Why the Olympics Didn't Melt the Internet

perlow tips his blog entry over at ZDNet on why the Internet didn't melt when millions of users streamed 480i video for a week. The short answer is Limelight Networks of Tempe, Arizona. "[W]hy the Internet didn't 'melt' is quite simple — [Limelight is] completely 'off the cloud.' In other words, unlike Akamai and similar content caching providers, their system isn't deployed over the public Internet... Limelight has partnered with over 800 broadband Internet providers worldwide... so that the content is either co-located in the same facility as your ISP's main communications infrastructure, or it leases a dedicated Optical Carrier line so that it actually appears as part of your ISP's internal network. In most cases, you're never even leaving your Tier 1 provider to get the video."

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Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck. I haven't watched the Olympics at all because I didn't have access to a tv (or a tivo). But for a change, the networks got their asses in order and actually put decent streaming video up? Now you tell me!

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[mikek2]

I sincerely think NBC & Limelight did a good job. The video is smooth, free, and wonderfully thorough (i.e. I can watch the non-'cool' events, such as judo, wrestling, etc).

Granted, I HATE it's not open-source friendly, but that's a way off goal (what with the NBC/M$ alliance).

Nevertheless, I take this year's online coverage as a step in the Right Direction.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[VJ42]

don't worry, you can still watch the highlights or if you're in the USA they're here

OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Prune]

Canada (the CBC) ranks them the same way as the US.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Eneff]

It's not like the olympics are over... and you can still pick up most of the events. (I just finally watched Phelps's 8th gold medal.)

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Auz]

To put the US at the top I suppose...

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[slashqwerty]

Another reason it didn't melt the internet is because SilverLight isn't supported on all platforms thus many people couldn't even access it.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[brouski]

funny I didn't watch the olympics on the internet because it was vista only.

there simply are not enough vista users to melt the internet.

That didn't stop me from watching them on several XP systems...

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Anonymous Coward]

To put the US at the top I suppose...

It is always a good idea to praise your neighbor when that neighbor is low on oil and high on nuclear weapons while you are high on oil but low on nuclear weapons.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[mikek2]

good point! silverlight is an abomination, but one which will certainly die out over time. (IMO, of course)

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Anonymous Coward]

to put the US first?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[nicolas.kassis]

The two they care about (Mac, Windows) works fine. I still thinks it's a pain to have to run a windows vm on Linux to get content. Someone tell me why they couldn't just use flash like espn360 did for the Euro2008?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[KamuZ]

The official rank is always sorted by the amount of gold medals, i guess because they want USA to be on top they go for the alternate "Rank by total medals". Still, you can check the real rank and the rank by total on the official website.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[nicolas.kassis]

Or MacOSX.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[HappySmileMan]

According top the website it was Vista only... So huge amounts of users would just not bother trying.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[symbolset]

Not everybody is calling it "decent streaming video".

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[bickerdyke]

You can find the real rank here: http://www.realmansolympics.com/

But IMHO there is only ONE fair sorting order of a medal rank. http://www.c64sets.com/details.html?id=210

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[MagdJTK]

Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

I imagine it's to put the US first. Personally I think it's a ridiculous way of ordering things. It encourages playing safe for bronzes, which is boring and contrary to the spirit of the Olympics.

Then again we've got to remember that no official table exists and it's not in the Olympic spirit. Personally, I think an official one should be made just to settle things once and for all. It's all well and good saying people shouldn't rank the countries, but they do and it affects both tactics and funding.

An (America-centric) article on the subject can be found here.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Brett Johnson]

Silverlight 2 (required for NBCOlympics.com) doesn't run on most Macs in the field. It only supports the newer intel-based Macs, which eliminates the 3 Macintoshes I have at home (including my PowerMac G5 with 4 x 2.5GHz cores, 8GB RAM, and 30" Cinema HD display). It also doesn't run on either of the Windows 2000 machines I have at home.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Blade]

I don't care which way they sort it as long as the UK stays ahead of France.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Ilgaz]

480i isn't decent streaming video. If they went with an actual plugin rather than advertising Silverlight for MS, they could go up HD 720, 1080 very easily and there are actually solutions existing to legally p2p stream protected content.

Result? P2P has 720p and actual 1080p mpeg 2 TS (42 GB!) and people choose it over their site. Why? Because they are standard based formats and any computer can play them. Not just Intel/Windows/Mac. Yes, if you have PPC mac, you can't view too because MS "abandoned" PowerPC as early as 2.x release. Like anyone cares :)

Another interesting thing is, you can get those formats and convert them to 3G/MPEG4 to view on your portable device. Another opportunity they missed.

Funny thing is, they could make (and save!) massive amounts of money if they checked with commercial bittorrent providers. DRM whatever could be applied too.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[gallwapa]

Total: US 65
China 61

read much?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[jollyreaper]

Fuck. I haven't watched the Olympics at all because I didn't have access to a tv (or a tivo). But for a change, the networks got their asses in order and actually put decent streaming video up? Now you tell me!

Allow me to spoil it for you. The guy who runs www.godhatesfags.com, rather homophobic but a surprisingly good swimmer.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Ilgaz]

" (including my PowerMac G5 with 4 x 2.5GHz cores"

If you install Flash 10 beta to that Quad Mac, you will figure it is not just supported (of course!) but it also enables multi CPU (4x) acceleration on that G5 Mac. Of course if it was Opto-Xeon, it would be 8x.

Gives clue about how serious companies are.

In a while, if Silverlight becomes successful, Intel Mac people will notice things like "Silverlight 4 shipped but it will take months to ship for OS X". Or... "Microsoft, citing patent problems have dropped (insert important codec here) support for Moonlight."

