Will World Cup Streaming Cause Internet Meltdown?

MetaNick writes "It seems with every worldwide sporting event, e.g., Olympics, World Cup, we hear warnings of a "meltdown" as more and more broadband users attempt to stream video of the event to their browsers. And such predictions have just begun for the World Cup just getting underway: World Cup streaming to cause network meltdown, World Cup by broadband endangers networks. Has this ever really happened? Will it happen with this the World Cup just getting underway? I tend to doubt it. I looked for articles discussing how predictions of meltdowns did NOT come to pass, but I couldn't find any."

Comments

Unlikely

[David Horn]

I think the closest we've been to an internet meltdown is the July 7th bombings in London.

The BBC's website was practically unusable and as far as I know they limited streaming video to UK citizens. I find it doubtful that the BBC feels they have sufficient capacity to knock out internet across the whole country.

What do I know, anyway? I can't stand bloody football!

Re:Unlikely

[Scorchio]

Reminds me of an idle Tuesday afternoon (UK time) back in September 2001, when yet another refresh of the /. homepage brought up a curious story about a plane in the side of a building. First thoughts were "some kind of silly advertising stunt with a giant inflatable?", but the unbelievable summary suggested otherwise. Slashdot was taking forever to load the story, so I tried BBC news... and then Sky news, then CNN, and several other news sites, finding that they were all extremely slow. Finally, we tracked down a tv set in the office and learned the full extent of the events occurring in NY. That's as close to a meltdown as I've seen, although that's probably more those particular news sites being swamped, rather than the entire net grinding to a halt.

As popular as football is, I doubt that you'll get that many people all hammering the internet simultaneously to create a full meltdown.

Re:soccer (football) != porn

[darkmeridian]

Porn-users do not all download the same porn at the same time from the same servers. For the most part, rights-holders to the soccer games will control the distribution and limit it to a certain number of servers. Everyone will basically watch the games at the same time, with regional variances coming from time zone differences if the games are also being "rebroadcast".

This really scares me...

[knardi]

This reminds me of the "power crisis" in California 7 or 8 years ago in which hundreds of power companies agreed to simulate brownouts in order to effectively hold energy to ransom, and raise energy prices to the insane amount that they are at today in California. Of course, many power companies went bankrupt in the resulting aftermath of legislation, but the big ones survived and profit from the scandal to this day.

What if these predictions are meant to set up a huge telecommunications breakdown on the day of the World Cup? Then AT&T and the Bells, et al., all simulate 100% traffic simulation on their networks, and "crash" their systems. Then they can say, "I told you so. Vote no on Net Neutrality so that the Internet keeps working," and effectively hold the Internet up for ransom. They may lose money in the short term, but they'd gain complete oligarchical control over the Internet.

The possibility really does scare me.

Re:where is the live worldcup streaming?

[tsch]

There has been quite a bit of discussion about "where to find streams" over at worldcupblog.org. Most of the qualifying matches have been available to watch live online from Chinese and Israeli websites, but most of the "pirate" streaming sites require you to dl weird, Windows-only software to be able to watch the games, so as a Mac user I haven't been able to.
I bought my first TV and got cable just to be able to watch the World Cup this year. It's a great event.

Re:Common Sense

[ackthpt]

People who like to drum up a bit of publicity for themselves by fearmongering every time anything happens that might result in a bit more net traffic than usual.

This time it might actually happen. More people follow the World Cup than all those other events combined. Football (soccer in the USA where the ball is in more contact with hands than feet and goes by the same name) is the world sport.

Personally, I'll be watching all the 2pm-kickoff matches from work courtesy of the BBC and I suspect that somehow both the NHS.net connection and the BBC site will stand up to the strain.

Polls are predicting a very large epidemic of too-sick-to-work during the World Cup.

Re:Misleading titles

[Tony Hoyle]

Every company I've ever worked for has shipped in a TV for events like this.

It comes down to:

1. Lose 2 hours of work when half the office watches the match on TV
2. Lose 8 hours of work when half the office call in sick to watch the match in the pub/at home
3. Lose your entire internet connection when half the office streams it from the BBC.

(1) is the better option really.

World Cup 2010 : South Africa

[Kifoth]

Maybe no meltdown in Germany, but the next World Cup will be held in South Africa, which has an internet infrastructure that's at least 10 years out of date.

To give you an example of what we're dealing with here: In SA a 1024mbps ADSL line will cost you about $150 per month, and that's capped at 3 gigs of data transfer. It's also port shaped and the IP resets every 24 hours.

[shameless plug]Check out www.hellkom.co.za and www.mybroadband.co.za for more info[/shameless plug]

Re:Misleading titles

[drsquare]

At my company, it's:

4. No TVs, no streaming, and employees who call in sick are fired and replaced by cheap immigrants.

I'm not joking either.