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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."
No. Who asks these questions anyways?
Philosophy.
I suggest we test this... someone sends all AOLers an email saying that Bill Gates Junior and Burger King has teamed up with World Cup *ahem* "Football". They must watch the game online. If they see the hidden LOST commercial, call the 800 number immediately to win $1 million.
Provided the AOLers can actually get streaming video to work they and the millions of friends that they forward the email to should pretty much melt SOMETHING down.
By the way, not to split hairs, but I think these articles seem to indicate CORPORATE networks could malfunction, NOT "THE INTERNET" as timothy/MetaNick suggested.
Funnypics
But what the hell is the World Cup? And it's supposed to cause an Internet meltdown? Please.
I am truly amazed with this marvelous technology. Watching tv via cable!? Whoda thunk!
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
I don't see anything like this happening for a long time. Television is still widely used. Only thing people watch that is streamed over the net is... well use your imagination.. And its not barney..
There won't be much streaming going on since most Americans don't know what this whole "World Cup" thing is about.
Probably not... Even if it did, there's a good chance it would be localized to everywhere besides the United States, because we just don't "get" watching soccer.
But I know one thing is for sure. I'm going to try my best to get the BBC internet stream here at my office and watch all the games. Anyone know of any N. American sites doing the same?
Yes, it's flamebait, but why is soccer so important to billions of people?
I just don't get it.
Just because a man places a ball in location A (the goal) instead of location B (anywhere else) will lead to millions of people jumping up and down.
If the submitter had bothered to RTFA (I know, I know, "You must be new here") he would see that these articles are about local networks being brought down by lots of users trying to stream World Cup footage at the same, not an "Internet meltdown".
Whether such a meltdown is even possible is another question entirely, but one not covered by these articles.
Love the Third Amendment?
if porn doesn't choke the internet, no sport ever will!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
I'd have to guess that a distributed streaming system is a long way off in being possible, since timely delivery is crucial, and people further away from downloading from the source would not be getting the data fast enough in real time.
That being the case, what's a possible way to lessen the load on streaming servers, and to distribute the file transfers onto networks and users who are interested in the content they are downloading or helping to distribute?
Oh You POS
Well, the BBC is using multicast to stream matches out to UK based residents.
Multicast is perfect for this kind of situation, and I don't think we'll see a 'meltdown' because of it.
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!
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
I for my part would LOVE to participate in the actual meltdown test - unfortunately it looks like I won't be able to: since the rights are handled regionally, and nobody in my region (Italy*) streams it, I'll be left out.
Snif...
* That's soccercrazy Italy, for god's sake!!
The world cup is only slightly, slightly more destructive.
I think it will be fine.
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Music should be free
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
Alert the internet!!
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
If the streaming servers can handle all the users request there will be a meltdown.
If there is a meltdown then the streaming servers cannot handle the user requests.
"All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football"
Albert Camus
At least we in the U.S. are safe.
I just have to say I don't like the new theme.
If the network is highly utilized, it's not a meltdown, just highly loaded. A true meltdown would be along the lines of a congestion collapse, which, while not often, does occassionally happen on some networks. The most famous of those would be the one at Berkeley in the late 1980s which spurred the development of a more widely available congestion-respondent TCP.
Hell, pirated copies of the World Cup games are going to operate like this anyway. I'm sure The Pirate Bay has many busy days in front of it.
99% of the USA doesn't even care(free's up a ton of bandwith) about the World Cup of Soccer so I highly doubt the Internet is suddenly going to implode.
Has it happened?
Yes! - In 1999 - Victoria Secret Provided a live streaming version of their fashion show. There were many individuals who couldn't connect to that site, and there were reports of other non-Related bandwidth issues related to the multicasting.
There are a few things going in the WC's favour. The highlights won't be broadcast live - so that there is time to get content to mirrors. There are also staggered releases across the globe. I suspect we'll see bandwidth slowdowns as you go further down the network tiers. The bigger problem I see with this goes back to the tiered Internet structure. This will be a perfect opportunity for the network providers to complain about bandwidth costs!
