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EU Funds P2P-Based Internet TV Standard
oliderid writes to let us know that, even as the UK threatens ISPs who don't clamp down on P2P traffic, the rest of the EU is going the other way. (Here is a link with a a bit more technical detail.) Europe recently agreed to: "...spend 14M Euros to create a standard way to send TV via the Net. The project will create a peer-to-peer system that can pipe programs to set-top boxes and home TV sets. It will be based on the BitTorrent technology. The four-year research project will try to build a system that can stand alongside the other ways that broadcasters currently get programs to viewers."
Comcast just had a heart attack.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
There has been increasing commentary on the relative scarcity of bandwidth, and how web 2.0 (or whatever you'd like to call it) with increased video and interactive content is putting more and more strain on existing internet infrastructure. Can anyone offer insight into whether user to server or server to users to users puts less stress on internet infrastructure?
The Mothership
Given that TV programs tend to be conducive to torrenting -anyway-.
Lessened distribution costs, quick distribution, and a clear case for legal P2P usage that could be potentially leveraged into something useful on this side of the pond--this is perhaps the clearest win-win situation I've seen all this week.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
This is best way for the ISP to provide real service is to offload the data traffic to as low a common point in the network as possible. As long as there is a reasonably sized common data set to transfer.
I can see the networks requiring clients to have a P2P client that talks to a common local network aware host. This is the best way to handle the large data needed for video on almost demand. If the IP provider could be convinced to drop seed nodes in at balance points it would be great.
.. because even though we're supposed to going digital as a country, I still can't get half the digital channels where I live - even with an upgraded aerial. Being able to get TV over the internet would be a great solution to this.
Sounds like End System Multicast (ESM)
The UK is only clamping down on ISPs who don't stop illegal downloading of commercial music and films. It doesn't target P2P directly.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I wonder why?
If it's BT based, that means the popular stuff is easier to access, and the niche stuff isn't... Doesn't sound like the quality of programming is going to improve if the only teevee seeds you can access is what the majority of cretins wants to watch.
It's especially silly when you consider that 'the rest of the EU' in that statement actually *includes* the UK, with funding from the BBC.
There are UK contributors to that project - where does this "rest of the EU" stuff come from?
The EU would appear to disagree with you.
Download Miro. Can I have my money now? Any time a group tries to re-invent the wheel, spending a ton of money along the way, offer to solve the problem by re-branding the wheel.
Education is the silver bullet.
Wow, 14M Euro and half a dozen universities to reimplement Miro/Democracy Player and Joost. Not very efficient those Europeans, are they?
If I'm not mistaken the British are not trying to make ISPs combat p2p traffic, they are trying to make them clamp down on copyright infringement. The fact that the two are different is of course why the law is absurd. There will be no way for the ISPs to confirm that copyright infringement has taken place without essentially logging all of their traffic (and even then it doesn't help if the transfer is encrypted ). Thus the law would effectively force the ISPs to cut the connection of people based on mere allegations from third parties, which would in turn make them potentially liable if wrongly accused people were to go to court. Essentially the law would put ISPs in a "damned if you do , damned if you don't" situation, and this has nothing to do with the protocol, it is a consequence of a law which effectively forces the ISPs to break the law in order to follow it.
Now if only I had mentioned this earlier to somebody... I could have gotten a big payout, or at least had a frivolous lawsuit.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Our national broadcaster (Radio-Television Slovenia) already provides its programme via the proprietary p2p technology called Octoshape.
Translation: if the broadcaster externalizes the delivery cost, the broadcaster comes out ahead.
Unfortunately this is horribly inefficient. You're not only shifting the cost to the ISPs closer to the viewers, but you're multiplying it. A hundred viewers will receive a hundred separate transmissions of the exact same gigabytes. Not to beat a dead horse, but it would be vastly more efficient to have your content be cacheable, as well as using multicast when possible.
But why care? You've externalized that; the increased inefficiency is somebody else's problem, right?
No, it's your problem, because the "somebody else" is going to come looking for you. This is why the network neutrality debate is happening. The "somebody else" is going to want to shake you down. And their view is somewhat justified: your decision to use inefficient delivery, is costing them extra money. If you were more responsible, the conflict could be avoided.
But suppose the ISPs don't shake down the broadcasters, or are unable to. (I don't know it will happen, but I can sure easily imagine Europeans winning their network neutrality war at the legislative level.) What then? They're still going to get compensation from someone. Guess who is left? The ISP users.
Kill p2p for large content delivery. Kill it now, before it gets more entrenched. You, the viewers, are going to pay for this inefficiency. Unless there's some massive technological leap that creates a wealth of truly cheap (not cost-shifted or otherwise subsidized) bandwidth, then you can't afford it. You waste, you pay.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Eiter? Fourteen million coins of fourteen megaeuros?
Also, it would be megaeuro, not megaeuros. The plural of "euro" is "euro". One euro, two euro... fourteen megaeuro.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
I guess the ISPs are going to have to terminate the BBC's internet access.