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[MagdJTK]

I think that it does. In Europe, funding in many countries has been ruthlessly cut for sports that don't look likely to yield golds. This leads to situations where gynastic teams (for example) will try incredibly high-scoring routines in the last round to nab a gold (and some more funding for the next four years) only to fail and lose the bronze that they could have secured.

If you know your funding just depends on getting a medal, you'll probably consolidate your third place, rather than going all out for a tiny chance of gold.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[sethstorm]

The others would rather put China on top.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[timeOday]

Ranking by total medials is absurd, because it gives equal weight to bronze as gold. If you believe that, why award medals at all, or bother to count them?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Pantero Blanco]

Ranking by total medials is absurd, because it gives equal weight to bronze as gold. If you believe that, why award medals at all, or bother to count them?

Considering that dozens of swimming, kayaking, etc events all give separate gold medals, you might as well.

By the way, the easy answer is to rank by all medals, but give gold more weight than silver, and silver more weight than bronze.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[thunderclap]

WE rank according to the most medals achieved while everyone else save cbc rank according to the most Gold. I think that the most medals is a superior ranking just like I think soccer should be the name of the sport where you can't touch the ball not football.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[korean.ian]

How is the parent marked insightful? Funny yeah... insightful?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[kasper37]

OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

There are plenty of ways to slice it depending on who you want to show up on top.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[dlmarti]

same here, I haven't been able to view a single frame of content.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Walkingshark]

good point! silverlight is an abomination, but one which will certainly die out over time. (IMO, of course)

I used to think that about AOL.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[dakameleon]

There's a reasonably official one at the official site: http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml

It has an extra column, rank by total medals, for those searching for some redemption because of sheer numbers of participants. Aussies don't mind the American sorting though, as it puts us fourth :)

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reason it didn't melt the internet is because SilverLight isn't supported on all platforms thus many people couldn't even access it.

~96% of the browser market is a pretty good portion I'd say. I doubt the 23 people running Iceweasel would have been the tipping point of the servers exploding.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[bitrex]

The horizontal sweep tubes in my Philco telereciever can't keep up with 480p, you insensitive clod!

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Americium]

Don't use MS office then either? But what could you replace Excel with?

Open office is still a ways to offering me the features I need. And these features were available in Excel 2003, probably even as far back as 97, and they had that sweet flightsim in 97 too ;)

So what should I use instead of Silverlight? Flash?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[jrumney]

And if they'd ranked that table the American way, they could have put themselves second instead of third.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[socsoc]

I like futbol and all, but how do you play it without touching the ball? Do you will it past the defenders? I'll stick to kicking it...

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Americium]

Just like huge amounts of users don't continue when it says bad site certificate?

The average user clicks and clicks and doesn't read warnings. Why would he? They are only slowing him down until he gets to see the streaming video.

It's like saying that I would click disagree because I read the EULA and realized the program was not for me, LOL

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

It didn't melt because they waterproofed the box before Michael Phelps swam by it. Duh!

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

Why is it an abomination? Just curious to see if you can actually defend your position or if you just mindlessly bash MS because 99% of your friends do as well.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

I thought Steve Jobs sent out code to make all non-Intel Macs self destruct when they switched over. Now I'm confused...

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

It is always a good idea to praise your neighbor when that neighbor is low on oil and high on nuclear weapons while you are high on oil but low on nuclear weapons.

Why? So, one neighbor can completely destroy the other neighbor 100 times over while the other neighbor can do it 1000 times over?

I doubt Canada could even successfully invade Idaho, and we could give a rats ass about that state, unless we are having a steak dinner and need a good potato to go with it. Dunno what's with this "100 times over" talk.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

Realmansolympics.com = way for countries that suck at sports to feel better about themselves. Canada, is that you?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

don't worry, you can still watch the highlights or if you're in the USA they're here OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

Let's just do this the right way: Rank by athelete.

#1 - Michael Phelps

#2 - Who cares...

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

Most of these athletes probably don't even know how these networks rank the medals. Nor do I doubt that they care.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

What's even more hilarious is that when I went to look at the list posted above, Canada's two Golds came in women's wrestling and in rowing. They must have world class athletes. No wonder Steve Nash doesn't want to play for the Canadian Team anymore. To quote the great playoff choker, "In my mind right now, I'm not going to play for Canada any more." Wow, just ouch.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[longacre]

It's pretty clear MS wrote NBC a fat check given the prominent Silverlight logo on the player. But so what? I wasn't on /. when Flash first came around, but I'll bet a bunch of naysaying Java loyalists said the same thing you guys are saying about Silverlight. If you don't want to build stuff using Silverlight, fine. If some sites do, it's no skin off your back. You can either install the plugin, which from my experience works fine, or you just don't use the site if it bothers you so much.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[cashman73]

(i.e. I can watch the non-'cool' events, such as judo, wrestling, etc).

But the major events, the ones that generate huge advertising revenue in the US, are still not streamed, in full or live. That includes gymnastics, women's beach volleyball (man's favorite spectator sport?), swimming (unless you count -- gag! -- synchronized swimming, but most slashdotters probably don't consider that a real sport anyways) and most of the track and field events. They've got some select stuff up once it's already happened, like after Michael Phelps already got his golds, but it's not live. Still, I'm kind of surprised that most of the basketball games are streamed -- you would think they'd want those television ad dollars, too?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[riceboy50]

It's not like they had it ordered by golds total and then changed it when the US had fewer. I think total medals is just their primary metric. Don't worry, it looks like China will soon posses the top spot in both metrics.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[the_B0fh]

And if US had more gold medals than China, but less silver/bronze, I'm sure they will still sort the tables the same way they're doing it right now, right? ...wanders off muttering "moron..."