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
film at 11.
It's been predicted for decades, whenever the latest new/big even comes along.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Is it really that hard to multicast the stupid thing? Would be it be so hard for man kind to actually be efficent for a change.
Cricket is gay though, so I hope the people watching just loose their jobs.
Isnt that "Metric" Football?
I wonder how much extra bandwith wil be used, incremental to the load bittorrent (and other p2p technologies) has on the internet. There are so many technological enthousiasts pumping everthing they have through those internet wires, I wonder how much the global traffic would rise. I remember bittorrent taking up about 30% of the total global load or something.
But then again, bittorrent is kinda distributed all over the world, and without smart mirrors streaming the world cup data this might saturate key points of the internet infrastructure. It's not as if local proxies can handle most of the load, since each pc/phone/whatever probably has a direct link to the streamin server(/cluster).
Dependency hell? =>
If you've ever watched soccer on television you'd have to wonder if we couldn't implement some sort of soccer-compression algorithm that only sends partial-video frames for the one guy who's looking around deciding where to pass. It seems like an awful shame to waste bits for the six players on the screen that aren't moving.
The article talks about individual corporate networks dying, which at least seems plausible to me, but I read the submitter's question as asking about the internet as a whole. In the case of the latter, wouldn't something like that be self-regulating? A meltdown presumes that jillions of people are eating lots of bandwidth at once, but in this case, the demand would be limited by the supply, wouldn't it? I would think that whatever servers are hosting/streaming the files for the World Cup would melt down far sooner than the whole Internet would...
I would think that the most likely cause of a total meltdown would be a continuous stream of new internet users, higher-bandwidth usage patterns, and the infrastructure not being upgraded to meet demand. I'm no network wizard, so...yeah.
Who provides live streaming of worldcup in US? Does that include all the matches? Where is it? Do tell.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Yes. But that's OK because Slashdot looks like crap now and nobody is going to use it. It should all balance out.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The only issues I can see would be saturated pipes of ISPs that oversold their available bandwidth and didn't prepare for major Internet events. All major upstream providers and content delivery networks should already have taken this into consideration and be prepared for the burst usage.
Either that or hordes of geeks leaving the basement to declare jihad on all those infidels abusing their precious bandwith for non-science-fiction or porn related activities.
:/- spoon(_).
There will be some streaming, but with the exception of the USA, every match will be on a major TV network. Even in the USA, ESPN and ESPN2 will show every game in addition to about 10 matches on ABC. Everyone will be watching on their TV's rather than their computer. I'm sure we've all seen the picture of 100 people sitting around a 13 inch TV watching a World Cup match. Unless all those poor people suddenly have computers and know how to stream, there won't be a bandwidth bogdown.
I can gurantee it won't affect U.S. ISPs. :-)
If only you could really use that.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
I doubt most Americans know, much less care, that they have a team in the World Cup or even what the World Cup is. So the rest of the Internet may melt down but not here in the good ole US of A.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Yes there are segments that will be affected and the servers that are streaming may have issues but the internet as a whole will be uneffected.
For temporary slow-downs, certainly major events cause problems, and most of those are indeed caused by streaming. More specifically, unicast streaming. If streaming was predominatly multicast, there would be no meaningful load imposed, no matter how many people had broadband.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
For popular live events, nothing can beat RF (radio/tv). It's broadcast. Until we can figure out how to make a secure and smooth multicast enabled, Internet RF will continue to perform better. For niche interest, the Internet is a perfect conduit. It's when something becomes too popular the economics start to breakdown. Companies like Akamai help with this by providing streaming servers all over the world in important peer points.
FYI, for people in North America, XM Satellite Radio is broadcasting World Cup coverage.
you play football.
In the US, Soccer plays you! At least, things are heading that direction.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
...
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GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL! !!
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
...By not giving a rats ass about that shitty sport.