Miro is already doing it. They could work more on their interface to make it friendly on the TV.
I wonder if Pirate Bay will be able to sue the EU for stealing the method they use of distributing TV shows.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Pedia page with a stub for "Comcast"?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The solution they're trying to create is called "Miro" and it's available free now. Can I have the 14 million euros now that I've solved their problem?
I know the idea of multicast has been around for a long time. Does anyone actually implement it? As far as I can tell, every stream I've ever watched has been unicast (although, I'm not sure how I'd know if it was multicast or not?).
I mean, I like the idea - only send the data through a backbone link once and let the router propagate copies to multiple local recipients - at least, I think that's the idea, right? Seems way more efficient than P2P which, while it will probably improve over-all speeds (and by extension, quality of service), probably also increases bandwidth use a lot too (because now, instead of my just receiving the stream, I'm also re-transmitting it to however many peers).
I can see this surviving for some programs, for many programs, in fact. The system I envision is one where the P2P is limited to subscribers of the ISP (of course, there will be people to find out how to get around this part,) and because the traffic stays within the ISP's lines, then it helps alleviate the fears about the internet backbones being too saturated.
/. meme, loads of people watch sports events, and love it or hate it, programs like American Idol "rely" on interactive viewers. Delaying the "broadcast" by 3 hours because of availability of peers won't affect programs that people regularly record (e.g. the evening news, the latest episode of Doctor Who, etc) but it will affect programs whose main draws are that they're live and/or interactive.
However, there are too many programs that people want to watch *right away.* Remember, contrary to the
Maybe Euros are when you talk about more than one kind of Euro coin (each country makes their own version of the Euro coin).
Like "peoples" when you talk about people from more than one community or nation.
Miro is around, if it is not good enough, hire someone to fix it -- or can they not afford someone to fix it?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Instead of using Usenet news, Bit-torrent or Multi-cast, why can't we combine the features of all of the available protocols?
Usenet news is not real-time, and Bittorrent is too inefficient, Multi-cast is not supported by all ISPs.
Upgrade Usenet news to handle real-time channel subscriptions, bandwidth slot allocation, add multi-cast options, and support p2p style channel discovery.
Bandwidth allocation determines what you are guaranteed to see real-time, everything else is done on an available bandwidth basis. What I mean is if you are watching a show live, it is guaranteed not to have gaps, but if you want to download 5 stream sections you missed from last week, the server might not have the bandwidth to serve you all 8 of them real-time, so would instead download them at slower speeds, allowing you to continue watching the two shows you had scheduled for real-time viewing.
Having the multi-cast part of the protocol optional allows smart ISPs to lower their bandwidth requirements, while still allowing adoption of the protocol regardless of what the hostile or clueless ISPs support.
P2P additions: This gets around channels not supported by the local ISP. So they don't want to support Usenet+? Fine, subscribe to an external premium encrypted Usenet+ server and they will be be punished by having their bandwidth support costs increase. Conglomerate the different sources together into one view similar to the way some newsreaders will combine messages from different servers.
Encryption: Not sure how to leverage this in a useful way, but should be a way to enable it. Doing it securely would negate multi-casting (I think).
Advantages:
- Backwards compatibility: Any old newsreader can still use the service.
- More efficient than Bittorrent when multi-cast is being used.
- Unlike pure multi-cast, old data is cached, allowing you to get something that you missed.
- Pre-scheduled broadcasts can be preloaded at off peak hours.
- Reruns or repeats within a certain amount of time don't need to be resent.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
The fact that governments and corporations seem to think that P2P is an inheritetely dangerous technology which can only be used illegal shows how ignorant they are how little they know. P2P has as we know many legitimate uses, like many technologies. It can be used to legally distribute content. It is similar to another term, file sharing, being labelled as evil, illegal, etc, when the internet could not function without it, since every web server and mail server uses some type of file sharing. It is clearly wrong to go after entire technologies, due to a small few who are abusing them, It is like banning kitchen knives because they can be used as a weapon.
I am concerned that one reason they do not like p2p is it decentralises legal content distribution, such as open source software, and threatens the big media monopoly. P2P can be used by independant artists to distribute legally their own music, and in a way where it is within the means of anyone due to the small amount of resources it requires, and perhaps the big media companies do not like the idea of their monopolistic position being challenged. The big media companies want to be the one and only place to purchase and market music and i do not think their real concern is illegal filesharing, but instead, the idea that they no longer are in the position to control what music can be distributed and to block and allow artists access to a market, and that artists no longer have to go through their monopoly.