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[DrFalkyn]

What I think they should do is come up with a points system. A gold is obviously worth more than a silver, and a silver worth more than a bronze, but by how much? Maybe 3 bronze:2 silver: 1 gold? I think they should also weigh it by the competitiveness of the sport and how much. Winning a team medal is a bigger deal as it is a much longer process and a country can only win one. I think for instance, winning a medal in soccer or basketball should be weighted much more heavily than say the track and field or swimming events, where you have one race and multiple medals are possible for both individuals and countries.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[gd2shoe]

You sound confused, but you're an AC, so I guess that's a given.

Iceweasel is Firefox for Debian users. It really is that simple.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

While you're at it, why not divide a nation's medal "points" by the nation's population, to really make things fair. Points per capita.

But I got a better idea - how about no point system at all? Which is what they have now. This isn't like a high school or college track meet where points are totaled to determine which side won the meet. It looks like China will win the most gold medals and most medals over all, but there won't be any official statement that "China won the Olympics". The medal count has no formal place in the rules, nor should it. It's just an informal stat that may or may not be interesting for fans to talk about. Bringing in a complicated system to formalize the medal count (or medal "points") into something that's officially meaningful would be pretty lame.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

Who's the prick who posted anonymously, eh? Outed indeed, perhaps you are the anti-outed out.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

Who said anything about invasion? Ask Al Qaeda what they think about the MOAB. A series of transport planes would bury you in said caves. Or we could tell all of the rednecks in the southeast that you called them Yankees and watch as they pour over the border with shotguns, Trucks with Dale Earnhardt #3 stickers, and plenty of Jack Daniels. Canada would be the 51st state in a matter of days.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[portaloo]

But IMHO there is only ONE fair sorting order of a medal rank. http://www.c64sets.com/details.html?id=210

But then you'd have the Australian team pressing "RUN STOP" and "RESTORE" whenever they miss out on a gold medal.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[rgigger]

And we'd have a million less NASCAR fans. It's win-win! Why didn't we do this 20 years ago?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[rgigger]

Apparently someone hasn't been keeping up on his michael more documentaries: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109370/

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[rgigger]

Yeah, I'm sure as American runners are pulling into the lead they're thinking, "wow if I keep running fast I could win a gold medal, but NBC will count a bronze medal the same. Screw it, this is hard work, I'm just gonna slow down, take it easy, and coast into getting a bronze."

Seriously, what individual athlete is going to be encouraged to play it safe and get a bronze. They all want gold and they'll all do everything they can to get it. The alternate sorting is just to ease the pain of the U.S. no longer being the dominant sports power in the world.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Atario]

You can find the real rank here: http://www.realmansolympics.com/

Jebus, what a stupid site. These appear to be the rules:

1. Women do it = bad
2. Teamwork = bad
3. Metric system = bad
4. Being born not the largest man in the world = bad
5. Some kinds of judging (as of going out of bounds in track) = good, judging of other kinds (as of going out of bounds in gymnastics) = bad
6. Using muscles for brute force = good, using muscles for optimized technique = bad

I repeat: what a stupid site. The fact that this is the second time I've seen this crap modded up to +4 or better in two days does not speak well of Slashdot.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[harlows_monkeys]

Another reason it didn't melt the internet is because SilverLight isn't supported on all platforms thus many people couldn't even access it

It's supported on Windows (2000, XP, Vista) and Mac OS X. That covers around 98+%.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[dr_d_19]

...where gynastic teams...

I would think most slashdot men also aim for gold in the gyn-astics with high-scoring routines only to fail.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[mtmra70]

Silverlight was not required. If you do not have Silverlight installed and go to watch a video, you are prompted to install Silverlight but there is a tiny little link that will let you proceed without installing.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Zaphod2016]

What the-?!?! Someone is offering a rational opinion here on /.

Let's get 'im, fellas!

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[fireboy1919]

1. Women do it = bad
   Yes. It's the real man's Olympics. They could totally make a site like this for women, too. I will agree that it's definitely sexist. But for argument, I think that they're getting at the idea that women have totally different athletic abilities. If you're in a sport that women do as well, then chances are higher that the sport isn't actually testing any sort of athletic ability (since such abilities arguably don't overlap much). I think that's the idea, anyway. I don't really think its true, personally, but I'm not going to discount it entirely.
2. Teamwork = bad
   Only if there's already another event that's the same, except single. Idea there is that it's really an individual thing, and there just throwing in a team mode...to have a team mode. So team mode is event pollution. Baseball and basketball, which are actually team sports, both got pretty high scores.
3. Metric system = bad
   You're just saying that because everything is listed in yards. No scores are marked down because of that, though. Just because you wish that he'd listed everything in meters doesn't mean that listing everything in yards is invalid.
4. Being born not the largest man in the world = bad
   A lot of physical skills are greatly aided by sheer physical size. What they're getting at is they only want to see the best at anything. If sheer physical size is what it takes to be the best, then they only want to see that. On that note, why do we have weight classes for boxing but not height classes for basketball? Why is it not exactly the same?
5. 
   Some kinds of judging (as of going out of bounds in track) = good, judging of other kinds (as of going out of bounds in gymnastics) = bad

   I'm pretty sure both of those fall into the category of "simple rules," and would be acceptable in that list. Looks like subjective scoring is the thing he doesn't like - i.e., most of the judging you get in almost all of the gymnastics events, but what doesn't occur at all in track.

6. Using muscles for brute force = good, using muscles for optimized technique = bad

   And yet archery, which requires technique, and can be done by small guys, is one of the highest scoring events, and decathlon, the highest scoring event, absolutely cannot be won by someone with too much muscle mass (they would tire too quickly).