However, I will partake in viewing videos of the only redeaming part of soccer... The riots!
This will be a stress test for both mobile and internet networks, as many mobile providers in Oz offer on-line video and updates, many ISPs offer streaming, not to mention the talk. I live in Melbourne Oz and this would have the biggest soccer following anywhere in Australia, so I'd guess that making calls in some areas will be impossible, and the 'net should get a little jerky.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
....I don't get it.....I know I'm knew, but I still don't get it. Which part isn't true and invokes teh funniest?
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Last Olympics, it was very obvious.
... a hell, I'm off for a lemonade, this too darn hot in here". Serious Tennessee Williams shit goin' on!
You'd be browsing some porn site, and the chicks nipples would be down around her ankles. Next thing you know her face was melting. Then you'd be on Slashdot, and someone would be half-way through dissing M$ for something and they'd trail off "... so
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
http://old-siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article .php/741951
I don't think streaming video of the games will melt down the internet, but I bet European businesses see productivity drop a ton.
That's my motto, that and everybody wang chung tonight.
Of course not! Unless the unthinkable happens and the streaming servers get slashdo... Oh, well.
The Internet2 is massively broadband and can handle way more than any WorldCup could throw at it.
But, it's unlikely to cause any major disruptions in Canada and the US, as they don't follow the World Cup that closely.
Even the standard Internet will cope, although if we'd moved to IPv6 already, it would have been fairly easy to ensure that any WorldCup traffic was pipelined so that it never took up more than half the bandwidth in any major trunk, just from the headers. With our current reliance on IPv4, though, it's possible you might see some disruption in Europe, although you'll get a far far better picture quality from standard television, unless you're forced to work during the WorldCup - at which point having a desktop small pic of the game might be expected.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So although the name appears to be logical, history would imply that it is not quite as simple. The origins of the game are sufficiently ancient and obscure - although it almost certainly started in the British Isles - that there is no absolute guarantee that the original name was even in English and therefore may be merely phonetically derived from an earlier name. That happens a lot. In that case, the modern name would have no meaning whatsoever.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
World isn't just 2 countries huh?
The BBC site was totally inaccessible as the location for the 2012 Olympics was announced. I just hope they've improved matters this time...
Just as a quick question, couldn't something like bitorrent be configured to handle data streaming? If people didn't mind a little lag.. one might be able to make it work. As long as everyones bandwidth could handle the punishment, couldn't it work?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
I remember when the first version of Big Brother aired(a couple of years before it came to America), most company internet lines were small. And so, since I worked as a consultant on firewalls at the time, I spent a lot of time driving around to many companies to insert block rules.
Today it is not much of a problem, although I can imagine that the world cup could cause problems. Tour de France does generate a lot of streaming traffic because that also is going on during work hours.
BBC now have to common sense to now have Windows Media streams as well as Real, therefore set up one of your Windows 2003 servers with Windows Media Services 9 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/for pros/server/server.aspx), point it at the BBC stream and give the users the address of your local server... = profit!
...erm, or at least some leftover bandwidth while the matches are on.
r pros/encoder/default.mspx) to the server and letting the users connect a server broadcasting that stream on the LAN.
:)
Still doesn't solve the problem of ITV broadcasted matches though, therefore I'm sticking with encoding the stream from a TV tuner using Windows Media Encoder 9 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/fo
If you want to use the TV tuner idea you will need drivers with BDA support, anything certified for Windows Media Center will do the job a goodun.
Hope this helps some bandwidth fascists out there
Its so unlikely at a "single" provider can cause an internet meltdown. However, the STREAMING sites may not be able to handle the client traffic, or companies LAN could fall under the weight, due to employees watching. But a world or national (US) Internet melt down is probably very hard to create, and the FIFA World Cup won't do it.
... but that is just for that site, not the "Internet".
