstairs. So perhaps there are five instances in my home all by itself. Wireless won't support, that, not even MIMO. Broadcast can, but not full res (or even close) DTV broadcases-- even with the best CODECs.
Then take my neighborhood, and start multiplying the instances. Do the math. It's pretty easy. Along about the tenth home or so, you start filling up an OC12-- even if there were distribution boxes that understood multicasting protocols. Take my block, add up all the other blocks in the city. Make it 9PM, prime time. Mulitple OC192 lambdas running on the best fiber today is going to cave. The backhaul will become clogged, and then the lights go out, running from green to red on somebody's Cisco 12000 in a NOC. Then they start to throttle back traffic by protocol type.
Ok, Mr Wizard-- which ones get throttled? Mail? Port 80? Oh-- IPTV-- it's not critical.
Wait, my set's blooming. All pixelated. Bummer.
For a fact, the implementations-- no matter what the last 100 yards are (even fiber) will clog the backhaul. The only solution is local/regional cacheing.... or using a different way of thinking for broadcasters. The numbers don't work. You either limit raster size, color spectrum, frame rate, or start losing information in the CODEC method, or you have data rates that are huge or are substandard compared to broadcast HDTV (US standard). IPTV has that to compete with. If it can't do it, and must forever mime something ugly like NTSC, PAL, or SECAM, then the game is over and IPTV loses. If, however, you can compete with advanced (and advancing HDTV methods) then there's a chance. To do that, given an isochronous data transport need, requires method that doesn't crack the time domain encapsulating the data stream. Multicasting can't do that but for a few channels at a time. Add VOD and other instances, and the backbone collapses or becomes throttled, impeding the streams-- and blowing their quality to shreds.
Local/regional cacheing is the only solution until everything becomes re-thought in terms of infrastructure-- and the economics are behind it. Until then, IPTV will have ugly, postage-stamp sized rasters at frame rates that can be measured in furlongs per fortnight.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
What I don't understand about the Telecoms is why they would want the gross legal responsibility they would pull upon themselves if "net neutrality" were implemented.
As it stands, Telecoms come under only the slightest legal obligations to monitor their clients' viewed content. They stand constitutionally protected as "common carriers" under the same respects that the post office is not to blame if they deliver a bomb, the Telecoms are not to blame if viruses or illegal content are run through their pipes.
If, however, Telecoms decide it's their right to pick and choose what content goes through and what content does not in order to tier their pricing, that puts them under the responsibility to filter all illegal information, viruses, or anything else harmful to an end user.
Napster was under no obligation to scan or filter their content, yet the supreme courts ruled that they were still liable for the content being passed (saying Napster did not fall under the protection of "common carrier") and they stood vulnerable to the legal consequences generated through end users that were unmonitored and had little-to-no direct communication with Napster itself. Less than the post office, less than an ISP.
Though ISP's can/are currently be prosecuted in civil court for allowing for copyright infringement committed through piracy, it usually comes down to asking their clients to remove such media from their computers, threats, and bulldancing.
If the net neutrality action passes, however, the blurry lines between common carrier and filtered information will be defined, and the telecoms will be damned to babysitter status for every user they have. If napster can be sued for letting Joe A and Jane B trade music, even under pretenses that could possibly fall into the home recording act, then the CEO's of telecoms should be ready for jailtime for the first time Joe A is redirected to a kiddie porn site when he's searching for a new mp3 player mod.
Grats, Telecoms, you'll need to be hiring a lot of cheap work in order to go through every single website before it can be sent to its enduser, every time they request a non-cached version of a site. (As soon as they let their guard down, you can BET that angry techies, hackers, and users will exploit their security responsibilities out of spite for their shady business practices)
Instead, I'll choose a telecom to go through that decides not to tier its pricing and keep a "common carrier" image. It will be faster, easier, and less expensive because they won't be paying anyone to read my websites for me before I read them.
Not true. VoIP traffic is more time sensitive than FTP traffic. A SSH session needs better response than bittorrent. And video on demand needs to be processed before a /. page reload.
Sure, it's all 1s and 0s, but those 1s and 0s are arranged into headers and payload. Headers can be analyzed and tagged for prority. All this takes processing power and memory.
It's simple: if you want your VoD to play seamlessly and you want your VoIP to be a clear as a land-line call, you pay more for tagging.
If not, then your 1s and 0s can get lumped in with all the others. Your phone call to mom will be lumped in with my pr0n download.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
The fiber is there, but the equipment to light it up isn't. That nice fancy cable does you no good if you've nothing to plug it in to.