I repeat: what a stupid site. The fact that this is the second time I've seen this crap modded up to +4 or better in two days does not speak well of Slashdot.

Your arguments, as a whole as to the authors arguments, are invalid. I put it to you that you are biased against the idea that people disagree with the way the Olympics works, rather than that the site itself is inherently stupid. I consider that there is some insight to be gained looking at this. Especially in regard to the concept of event pollution.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[iamhigh]

The unfortunate side effect of tolerance is that you must tolerate the morons.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Trifthen]

Not to shit all over your rant, but the site is clearly satire. They list China as "Communist China" for fuck's sake! What, does something have to be Maddox level before your spoof sensors start going off?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Give up the astroturf.

You've been outed already.

Okay. So if Microsoft's position is so weak they've gotta hire a company who then hires people to come to Slashdot and rigorously defend them by saying "back up your claim", then you've got actual really really strong reasons ... right? Something a little less questionable than "you're an astroturfer", right?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Possibly the most US Centric article anyway - The internet did not melt because of a US company providing US biased content to US Citizens

Really.... and in other news there are more people on the internet in China than in the rest of the world put together ....

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[pcolaman]

Because 20 years ago we thought that this would mean sending Cole Trickle (err, I mean Tom Cruise) along with them, and that was unthinkable. Now, we have made Cole General of the invasion force, and advised him to lead his troops into battle. Here's hoping that the General trips over a land mine.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[dafradu]

Then again we've got to remember that no official table exists and it's not in the Olympic spirit. Personally, I think an official one should be made just to settle things once and for all. It's all well and good saying people shouldn't rank the countries, but they do and it affects both tactics and funding.

There is an official one, the IOC (International Olympic Comittee). http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml

Don't know why but i'm not surprised the US is different from the rest of the world...

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[drew]

Apparently because the US one is coming from 12 hours in the future. (At the time of this posting, it says "As of 8/18, 10:41 PM ET" Do they have a time machine to watch the days events before the rest of us?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[JD-1027]

realwomansolympics.com is available

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[PalmKiller]

That's all well and good, but the site itself wont serve video to my windows 2000 machine.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[denttford]

Order '86?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[lgarner]

Because it's a "Medal Table" on NBC, not a "Gold Medal Table". The nice thing about statistics is that they can mean almost anything you want.

I happen to think that NBC's ranking is correct in this case, given the title.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[stdarg]

Are you sure? I watched almost 2 hours of women's team gymnastics. I think it was called a "Long Rewind" or some crap.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Quikah]

They have used that ranking for a LONG time now, I remember them using it in '88 also. Anyway, I think it stems from that "lets give everyone a trophy" sentiment prevalent in the US.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Atario]

I've got news for you: Maddox is not spoofing anything. He really believes the fundamental theses of his rants. As does this guy. Nobody goes to that kind of trouble to say "ha ha, I'm dumb because I believe _____".

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Atario]

Lighten up, it's *FUNNY*

To who? Fans of "Home Improvement"? Pass.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[omfglearntoplay]

OT smartass answers

1. Because the US population is so spoiled we won't look past line one to find the US. And "US" is a hard string to search for on a website if you forget to use the case sensitive search option. ;)

2. Or maybe b/c the US can't (yet) disqualify China for too much obvious cheating and bribery, so the next best thing is to list the US at the top. They should just put images of the Chinese girls falling on their butts during the recent gymnastic finals with a photochopped medal dangling from their necks. How did she get a bronze again??

3. B/c spin is more fair than bribery.

Do I sound bitter?

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[zummit]

Couldn't - or wouldn't?

I sent NBC (MSNBC) and email saying I wouldn't be watching due to the fact I don't want or need any more Flash(tm)-like plugins on my winderz box.

Now if they had a Silverlight plugin for Opera on *nix, I might go for that - just to be a d*ck..

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[bonehead]

Yep, we would. The US media, that I've seen, anyway, has presented the list sorted that way for as long as I can remember (which is at least as far back as watching Mary Lou Retton compete.), regardless of where the sorting put us on the list.

I know America bashing is the hot, new trend these days, but there's no great conspiracy going on here.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[klubar]

It might be time to replace those macs... the new Mac OS (from Apple) will not run on power pc processors either. That big 30" monitor might look pretty cool when you're running Vista. Stop complaining about 10+ year old OS and machines not being supported.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[benwaggoner]

There's actually a ton of stuff archived for those sports. You just have to drill down to each sport's "all videos" page.

297 Swimming videos: http://www.nbcolympics.com/swimming/video/all/index.html
124 Beach Vollyball videos: http://www.nbcolympics.com/beachvolleyball/video/all/index.html
380 Gymnastic videos: http://www.nbcolympics.com/gymnastics/video/index.html

Note that the Highlights and Encore clips are at a higher bitrate (up to 1.5 Mbps) than the Live and Live Rewind clips (up to 650 Kbps).

Alex Zambelli's blog has a bunch of details http://alexzambelli.com/blog/

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[ResidntGeek]

You.... you can't be serious. You're KILLING me. What the hell happened to the days when stupid people weren't allowed to use phrases they heard from smart people, like "fundamental theses"?

Your original rant was also shockingly retarded, by the way. Disdaining the instincts and prejudices toward various manly characteristics that are inherent in men doesn't make you more enlightened or intelligent than those who don't; it just furthers the agendas of feminists and other forces of modern stupidity you don't fully understand.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[RpiMatty]

Because we are all about quantity not quality.

Why have 1 nice bottle of wine, or a couple of good pints, when instead you can have 24 piss waters that the majority of us call beer.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[gallwapa]

To follow up on this point: Apparently we also use the "Standard units" to describe measurements used in ...pretty much just 1 country in the world.