The colo that is doing the streaming is much more likely to have issues, than the "Internet" as a whole. And I figure there is more than 1 server, in more than 1 colo doing this. Yes, for some, it could be slow, or they can't connect
Maybe a system where a user could pay more money for a special tier for the guaranteed delivery of packets. Hmmm ... rolls eyes.
I had a feeling the telecom industry probably had something to do with the article until I read it was written by someone with ties to a packet shaping company.
http://saveie6.com/
How about "broadband telcos' shabby internetworking and bandwidth oversubscription melts down when customers consume what they paid for during World Cup"?
Not as snappy a headline. I'd make a better one if telcos paid me the marketing budget that produced the headline on this story.
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make install -not war
1. If you see a big bright mushroom of smoke rise outside your window, stop immediately streaming video.
2. If it doesn't work, stop also downloading pr0n and war3z through p2p.
3. If it still doesn't work, duck a-a-and cover.
4. Don't forget to turn on your pr0n and war3z downloads as soon as its over, or severe health and brain damage effects might manifestate.
I worked a bit with proxies and live streaming, and one of the problems that could keep the traffic down were proxies doing splitting of the live streams. I don't know where that market is today but at one time there was an idea that the ISP / phone company would have proxies at their PoP's and do splitting there of live streams so that all people connected to that PoP would share the same stream out.
There were a couple of problems with that. First of all that it was hard to find a business models that would return the investment on the hardware.
Second that most streams at the time would not allow splitting, perhaps because licencing issues and not knowing the actual number of viewers. The ironic part about that was that the hardware that would obey the no-splitting flag, was also those that would report back the right number of viewers to the streaming server and the software that would not send the number of viewers back would ignore the flag anyway.
Finally there might have been an issue with splitting streams for servers that required authentication for subscription / Pay Per View streams, but I think that also could have been resolved.
It all of course comes down to money and getting al involved to work together. The broadcasters and the ISPs could all benefit from it, but who should pay for what and how much seemed to be too big a task. So all just seems to be adding fatter pipes instead of sitting down and doing something intelligent.
Use the new FAX interface to post your comments, so you don't have to go online!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
anyways ?? So if we try to use our bw to the fullest, will it cause a meltdown ?
So what are these telcos trying to say - that they were guaranteeing us bandwidth they would never be able to provide ?
Was it "sweet profits", "easy money", "yet-not-defined scam" ?
Read radical news here
Although multicast will scale up enough for one user to support millions. But..if the Backbone providers could get multicast streams of the video and then let ISP's pick up those feeds, then the ISP's could multicast them to their networks.
:(
Thus providing nice bandwidth friendly video.....meanwhile back in the real world
Of course, that last part may explain why I never did well on the statistics coursework.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I know that several brazilian ISPs have asked for increased bandwidth from our biggest (perhaps the only) backbone and had it denied, as it was not possible. Perhaps were the web is really like a web it will be more reliable, but here were its more like a river/fish-bones, there will be a big slow down due to people watching streams even in worktime. Not the our actual games, as all our companies release their workers to watch it at home, or bring some TV to the work place when our team is playing. But all other related content.
All sporting terms and most high-bandwidth sites are blocked already. Not to mention that I don't believe 99% of our staff would even realise that you can watch sport on your PC.
I would love to stream the WC into my box at work. We have the T3 bandwidth for it, too. But I couldn't do it four years ago, and I won't be able to this year either. The teevee/video rights to geographical areas are sold by FIFA for megabucks to the various networks world wide, and the @#$R%T^ swine just don't allow any internet streaming. Last time, I found one feed streaming video, with commentary in Portugese (who cares,eh?), but it was pretty bad to start with and after a couple of days lots of folks found it, and it was just hammered. Totally shut down by the end of the first week.
The rights holders are pretty zealous about stopping streaming. I have no clue why; stream the @#$%ing commercials as well.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
...brought down the streaming Bigpond website that was meant to be able to show it to people who registered (office workers, presumably). However, there was such a demand for the two-minute race that the site was down for most of the day, and from memory, access was troubling the day before. We ended up watching it at work on a 12cm black and white portable television.