Comcast ( and other isps ) will just charge you extra for the bandwidth, once you get used to using it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
All of the RBOCs will adopt this VERY quickly. Each of them would love a model of on-demand tv that leads to packets only being sent amongst their network rather than having loads go out. I am sure that once EU or whoever thinks about it, they will try to allow for optimization within an area via hints from friendly ISPs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
First, the last thing that any major isp wants to do is provide the caching even if more efficient. Nor would I want them to. Imagine if another Yahoo or MSN could cache your data. They would quickly turn it over to Chinese or US gov.. Instead, a better model is to move to having the ISP provide hints of its area. Then allow those that systems that are closet dish it up. Of course, that should be up to the bit torrent client, not via an intercept server (akin to a squid intercept). But if I were looking at a pure tv download, heck yeah, I am going to try and get the systems closer to me (network wise, that is).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It seems to me that multicast is little understood by many people that are otherwise very familiar with unicast IP behaviour, even though there are very few concepts to grasp and implement to have a successful system. Plus it becomes self fulfilling - no multicast support because no-one wants it. No applications to drive demand because there's no multicast support etc. It's a shame because it works really well in my (VSAT) network environment.
Nullius in verba
What you say is exactly true. Valve Software realised this years ago and have figured out a pretty good system (note: not perfect) for their content distribution. They have an extensive content server network which allows for easy distribution of their bits; ISPs can set up their own Steam content server caches to save heaps of bandwidth.
I mean, I like the idea - only send the data through a backbone link once and let the router propagate copies to multiple local recipients - at least, I think that's the idea, right? Seems way more efficient than P2P which, while it will probably improve over-all speeds (and by extension, quality of service), probably also increases bandwidth use a lot too (because now, instead of my just receiving the stream, I'm also re-transmitting it to however many peers).
Multicast is one of the strengths of IPv6. However, nearly every last article about IPv6, including the one here recently, throws out the red herring of address space. Fsck address space. It's the least interesting, least useful and least relevant aspect of IPv6. All operating systems nowadays, except one product line, support IPv6. Drop that one product line and you can go IPv6. A good number of today's networking security problems go away at the same time, even not counting dropping that one product line.
It would make sense for BitTorrent, or a fork, to start to make use of multicast at least at the router level. Many home networks are using legacy operating systems, found on the store shelves even today, that lack proper IPv6 capabilities. Others have old LANs or routers, but connect at some point to modern IPv6 networks. No reason (that I see) the two, P2P and multicast, could not be combined.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
For a little more information, here's a BBC announcement about P2P-Next last week:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/p2p_next.html
The most interesting quote in this short blog post is at the end:
"This isn't yet a project that TV viewers will see and it's never going to replace the BBC's consumer offerings (e.g. iPlayer); it's a test bed for new ideas, allowing us to collaborate with colleagues across Europe, and to hone and develop technology which could help shape the TV of tomorrow."
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
It is a very fortunate coincidence that those who are manning the eu bureaucracy behave like they are reincarnates of those people who have brought the age of enlightenment.
regardless of how some control freak governments here and there try to strangle them, eu protects and sees that the innovations and progress is preserved. this is just one more example.
Read radical news here
ISP-based caches of legal content would solve this, surely?
My Journal
No, it's "euros", just as "dollar" becomes "dollars" and "pound" becomes "pounds".
It seems all they are doing is using P2P as a cheap alternative to creating their own distributed hosting service. How is this different than using the Squid cache servers to do the same thing? Or for that matter -- how expensive is it really going to be to run 100 servers to simply act as distribution points?
I don't see the benefit of going with P2P versus going with something else. P2P has an awful lot of crap on it: porn, virus, spam, bots. Somewhat useless for a real network. I gave up on it years ago because it took forever to actually find anything and then it was difficult to even retrieve.
I applaud the positive stance shown by the EU here but doesn't the VUZE layer in the latest version of azureus do this already ?
there are probably lots more similar bits of tech that do this , its not rocket science after all.
The problem here is the licences not the technology , most video content is released with licences that restrict sharing in this way.
I think this money might be better spent creating , documenting and maintaining a legal framework for releasing p2p content rather
that creating yet more tech that will be hamstrung by not having the content people are most familiar with so not being able to
gather enough peers to get decent speeds.
The other big hurdle with P2P is its reliance on filenames , i like to rename most of my downloaded files to something that is
more meaningful to me and adheres to my local filenaming convention. This prevents me sharing stuff in my archive.
A simple name mapping layer would increase the amount of seeding dramatically.
Toodle-pip
Amias
[site]
Large broadcasters such as the BBC in the UK have gone to great lengths to ensure that they can deliver content to users efficiently. They have peering agreements with all of the major ISPs in the UK so that the streaming video (and all of their normal web content, of course) doesn't have to route through anyone else's network. It's interesting to note, though, that their downloadable TV service "iPlayer" does still use P2P. At least in iPlayer's case most people using the content are in the UK and so the peers are relatively close to one another compared to your average warez torrent.
I apologize, I did forget that slashdot doesn't keep whitespace, so my two paragraphs became one. However, if you'll read my quote, I said that p2p is dynamic content caching, not that it's multicast. And I suspect that p2p is the most efficient model possible for distributing dynamic content in real time across multiple subnets.
Changa hates change.