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[Atario]

Aww, whatsa matter, little troll? Did the big scary words hurt your tiny brain? It's ok! Just go to dictionary.com and they can't hurt you!

Re:Wait, who had 480i streaming video?

[soldoutactivist]

I haven't watched the Olympics since they made Curling one of the sports. And that was many games ago. Don't get me wrong, Curling is a fine past time when you are drunk, near a body of ice, and drunk. But you can't convince me it is an olympic-worthy "sport." What's next: shuffleboard?

Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[presidenteloco]

If the general cloud does not also support high-bandwidth content viewing, the pipe providers (cable cos) will grab our throats and shake us down for money.

This trend ought to be resisted, by net neutrality legislation or just more peer to peer innovation.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, I've got DSL from the phone company. They control my home phone, cell phone, internet, satellite tv, and brain chip, but they do not control my cable tv! That would be stupid!

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Brett Johnson]

the pipe providers (cable cos) will grab our throats and shake us down for money.

Tell me about it. I subscribe to some premium sports tier to get the Fox Soccer Channel from Charter. With this Olympics, NBC is showing much of the soccer on some "NBC Soccer Channel" which I've never heard of. It suddenly showed up in my channel listings, but if I try to tune to that channel, I get the "Not authorized - please call this 800 number to subscribe." panel. So while the Fox Soccer Channel is included with the Premium Sports Tier, the NBC Soccer Channel seems to be in some "Ultra-uber Premium Sports Tier". I hate these ass-hats.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Solandri]

If the general cloud does not also support high-bandwidth content viewing, the pipe providers (cable cos) will grab our throats and shake us down for money.

This is an "already been solved" problem, and even has a dedicated IP address range (224-239.x.x.x). The multicasting solution is the optimal solution for this type of problem - identical information being broadcast "live" to millions or hundreds of millions of locations.

It's even more efficient than Akami or Limelight, which are more suited for on-demand asynchronous streaming applications like pay-per view and web sites. With Akami or Limelight, the ISP has to send the same video stream to every single viewer (though you can ease the burden with some smart routers). With multicasting, the video stream is sent only once along each network route. If a viewer wishes to see the video, they just tap into that one stream. The IOC and subsequently the ISPs went with the less-optimal solution represented by Limelight because they wanted to have more control over the distribution.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Paul Jakma]

Inter-domain multicast is far from a solved problem - at least, judging by operational deployment.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[jsoderba]

This is nothing new. NBC has bought exclusive access to all Olympic broadcasts in the US for many, many years. It looks like Fox has the US rights to most major football leagues. Exclusive deals like this are common and the largest source of revenue for most sport leagues, including the Olympics.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Mista2]

Olympics coverage on the net is what you will get without neutrality. Content streamed in propietry formats, to paying customers on only certain premium providers. Hey, sounds like cell phone networks.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Ash-Fox]

This is an "already been solved" problem, and even has a dedicated IP address range (224-239.x.x.x). The multicasting solution is the optimal solution for this type of problem - identical information being broadcast "live" to millions or hundreds of millions of locations.

I have been experimenting on my own network with multicasting in TCP/IP and couldn't figure out how to make multicasting work on a 'interested' receiver basis, it just kept broadcasting the data to every machine on the network, whether interested or not.

Are you sure this issue has been resolved?

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Deadplant]

There is a company out of the Uk called INUK TV that is/has deployed a multicast IPTV system.
They can only serve University students because only the research/education fibre networks multicast enabled.
I hear it works but i haven't seen it operating.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[psydeshow]

I have been experimenting on my own network with multicasting in TCP/IP and couldn't figure out how to make multicasting work on a 'interested' receiver basis, it just kept broadcasting the data to every machine on the network, whether interested or not.

Curious about this, because I'm still getting my test network set up. How complex is the network? My understanding is that packets are broadcast to every host on the subnet and they can choose to listen or not. There's still only one copy of the packet on the wire.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Ash-Fox]

Curious about this, because I'm still getting my test network set up. How complex is the network? My understanding is that packets are broadcast to every host on the subnet and they can choose to listen or not.

The network wasn't that complex, only one router and testing with VNC and some packet inspection utilities. My understanding after numerous trials was that it was essentially the same as doing a broadcast, all the devices were receiving the packets, they never 'asked' for it. With this mind, I don't really see how a computer can 'opt-in' for receiving, they're sent the packets either way. The only choice you have really is if you want to decode the data you're getting sent or ignore it.

I never went out of my way to read the RFCs on the matter, simply because this was just me fooling around with the idea out of curiosity, didn't have any practical use for it.

I'm probably doing this wrong to begin with and if that's the case, I wouldn't mind being told exactly what is needed to do this properly.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Ash-Fox]

Sorry, VLC, not VNC.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[psydeshow]

At the local level it IS broadcast--it's when you go upstream that the efficiency really emerges. If you run a video server, you only stream packets to a few downstream nodes, rather than to each client that is watching the stream.

To test it properly you'd want a network with multiple subnets. Multicast packets should only be router to, and broadcast on, subnets where there is a listening client.

Nevertheless, even locally, broadcast is more efficient than unicast if more than one client wants to listen.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Ash-Fox]

Nevertheless, even locally, broadcast is more efficient than unicast if more than one client wants to listen.

That depends, flooding every computer on the network with information is not desirable. It takes away bandwith from every computer on the network at the expense of this 'efficiency'. Personally I would be very unhappy with my ISP if I was receiving unicast content I didn't want.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[benwaggoner]

If only multicast was supported end-to-end in the US internet. Alas, it's not, and multicast really requries broad support.