The World Cup is a lot larger then the Melbourne Cup (one bloody so-called 'legendary' horse aside - forget its name), so unless streaming sites are beefed up a lot, then they will be brought down.
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.
Astroturfing, by definition, is "fake grass roots" -- when a company gets people to write or post opinions on the company's behalf while claiming to be independent citizens. The articles noted that the source of this information are company representatives. So the company reps are acknowledging that the information comes from the company; this is not astroturfing. Astroturfing would be 5 guys writing letters to the editor saying "we're network guys, and we think bad things are going to happen unless people buy packet shaping technologies", and later, we find out that the five "network guys" actually work for Packeteer.
That doesn't Packeteer is right, just that they're not astroturfing. The existence of two articles quoting one obscure guy is suspicious. This usually means someone issued a press release.
The article from the Register does not take the Packeteer guy very seriously. They didn't fall for it. However, the vnunet staff are being non-critical in that they are writing stories based on the input of vendors without getting sanity checks. The vnunet article accepts the two network vendors' claims at face value without asking someone else if there might not be an opposing point of view. In my book, that's bad journalism.
Yeah, what about using P2P principle to stream video worldwide in order to keep a balanced traffic while spreading video to many people ?
Who care if it's few sec laggy anyway due to stream reconstruction ?
And I'm sure even the P2P video streaming of a big event such as world cup wouldn't be as much as current P2P traffic - means current networks can easily handle it.
It could be a very interesting project, and would encourage TV channel to broadcast more easily as they wouldn't have to buy crazy amount of bandwidth to stream their programs.
Hoping some free software will try out the idea...
So, will the World Cup be a testing ground for any peercasting apps?
Doesn't like soccer but hopes to test out some P2P streaming
Seems many have migrated to using programs like absORB http://briandailey.googlepages.com/absorb
The internet has a very elegant way of dealing with huge spikes in traffic, which prevents a meltdown.
Whenever a server gets hit by too many users, it delivers the webpage either slowly, incomplete, or not at all.
Then the user becomes frustrated and goes off to visit another server, or do something else entirely.
This lightens the load on the server. It's a highly sophisticated, dynamic load balancing algorithm.
Buy up bandwidth in the U.S. and re-sell it in Europe at a premium? Make, sorta, a tradable commodity out of it? I bet you could make billions, or at the very least convice speculative stock traders that you could make billions.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Sports fans continue to overestimate their relevance to humanity. Wow 1.11 patch will have a bigger effect on the internet IMO.
Doesn't anyone remember when the Starr report was made available? The internet slowed to a crawl that afternoon.
Off the top of my head, I can recall a few events that definitely have slowed the Internet overall -- maybe not "meltdown" but definitely noticeable and bothersome. Let's see, Victoria's Secret streaming their big show back in 2000 or so, the SQL Server Blaster worm, and 9/11 (though, that was more specific to individual websites than the 'net as a whole, there was the big peering conflict of last year.... overall, the Internet isn't quite as robust as advertised. I'm sure that the military has their own "internet like" system for communications in emergencies, because I'm sure they wouldn't rely on the Internet as it stands today. Heck, they've probably got a half dozen plans on ways to break the Internet so that the enemy of the day can't use it at critical times -- just like GPS.
:)
However, with regards to the World Cup, here in North America where most people think football involves using hands to throw and catch a non-round ball, I don't think we'll notice the traffic...
I know I'm knew
You must be knew here... Wait... That doesn't look right... Hey! You did that on purpose, didn't you?
Yeah, that ball they're using doesn't look anything like a foot. It's shaped more like a head, perhaps??
We can always go back to the teenage girl demographic, if you'd like.
There's no way that the internet will suffer from pro...
I have no doubt globo.com, the site of the biggest brazilian TV broadcaster won't be accessible. It will be the first time they stream live football (aka soccer for some mirror countries who have strange sports taste) games on open (without subscription fee).
