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Will Internet TV Crash the Internet?
Stony Stevenson writes "Analyst groups and Cisco have come out saying that the internet is heading for a crash unless it increases its bandwidth capabilities which are being strangled by the increased use of Web TV.
Stan Schatt, research director at ABI said: "Uploading bandwidth is going to have to increase, and the cable providers are going to get killed on bandwidth as HD programming becomes more commonplace." He added that the solution to the problem is to change to digital switching and move to IPTV. "They will be brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century," he said.
Cisco weighed into the argument, adding that it had found American video websites currently transmit more data per month than the entire amount of traffic sent over the internet in 2000."
If you ask me, the whole "problem" is a bunch of balony. ISPs oversubscribe their services, because most people just browse websites, and that's low-bandwidth. Now, they're realising they can't do that, because people are using youtube and bittorrent, and that's about to reach critical mass when people like the BBC legitimize it in a consumer-oriented shrink-wrap. Suddenly, ISPs can't claim that people who actually USE their services are doing something immoral or illegal.
So, what's the problem again? You sold a service extra-cheap, because you didn't think you'd have to provide the full service? Tough. Get real, and sell what we're buying. The prices might go up, sure, but either we'll pay, or we won't care about the new service. Your upstream providers might charge too much for bandwidth, but that'll soon change as ISPs start demanding more.
I've spoken with a few engineers in the IPTV business... they're al about multicasting and QOS delivery. I'm going to go out on the limb and say... uhhh.... no. Why?
Because that's NOT what internet TV is all about. Sure, for some content think it's great. Like ABC, Fox, whatever - they can do the multicast. But for the rest of the content providers, it's going to be on-demand. And that solution is really quite simple. And it makes money.
Basically you take an Akamai like model and extend it. Deploy caching servers right to the ISP's - on the customer doorstep. Offer subscriptions to the customers and the ISP gets a chunk of the monthly. Customers get instant access to the content from the caching server. Content people get a chunk from the number of views statistically. ISP's only have to move content over their uplink once for all their customers nearby.
Best part is you could do it securely for the media providers, and give people a reason to use the service (more shows, better quality, faster delivery). Eventually you offer sell-up items like movies, sporting events, etc. In other words it would be better than cable, cheaper than cable, and far cheaper to operate.
There's all kinds of great stuff you could do here - and you could do it on the cheap and make beaucoup bucks. So, ya know... send me a bag of gold hehehe.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I wonder with telco/cable company this "research" firm was paid by. This bit of disinformation helps support their case for why we need to turn the net into an information superhighway dotted with toll booths. However, there are better ways to do things.
Isn't funny, that a country of South Korea does just fine with super fast broadband connections many times faster than ours in both directions? No problems there. Unfortunately, this country's moronic embrace of unfettered capitalism and foolish trust in corporations to deliver essential public services is stopping us from seeing the best approach to delivering an infrastructure that will serve people well.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Actually, my Mom still has it. Bought the thing in 1997. Still works!
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Seeing as tv over the intarwebs will be plagued with DRM and propriatery code, why not have the shitty pointless advertising and tedious channel logo 'establishing shots' cached locally? Hey presto, a 80% reduction in traffic.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I have the feeling it's not so simple as that. I'm on the Comcast 8 meg tier and have also noticed no difference in behavior. But then again, where I live I have lots of broadband options (I didn't plan it that way but there it is.) I doubt Comcast is going to screw with me too much because I could switch to a more congenial provider with a phone call. On the other hand, if you're someplace where Comcast (or any other ISP) is the only game in town, I think it might be a different story. Besides, Comcast is huge and is under no obligation to apply any policies equally across their entire network. You and I could be among the lucky ones (for now.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Available bandwidth is currently deliberately limited by the major incumbents. This manufactured scarcity drives the price up. There is more than enough dark fiber to meet our needs for decades to come.
The incumbents are about to discover that people will only put up with this for so long before they mandate municipal information infrastructure. Fiber is the bridge to the global economy and building bridges is one of the justifications for government exist. If your state and local governments won't do it, mine will - and your kids will find it that much harder to compete with mine.
Fiber is not made of some rare mineral. It is processed sand.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Considering it was something like 2006-2007 before YouTube took off, you could say video over the Internet has, in fact, been a long time coming. And HD video over the Internet? May be a long time still. It's a big jump from YouTube to streaming even 720p regularly.
The cost of the Internet is in the routers, not the fiber.
Dark Fiber FAQ
"Using multicast you can send the same channel to multiple customers (IPTV) but that is broadcast, not pay-per-view."
Why can't multi-cast be pay-per-view? You download a key you pay for ahead of time and then decrypt what is streamed to everyone. Moreover you could download a broadcast and then pay later for a key to decrypt it. You could even have the cost for live events go down by how long the delay between the download and buying the key.
Granted there will be piracy, but for live sporting events this would probably work very well as the pirates wouldn't be able to get the pirated material decrypted quick enough to post, nor post the crack and software for intercepting the broadcast in real-time quickly enough (though some computer savvy users may manage some of the latter).
Letter To Iran