Multicast mainly gets used in corporate/education/government networks where they've multicast enabled their whole subnet. And in a few countries where they rolled the whole infrastructure out with multicast. But for most of the world, you simply can't get a multicast broadcast out to the majority of end users.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[evilviper]

That depends, flooding every computer on the network with information is not desirable.

With a hub, every machine on the network is already being flooded, even if the content is only unicast. Unicasting the same content to two machines on the same hub-based network segment would result in every machine on the network receiving the all the data, TWICE.

With a switch, this isn't quite the case. Though due to the limited throughput of switches, a single broadcast to all the machines might slow down your overall network less than a few simultaneous unicast streams, with the specifics depending on speed and topology.

But generally, with a switch, multicasting becomes more desirable than broadcasting, and provides the best features and benefits of both.

To answer your original question, there's little or nothing that needs to be done to set this up. Either your ethernet switch knows how to handle multicast, and therefore sends it only to subscribing ports, or it doesn't, and it broadcasts the data to all active ports, just like a hub. I imagine you were using some low-end home switch/router for your tests, which simply isn't smart enough to handle multicast properly. You can be sure, however, your ISP isn't using such low-end kit.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[Ash-Fox]

To answer your original question, there's little or nothing that needs to be done to set this up. Either your ethernet switch knows how to handle multicast, and therefore sends it only to subscribing ports, or it doesn't, and it broadcasts the data to all active ports, just like a hub. I imagine you were using some low-end home switch/router for your tests, which simply isn't smart enough to handle multicast properly. You can be sure, however, your ISP isn't using such low-end kit.

Well, I'm still glad my ISP isn't using multicast. Because my hardware was provided by my ISP and obviously if they started multicasting to me because one computer on my netowrk wanted to see the stream, my entire network would be flooded.

Re:Be careful or net will turn back into cable TV

[evilviper]

if they started multicasting to me because one computer on my netowrk wanted to see the stream, my entire network would be flooded.

You're referring to multicasting on a LAN, which is quite different than an ISP using multicast. After the ISP multicast stream hits your DSL or Cable router, it can look to the local network exactly like a unicast stream.

Bandwidth cap

[Eudial]

I'm on a bandwidth cap you insensitive clo(u)d!

Re:Bandwidth cap

[ScrewMaster]

I'm on a bandwidth cap you insensitive clo(u)d!

I am too ... but I have Comcast so I don't know what it is.

Re:Bandwidth cap

[Opportunist]

Now here's your chance to find out!

Re:Bandwidth cap

[mikkelm]

Cheap +5 Funny: just say "Comcast sucks because {insert bastard tactic here}"

I wish it had

[philspear]

I kind of wish the internet HAD melted. Not only would that have made a cool youtube video, but I waste too much time on the internet.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't have been able to view the youtube video then.

Also come to think of it, I'm wasting time on the internet right now.

Re:I wish it had

[freakxx]

Georgian people also agree with you partially.

Re:A good old fashion slashdotting...

[Lennie]

I wanted to ask, does it run Linux, but the answer is also usually: yes

New switching and routing technology.

[cuby]

Because of the fractal shape of IP traffic, until some time ago, the only solution was to over dimension the trunk capacity, now, a lot of new techniques where developed to properly dimension and forward data packets.
We may have a lot of data, but we have also more efficient ways to deliver it.

Or....nobody cared

[Gothmolly]

Other than watercooler chat about "that swimmer kid", this has to be the least watched Olympics ever. China got the big FAIL on this one.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[strelitsa]

NBC doesn't seem to think that nobody's watching. They're claiming American Idol-esque numbers so far.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[pla]

NBC doesn't seem to think that nobody's watching. They're claiming American Idol-esque numbers so far.

Which means, comparatively, that nobody watched.

American Idol and various other record-breaking series' don't even come close to the numbers for major events like the superbowl or the olympics. Claiming that this year's olympics "only" did as well as American idol amounts to a record-breaking poor viewership.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[evil_aar0n]

I watched the womens' marathon, last night, while at a local Applebee's - at least when they didn't break away for another five minute commercial - but, other than that, pretty much zip. I don't feel like rewarding either NBC or China for their complicity in subjugating Tibet and supporting genocide in Darfur. Fuck 'em.

Cheating in gymnastics - underage athletes - and requiring their country flag bearers to strip nude just to apply for the "privilege" strikes me as wrong.

And I _do_ check whether the stuff I buy is made in China. Sometimes I can't avoid buying it, though.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched the womens' marathon, last night,

That was an opportunity for pure MST3K gold.

Announcers: "And here the runners are passing Tienanmen Square, in front of the Gate of Eternal Peace".

Audience: where absolutely nothing happened! It's eternally peaceful!

Announcers: "Mao's portrait is changed annually, and has a different color backdrop every year"

Audience: *stunned silence*, mentioning trivia like that while skipping over the massacre was just too much for even the most cynical of us to improve upon.

Annoucners: "It was once a gate to the Forbidden City, where the Emperor held court, but after the Revolution, was opened up to the Chinese people..."

Audience: "And pay no attention to the grease spot where that guy stood in front of the column of tanks..."

Announcers: "And next the course goes through the first modern University in China..."

Audience: "...whose enrollment numbers suffered a mysterious drop a few years back, or, at least, they would have dropped if anything had happened at the last landmark, which, of course, it didn't..."

Re:Or....nobody cared

[MagdJTK]

Seriously? We are all over these Olympics here in the UK. Everyone I know is watching. It could be because we're at an amazing third place, but still.