When there are important games around here almost all sites and internet go more slow, my favorite radio broadcaster (http://www.radioguaiba.com.br) had to make a deal to stop streaming for themselfes and Brazil Telecom, a telefony company, started doing it for them.
Well, we are speaking of Brazil of course, during world cup most people just stop in front of shops because almost all of them places TV with games, it's just too much fun!!
Finally US broadcasters will have to compete with European broadcasters and cut down on the commercials. The reason football isn't popular in the US is because there are only 15 minutes of break available in the middle of the game. Any more commercials and the game would no longer be truly live.
"Do you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" -- Vinnie Jones, former footy player.
That there's a "BitTorrent-like" solution for live TV.
I've kinda been wondering if coolstreaming (or it's clones) are ever going to take off. It's where you're uploading the video stream as you watch it, usually with a delay of a couple of seconds as the "live" stream is buffered and reassembled before decoding. I guess it's "a just in time" version of BitTorrent. I've heard that it's had limited success in China - but hasn't really made it to the west yet - most likely because of copyright issues.
Although yes, multicasting is going to be the "correct" way of doing this - but I was assuming the barrier to entry here was ISPs configuring their systems correctly to allow this to happen (and that they don't really have an incentive to do so).
Soccer is the most popular game in the world, no doubt. But have you seen the monkey chantings and racist chants prevalent in most soccer games. World Series and Super Bowl may not be the biggest sporting event in the world ,but it is certainly without
complete Ku-Klux-Klan style sport or
a sport of intolerance towards blacks and immigrants.
Computers can reverse entropy.
Actually, that describes one particular method of multicasting. There are others. Source-specific multicasting works by either specifying authorized or excluded host addresses, which obviously isn't efficient if the inclusion/exclusion data isn't passed up the tree, which means that routers end up with lists of endpoints that are valid, as per method 1.
You are also correct in that there are ways to get around non-multicast segments of the network. The two most common methods are tunneling (whereby you create a virtual private network that is "connected" to the closest multicast-aware router) and reflectors (which convert multicast streams into unicast ones and vice versa). Reflectors were very common when CU-SeeMe was the dominant videoconferencing tool on PCs and Macs - at the height of the CU-SeeMe craze, there were probably several tens of thousands of reflectors operating. Hey, that's not a bad total, when you consider that this was 7-12 years ago, broadband meant a 33K modem and the elite nerds were the ones with the color quickcams, not the b/w ones.
Although the MBone has been disbanded, you can still find some good information by looking it up. The older flood-and-prune protocol (DVMRP) has been replaced by something called the Protocol Independent Multicast protocol (PIM), of which there are several variants depending on the number of upstream and downstream connections you have. There are other protocols (MOSPF, Core Based Trees, and a few dozen specific to wireless networks where you have all kinds of added complexities!) but these don't appear to be in significant use. Again, worth reading up on, though.
Then you've various extensions, like Source-Specific Multicast (SSM), Scalable Reliable Multicast (SRM), and so on. SRM and other "reliable multicast" protocols are interesting because you can do things like HTTP or FTP over them, allowing you to transmit losslessly to a large number of clients at the same time. That would likely be very useful for massively distributed multiuser games, as it would be the only viable way to keep all the machines in sync once you start getting large numbers of users.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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]
I dont get it the articles say about corporate networks failing under the load.
lets do the math, the majority of broadband packages are below 10Mb I think the fastest available might be 24Mb now, or if your lucky and have a fiber connection you might have 100Mb
an average corporate network 100Mb connections, or a modern on 1Gb connections
so whos corporate network will struggle?
I can see their internet connections maybe slowing down if everyones streaming the games, and they'll stop if the quality's rubbish because of the lack of bandwith.
The only place that may have any trouble will be the BBC's own servers, They've handled a slashdotting without any trouble they can hadle the few hundred thousand football fans that are able (either through permission or setup) to use the service.
I love the smell of burning karma in the morning...
