Slashdot Mirror
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."
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..
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.
ahem* "Football".
Well they play with a ball , using their foot, therefore: Football. Why the quotes and the ahem*?
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!
Funny, actually most of the world knows World Cup but not many know super bowl or world series. By the way you do realize that "world" in world series is a cruel joke right? oh well...
No. Who asks these questions anyways?
Alarmist news sells. Whether it be about cars, credit cards, or global warming, news sources try to make it as sensational and alarming as possible because it gets the ratings/hits and ad/commercial views.
What sounds more interesting?
Online coverage of World Cup predicted to cause increase in bandwidth usage across the globe.
or
OMG! The "other" football is going to make teh Interweb MELT! Run for the hills! Details at 10.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Becuase America is the only place that has this "Internet" right?
The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
I know you're only a troll. But anyway the the World Cup Final is the single biggest sporting event in the World period. It dwarfs the so called World Series in baseball and the Super Bowl and any of the individual Olympic events. 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!)
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.
No. Who asks these questions anyways?
Well, considering the only guy quoted by both articles is a manager for a company that sells packet shaping systems...
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"?
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.
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)
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.
He is using quotes to make sure the reader knows he is referring to the game where actual 'feet' are used when interacting with the 'ball', rather than the game sharing the same name where 'hands' are primarily used.
Obviously it is the former needs the quotes to avoid confusion, rather than the latter, which is much more widespread and popular.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Or more like this: "GOOOOOO...buffering, 23%, 45%, 67%...OOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!"
Football, when it started, was not restricted to the use of feet. Indeed, banning the use of hands only started after an enterprising young lad from the city of Rugby picked the ball up and ran with it to the goal. (Even today, this variant is called "Rugby Football", even though feet are rarely used outside of a scrum.)
That's a myth. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_football.
Jason
By the way you do realize that "world" in world series is a cruel joke right?
Oh, we know. Every year we invite you foreign buttholes, try to make nice, put all our differences aside for a friendly game, but do you show up? No. We just sit here all by ourselves with our "Go France" foam fingers and cry into our beer that no one showed up for our party, so we scrimmage and go home, and then you guys wonder why we bomb the shit out of you.
Real nice, World. Real nice.
The world's best baseball players play in the USA.
The world's best [American] football players play in the USA.
Probably because these are sports that aren't really played that much outside the US (and Japan).
A clue in return: We called baseball "rounders" at school. And it was a girl's game.
Yes in this context the "World Cup" is actually inviting the "World" to attend, unlike the US version of "World" where sometimes, if they are lucky, Canadians are invited.
"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."
One should not believe it is bandwidth-related only. I bet you all still remember the chaos and panic the media reported about the Y2K bug. It's all about doom, plain and simple, no matter what it is about.
Asteroids that may collide and extinguish life on Earth, a computer bug that will throw us all back to the middle ages, a World Cup that will cause a "meltdown" (SIC) and render all communication in the world broken.
Doomsayers. And, why oh why, "doomsaying" reflects in AUDIENCE.
- Please, ignore everything written above.
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.