Besides, what's not to like? The record for most golds ever and most golds at a single games has been broken. The 100m record has been destroyed by someone who only ran flat-out 85m and had one shoe undone and lots of events have been really exciting.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Blade]

Actually, this is the Olympics I've watched the most. I've just not sat down and watched it on the TV like previous years. This is the first time I've been able to sit at my PC and watch the bits I was interested in on the BBC website, and then fast forward through some other stuff the Sky+ box recorded, and then catch some stuff on the Sky+ interactive section on the BBC, and then head back to the PC and watch a bit more on iPlayer or the BBC news site. For me, it's really brought home the changes in broadcasting major sporting events that have taken place in only four years.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[afabbro]

They may be more popular outside the USA, but here in the States, no one is watching and no one cares. This isn't much different than the last Olympics...or the next one, for that matter.

We have a ton of sports - the NFL, the NBA, baseball, NHL - and those are just the big four. The idea of tuning in the Olympics just to watch American basketball players play...well, I can do that every night of the week for months.

Personally, I'd watch if they put fencing, judo, etc. on...but baseball? Yawn...I could watch the best players in the world every night for six months if I cared.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[MagdJTK]

I agree with you on things like baseball and basketball (as far as I know they're not even shown here) but surely the American broadcaster (NBC?) is showing all the swimming and running and things?

Here in the UK, most of the attention is given to swimming, running, cycling, weightlifting, etc. Sports that don't really belong in the Olympics (tennis for example) tend only to get shown if we're in them (though they are often available on the red button). Considering the Olympics is the pinnacle for these events, I'm surprised there isn't a big audience in the US, especially consider that you're the second in the rankings.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[ACMENEWSLLC]

The US Open was more popular on our Network than the Olympics. Of course, we figured out how to block Limelight after the USOpen so that helped too.. They make it almost impossible to simply QoS them because of this infrastructure.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[samkass]

I hadn't watched any of it until I accidentally hit the "On Demand" button on my FiOS TV remote last night. FiOS has "highlight reels" of the Olympics, which is way, way more watchable than the live feed.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Swampash]

Other than watercooler chat about "that swimmer kid", this has to be the least watched Olympics ever. China got the big FAIL on this one.

China's reaming the opposition in just about every event it's contesting (look at the medal tallies), and logistically everything is running like clockwork (for an example of how to totally fuck up the running of an Olympic Games, look at what happened the last time the USA was allowed to host).

If Americans aren't watching, one might be tempted to suggest that they're just sore losers.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Maestro485]

Horseshit! I voted for Michael Phelps on my AT&T wireless 3G Verizon Blackberry McDonalds Southwest Style Chicken iPhone!

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Moridineas]

Hmmm...

I have 4 channels available for olympics -- all in highdef. NBC, Universal HD, USA HD (showing some events), Soccer HD, and occasionally some other channel. I've seen just about every sport on, though I haven't watched them all. This is Timewarner cable btw, is your experience different? TWC added some new channels in the 1500s just for the olympics, so maybe your provider did something similar?

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Gothmolly]

If you don't count the famous dancer crippled in pre-production rehearsal, or the lipsync of the national anthem, or the 56 kids that weren't really 56 different ethnic groups, or that the opening fireworks were faked, or the fact that most of the events are not full of spectators to keep crowd sizes down, or the 1000s of homeless animals killed to clean up the streets, or the protesters who were sent for re-education through labor, or the fact that they closed most of the factories and forbid people to drive to clean the air, or that they pumped the clouds full of silver nitrate to make it rain, or that they hospitalized their homeless as insane so that the city looked nicer, or that most citizens lack basic freedoms, then yes, it runs just like clockwork.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Neoprofin]

I would hope he got modded flamebait because of his tone not because of his content, and not by anyone in the U.S.

I'm following the Olympics online because I have a good friend who was a fencer and I have a lot of national pride. I have to say though, when I'm talking to people on a day to day basis they spend a lot more time talking about the upcoming NFL season and the baseball division standings than anything involving Micheal Phelps or the gymnastics teams. I think it's incredible what he's accomplished, but I haven't watched a single one of his races, nor did I see more than five minutes of any of the games in the past.

The U.S. pays attention to the Olympics because we usually do very well and Americans love to win. It's big for month a year but other than that unless you're actually involved in one of the sports, it's completely off the radar for the vast majority of people.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Xaria]

In your opinion. In the USA. I haven't found that to be true here in Australia, and I bet it's not true in large sections of Europe either. And I hate to tell you this, but the USA is less than 5% of the world's population. India and China alone have 35%. So to say that China failed is a rather massive assumption to be making.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[truesaer]

They've got 14 hours a day of coverage for like 16 days...obviously no single hour is going to draw the ratings of the super bowl.

This is one of the most watched Olympics ever, that is simply a fact.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[RightSaidFred99]

Bullshit. How did this get modded "Insightful"? The number of viewer*hours racked up by the olympics dwarf the viewer*hours racked up by the superbowl and world series combined. Lots of people are watching.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Zoxed]

> I've been able to sit at my PC and watch the bits I was interested in on the BBC website,

I live in Germany, you insensitive clod !

Re:Or....nobody cared

[mgblst]

3rd, not anymore.

Sorry about that (not really), Australia.

But it is great to see Britain doing so well, I guess they are getting ready for their own Olympics (that £500 million would have helped as well).

Re:Or....nobody cared

[Nursie]

"We are all over these Olympics here in the UK. Everyone I know is watching"

I'm also British and I don't know anyone that cares.