>Why won't anyone stand up in Congress and say, "but Mr. Verizon,
> Mr. AT&T, aren't you just trying to charge twice for the same
> service?"
Because Verizon and AT&T's lobbyists pay the people in congress to not stand up and ask the question, thats why...
Maybe its time for open source/open moderated politics as well..the current system seems rather too...proprietary...
FTFA
If people start watching streaming video like they watch TV -- for hours at a time -- that puts a strain on the Internet that it wasn't designed for
WTF, and charging more money from content providers will change the design of internet.
The Economics:
Myth: Companies should have to pay for the bandwidth they use.
Facts:
Bandwidth is already paid for on both the outgoing and consuming ends, and there are contractual agreements for each network segment the packets pass through on their way from point A to point B. All bandwidth is already paid for. The telcos are proposing to add a THIRD layer of charges onto the Internet, one they can control and manipulate at will and can charge whatever they want for. Even worse, if a packet crosses through 3 networks on its way from from Point A to Point B that would be 3 additional charges. As everyone knows, these charges will be passed directly onto the consumers in one form or another.
Imagine the packet passes through 12 networks to reach you, if any one isn't being paid and blocks or degrades the packet YOU the consumer lose. There is no way to ensure that a packet gets priority unless the company is paying every single possible network that packet might pass through.
Freedom and Censorship:
Since companies would be controlling the flow of information through their networks based on how much they are being paid or any other uncontrolled criteria, they have great incentive to limit, or stop certain bits of information that is in conflict with their new data "Sponsors". Maybe you couldn't read a blog about lawysuits against the telco. Maybe you couldn't reach a news site that contained a story that exposed problems with a company that is paying the telco a lot of money. That is just the tip of the iceberg.
China is a perfect example of a country that does not allow Net Neutrality.
Net Neutrality is not only fair, and a key component in net freedom, it is the only model that will support innovation in a balanced way.
Don't give the Telcos a license to rob us all blind and restrict our freedoms.
The difference is that these aren't private companies, they're public utilities (paid for by tax money) that have been converted into private monopolies. There are very few places in this country where there is any actual competition in this business.
And on what basis do you think the current model is not sustainable? These folks are raking in cash hand over fist on their overpriced, underpowered internet service. They've dipped into the public coffers many times for infrastructure - and much of the infrastructure we paid for was never delivered, btw. If their business model isn't making money, they must need to reduce the amount being laundered into the executives accounts in the bahamas, cause their is no other explanation for it.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Run for office. If you're in the US, the barriers to entry are surprisingly low.
All these people who bitch about corporate control of government are starting to piss me off. How many city council budget hearings do you attend? Zoning board reviews? School board meetings? How often do you write a letter (you know, ink-on-paper, in an envelope, with a first-class stamp) to any of your elected representatives? How many of your elected representatives can you name?
Not singling you out personally, just a good place to interject this. The process is *way* more open than most /.ers assume, it's just that people are too lazy to do anything at all.
I agree on both points. However, there is a signifigant cost involved with moving a lot of traffic. As I have said before, Cisco, Juniper, and Bay are not cheap. Especially for equipment capable of moving data at OC-48 and up.
While the ISPs may not charge for peering, they both have to buy additional blades and pay techs to update and maintain those systems.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
For comparison, Manhattan has 25,800/sq km. Roughly 44 times as densely populated. Yet Manhattan does not have $70/month Gigabit fiber to the home. Why? Is Manhattan is too far from central hubs? Or that an area with a median household income of $47,030 would be unable to support sufficient $70/month connections?
Or is it that the telecom companies are getting fat on selling DSL/cable, and don't want to invest in the bandwidth it would require to support all those people at that speed? Perhaps with some addition pressure from media companies, that don't want consumers to be able to exchage gigabytes of data with ease?
Its like getting an unlimited electricity contract from your power company, at a maximum of say 5KW. then you try to use 5KW for a while to run your airconditioner and your airconditioner blows up due to a brown out caused by 50 people trying to run 5KW aircons off of one 5KW maximum powerline, the the power company forgot to tell you was running the entire street. They then try to charge the airconditioner company for creating a device which uses lots of power, and want to be able to turn your airconditioner off if they have too much demand on a hot day, while letting those that pay the manager a bit of extra on the side run their airconditioners on high all day. Meanwhile the whole time this has been happening, you and all the other people in the street were paying money for a service listed as UNLIMITED ELECTRICITY up to 5KW, and yet not getting it.