It also happens to be a sporting event that actually deserves the word "World" in it's title unlike the World Series in baseball which as far as I can tell is contested between teams from USA and Canada exclusively and the Super Bowl where the winners are crowned as World champions (what a joke!)
On the other hand, they have a point. In American Football and Baseball, no teams that mainly consist of non-US players come close to being a contender for the title.
In Football they are so far ahead that "NFL Europe" consists of 95 % US nationals, and it would be even less if they didn't have a sort of "equal opportunities" rule to make sure that "national players" get some time to play. If you have played even at a third-rate college you can easily make the team in one of the national leagues such as the German Bundesliga ("German Football League").
In Baseball the ratio is even worse. The only country that could challenge US baseball amateurs is Cuba, and it is a very very long way from there up to the Major Leagues, and of course even longer to the World Series.
So until there are actually any other contenders for the titles, I'm happy to let the Americans call their best Football and Baseball teams World Champions.
Note that in "the other" two major US sports, Basketball and (Ice) Hockey (where other nations are starting to catch up), they are a bit more restrained.
This is simply because the rest of the world play sensible sports such as football, cricket and rugby. No one cares about weird American bastardisations.
In each case international rugby, cricket and football draws in a huge amount of countries competing with one another which makes the sport far more interesting than simply playing at a national level and certainly improves the game of all the nations involved through increased competition. I think the US does have a football, cricket and rugby team but it is puzzling as to why they are so often so far down the bottom of the pecking order as be invisible.
This is simply because the rest of the world play sensible sports such as football, cricket and rugby. No one cares about weird American bastardisations.
... For Basketball, ... well, the list goes on.
Well, it's interesting to see that the chauvinism the Americans are accused of (probably rightly) goes both ways. The only sports that are "sensible" are the ones you happen to like, and because you don't care, "no one cares"? Flamebait? Troll?
In each case international rugby, cricket and football draws in a huge amount of countries competing with one another
Rugby and Cricket are pretty much limited to the Commonwealth and former colonies. Football/Soccer seems to have the most worldwide appeal; even George W. knows by now that the World Cup is "bigger" than the Super Bowl. I'm sure at least part of it has to do with the fact that it can be played with so little preparation. Try to get a (n American) Football team or even league together, just the pads are a major investment. For Baseball, it's not just the bats and gloves, but backstops, Bases all require a certain amount of investment before one can get started. To get a full Rugby XV together, plus another team to play against, posts, etc., is pretty tough as well. With cricket, it's similar to Baseball. You need the space, bats, wickets, helmets,
With Assoc. Football, all you need is a ball, plus some bags or whatever for goal posts, and you can start playing.
which makes the sport far more interesting than simply playing at a national level
Well, this is not a valid conclusion. Seeing the best Am. Football teams play each other is also interesting if you like the sport, irrespective of whether there's an international level or not.
and certainly improves the game of all the nations involved through increased competition.
Well, neither the NFL nor the MLB are trying to prevent the competition from other countries. In fact, they both have programs that are actively promoting the sports outside the US, to help bring in players (and of course fans) from abroad. You can't really blame them that for now, the other countries are so far behind.
I think the US does have a football, cricket and rugby team but it is puzzling as to why they are so often so far down the bottom of the pecking order as be invisible.
Please explain why the level at which US teams compete in your favourite sports has any relevance to the discussion. Would it make a difference to you if the US teams in "non-US sports" would be better? In the discussion about why NFL and MLB call their winners "World Champions"? What does one have to do with the other?
I agree that calling the winners of a national league "World Champions" sounds a bit strange. But I also try to see the other side and I think there is some truth in it. Blind yank-bashing doesn't make for a balanced discussion.
Just so you know where I'm coming from:
I spent a few years in England, and played Rugby (XV and VII) there, even scored a Cricket game once (couldn't play though). Later I played (American) Football at a high Amateur level in Germany (as well as coached a few teams), I coached a Baseball team (can't play worth a d*mn) and scored at high Amateur level. And of course I'm eagerly awaiting the FIFA World Cup 2006 in my home country (and of course I used to play it myself as a child).