Its bullshit. If we pay for a 1Mbit connection, we should get a 1Mb connection. If they want to limit our downloads on that connection, they should state the limits OPENLY and OBVIOUSLY and NEVER CALL IT AN UNLIMITED CONNECTION. whatever downloads we pay for we should get!! and no whingeing that we are downloading the amount we paid for, just cos they didnt actually expect us to use what we paid for
I cant get a contract to build a highway, get paid to build a highway, then mow a track through some paddocks with a ride-on lawnmower, just cos I figured no one would ever use the highway much anyway!
If they need more money because the ratio of users to actual available bandwidth is too low, they should charge more money to the users - UP FRONT. If they want to advertise an unlimited plan, thereby gaining an advantage in terms of number of customers over a limited plan, then they should be required to put in the equipment necessary to cover that plan no matter how much the users download. the cost of this equipment should be in the initial plan price. (obviously as costs rise, so can the monthly fee, but if its listed as unlimited it should goddamn well be unlimited and price all inclusive
watch "the money masters" on google video
That's the real problem. This notion of over selling bandwidth on the plan that people aren't going to use it anyways. Some ISPs have a horrific track record of doing this and it's inexcusable. If you're going to sell me 24/7, 6MB down/1MB up, then god damn it, I expect to get just that. If that's not what I'm getting then don't call it that, and don't promise it!
for congress?
School board meetings?
how many of the fortune 500 are paying off my local school board officials? that's not what we're bitching about. If I have an issue that the school board can solve, or the Zoning board, I do that. It's a different matter though to show up in washington and just sit in on a meeting of that level. If that were allowed, and people were that politically active, we would have a problem. Back in september, enough people who down to DC to protest the war that they essentially shut down all the traffic in the immediate area of the whitehouse, capital, etc. Those who organized it were telling people who hadn't yet started to march not to because the streets were clogged to the point where nobody could really move anyways. by the way, we're still in Iraq.
How often do you write a letter
they're not interested in individual letters and you know it. you get a petition going, get a bunch of letters, that's a different story, and I've participated in that. sometimes it does some good. sometimes not.
For those who really don't do shit, you've got a point. But for those of us who do our part - let us bitch.
No single raindrop believes that it is responsible for the storm.
First, the fiber network that was laid out during the .com boom globally by companies like global crossing currently contains a lot of dark fiber. So that part is cheap.
The routers / switches / head ends / last mile ARE NOT CHEAP. Verizon is laying FIOS and it is taking them years at a cost of many billions.
If the ISPs are worried about streaming, then they should flag the need for a media proxy solution. Certain shows are popular and will amount to a big percentage of the traffic. If they ISP stuck a smart media proxy that knows what most customers watch in between the customers and the backbone, then the customers would not choke the internet.
Problem managed!
Stop the brainwash
Let's look at HD
we all have SD right now.
Then congress says we need HD everywhere.
(Early ON)
They can't decide on a standard.
The TV's that say their HD ready -- are not ready.
They still cost $6000
SD users need a converter box
There are no converter boxes
Oh the boxes will be only $100
Then look at the cable companies
It costs more for HD shows.
(then lets look at the rest of the spectrum)
BPL gets rolled out.
It causes interference to HAM RADIO
It causes interference to AM Radio
It causes interference to VHF TV
It causes interference to (insert your favorite frequency)
All this HD crap just costs more money, and leaves small content providers up the creek
Look at the telco's trying to kill Public Access TV (They don't wan't franchises)
Look at the telco's trying to get net-nutrality killed.
It's simple people, the government is allowing the telco's to walk over everyone everywhere.
The FCC is ran by Bush Appointees.
You have nowhere to go now.
And they control all the "public Frequencies" (sic)
It's to KILL FREE SPEECH!! They don't want us to communicate, unless it comes out the mouth of the Whithouse press secretary.
They don't want us blogging, or running our Gorilla Journalism.
They want to control everything and disrupt everything else.
Call me paranoid, but follow the money, before you do.
Look at the history, you will see what I say is true.
If you make more than $100,000 a year you get news, if not your in the internet poor house, on dialup or just un-informed
All Corporate TV spin's the news.
This the way they want it in our prison planet.
Meanwhile you get to get bombarded by their electomagnetic sea of death, regardless if you subscribe or not. Look at all the cell towers, hell just turn on a spectrum analyzer.
They waste more bandwith and money with encryption of their precious HD movies. Also making Joe 6-pack un-able to tap in on rabbit ears.
Even Shortwave is fucked. Try to pick up Radio Moscow with a Shortwave, hear all the noise.
Then you have the DOT, and others who have video survelilance cameras , they all have their networks 24/7.
They want to watch you, Tap your phones, do pattern recognition and control your news from all sources.