I think that each sport has its merit; be open-minded about them; there is no point in criticizing other sports.
And it's the same with other countries. Try to be a bit more open-minded.
* lon3st4r *
Here is TV, no streaming of course and employees calling sick fille a self assesment form in case there is a pattern.
Oh yes, and we can work from home to save a couple of hours or more avoiding the commute that is more less the time that one match lasts...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There won't be any meltdowns, but this is obviously a plot to create enough internet traffic to mask attacks on nuclear power plant firewalls, permitting terrorists to take them over. Someone call Jack Bauer!
The Internet regularly transfers terabytes of data every day, and they're worried that a little bit of piddly-ass streaming is going to kill it?
FC Closer
In Baseball the ratio is even worse. The only country that could challenge US baseball amateurs is Cuba, and it is a very very long way from there up to the Major Leagues, and of course even longer to the World Series.
In amateur only competition (e.g. the Olympics) in baseball the reason Cuba are so strong is that they dont have a professional league (havent since 1961). So every player in Cuba is eligible to play (not the ones that have defected to the USA to play in the majors though of course).
In competitions where professionals are able to play there are quite a few teams better than the USA. In the recent World Baseball Classic pros were able to play and most players from the major leagues were allowed/agreed to play (this usually doesnt happen for fear of injury to VERY expensive players).
The USA won 3 of its 6 games and didnt even make the semi finals. They finished 8th overall. Teams above them were (in order). Japan, Cuba, Korea, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Venezuela.
USA has the Major league that players world wide want to play in as it is the top competition and pays by far the best, but they dont own baseball. Baseball is apparently the national pastime in the USA but its the national sport/pastime and religion in countries like the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Cuba etc.)
American 'sports' aren't sports at all, of course. They're just crappy TV shows that happen to take place outside. I may exempt basketball from this, as it does seem to be something genuinely worthwhile and watchable - it's certainly the USA's only contribution to sport that the rest of the world respects.
The USA won 3 of its 6 games and didnt even make the semi finals. They finished 8th overall. Teams above them were (in order). Japan, Cuba, Korea, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Venezuela.
Wow, you're right. I did not know that, I guess my knowledge of this is out-of-date. Is this a 2006 thing, or how long have I been missing this? And while just like in Basketball, for these competitions they don't seem to send the very best players, I'm not sure this has happened here. I certainly recognize a few names as top players, but I haven't been following the MLB for a while now (so I don't know who the current stars are, and if they took part):
(from US Roster for World Baseball Classics)
So I guess things have changed. And it seems for Baseball at least they should change the name of their final series.
Funny you should mention this. When I was in high school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I heard an interesting story relating to TV trasmission antennas. The TV trasmission antennas are setup on the tops of hills in Rio, and it just so happens that the slums are usually located on hills, many times surrounding those antennas. Well, someone found out that fluorescent light bulbs would light up without being hooked up to any wires if you were close enough to the antennas (I have since read that this is indeed possible, but have never seen it myself). The news spread pretty quickly about this "free electricity", and supposedly all those fluorescent bulbs started to be a power drain and reducing the trasmitting power of the antennas. Supposedly the TV station(s) had to somehow persuade the slum residents to give up the free lighting, but I'm not sure how. Anyway, this could definitely be an urban myth instead.
In the 4th season of the show 24, they acted like this was going to happen. Everybody on the planet was streaming a live video of the Secretary of Defense being held hostage and about to be executed, and the show made it seem like this network congestion made for weaker cyber-defenses at nuclear power plants.
I didn't find it too likely then, and have to wonder about it now. Can an overwhelmed network in one place create weaknesses in networks elsewhere, given they're both connected to the internet?
Only on Slashdot would a comment like this be modded Insightful instead of Funny... I guess some mods are really clueless about the World Cup.
Go hug some trees.