Oh, except for the chinese girl I work with. Other than that, nobody gives a crap that I know.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[mtmra70]

Don't forget about the 14 year olds on the women's gymnastics teams.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[petermgreen]

and the fact that china's government is willing and able to do theese things is IMO both very impressive and rather scary.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[old and new again]

quote: If you don't count the famous dancer crippled in pre-production rehearsal, no i don't things happen or the lipsync of the national anthem, who the fuck cares, in fornt of 90 000 person, i'd make sure everything is pre recorded, there was already enough wireless signals going there or the 56 kids that weren't really 56 different ethnic groups, who cares or that the opening fireworks were faked, who cares, 1 single chopper shot was faked cause flying a chopper in the firestorm was just unsafe or the fact that most of the events are not full of spectators to keep crowd sizes down didnt watch athletism didnt you, packed stadium, and swimming, packed water cube the 1000s of homeless animals killed to clean up the streets, good thing, errants cats and dogs are a carrier of diseases or the protesters who were sent for re-education through labor, ok, maybe this one matters or the fact that they closed most of the factories and forbid people to drive to clean the air which every major city in the world should try , or that they pumped the clouds full of silver nitrate to make it rain another things other cities could try that they hospitalized their homeless as insane so that the city looked nicer, they do the same in here

Re:Or....nobody cared

[bonehead]

So far about all I've cared to watch is women's gymnastics and women's hurdles (Shawn Johnson and Lolo Jones are both hometown girls), and swimming (the whole Michael Phelps thing has been fun to watch).

Other than those events, though, every time I try to watch I just end up dozing off.

Re:Or....nobody cared

[old and new again]

wow! where has my line breaks gone?

NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PCs.

[whoever57]

NBC provided streaming video for only a small proportion of Internet-connected computers: Those running more expensive versions of Vista -- what proportion of all the desktop computers connected to the Internet is this?

Peer Guardian ...

[Tink2000]

... resolves them as a "hostile" IP range. How interesting and (Alanis) ironic; someone that PGLabs views as "hostile" managed to distribute a high content of data seamlessly over the internet.

Re:Peer Guardian ...

[maztuhblastah]

That's because PeerGuardian sucks as a blacklist. It's wildly agressive -- their "level 3" list blocks something like 25% of all IPv4 addresses, no joke.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[Telvin_3d]

Also, Vista installs are heavily weighted towards people who have bought a prebuilt retail computer for home use in the last few months. I don't think these are going to be the same people who are inclined to watch something on their computer instead of the television. At the very least, it cut out all the office workers running 2000/XP who would have wanted an Olympic stream running in the background during the day instead of their normal music.

That's not the reason

[mobby_6kl]

I thought it was because nobody actually cares enough to watch.

Re:That's not the reason

[thermian]

I thought it was because nobody actually cares enough to watch.

I think the main reason is that 70% of the internets heaviest users have been playing WoW and didn't notice the olympics were on.

Re:That's not the reason

[owlnation]

I thought it was because nobody actually cares enough to watch.

That's exactly what I thought too. I know no-one who is excited about the Olympics. I've never known anyone who is interested in the Olympics.

But why are there so many viral marketing Olympics stories on Slashdot? News for nerds? Only if stretching a point is an Olympic sport. If I wanted to visit Digg I'd go to Digg. I DO NOT. That's why I come to Slashdot -- so why does Digg come and visit me here?

Re:That's not the reason

[Born2bwire]

I thought it was because nobody actually cares enough to watch.

That's exactly what I thought too. I know no-one who is excited about the Olympics. I've never known anyone who is interested in the Olympics.

But why are there so many viral marketing Olympics stories on Slashdot? News for nerds? Only if stretching a point is an Olympic sport. If I wanted to visit Digg I'd go to Digg. I DO NOT. That's why I come to Slashdot -- so why does Digg come and visit me here?

Because we don't like you.

Re:That's not the reason

[MeditationSensation]

And they truly are the *heaviest* if you know what I mean. Hur hur.

Re:That's not the reason

[bonehead]

I thought it was because nobody actually cares enough to watch.

Could it also have something to do with it being more enjoyable to watch on a 50" plasma than on a 19" computer monitor?

Or that it's more enjoyable to watch sitting on a couch with your family than sitting in a desk chair?

Just sayin.....

Re:That's not the reason

[Abcd1234]

I know no-one who is excited about the Olympics. I've never known anyone who is interested in the Olympics.

Ahh yes... anecdotal evidence. With a selection bias! Ahh, the best kind.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm...I run XP and had no problems at all.

Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[d34thm0nk3y]

Maybe nobody was watching:

Tom Steinert-Threlkeld has a great rundown of the numbers behind this weekend's Olympic coverage. The highest day of coverage was on August 10th and it saw about 3.42 million video streams with 66.7 million page views and an average time spent on the site of 15 minutes. Pretty good numbers but as the BTL piece notes, that's only about 2% of a typical YouTube day. So it didn't exactly take the world by storm.

reference

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[teknopurge]

Mod parent up and tag article "Slashvertisement".

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[clang_jangle]

And of course, that would be the real story, rather than the slashvertisement for Limelight Networks via perlow's blog we ended up with. But hey, perlow and Limelight are happy, and that's the what matters, right?

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[symbolset]

Wow. All the sport fans on earth, two years of build up hype, tie ins from every company out there and they can't get 1/50th of a YouTube on an average day?

That's a flaming pile of fail right there. I wonder what they spent on that.

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[Ilgaz]

...and CNET who still chooses to be MS-CNET even after CBS deal says:

"Microsoft is not disclosing specifics on the number of Silverlight downloads--except to say that it registers up to 1.5 million downloads a day."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-10017507-60.html

1.5 million of downloads a day is a joke for Windows scene especially when you are Microsoft and put Silverlight to Windows update site with a "Q" number like a required system update, auto selecting it for some. People will download whatever they see on "windows update", they are afraid. That is the same company who dared to put Flash 6 to Win XP SP3 ISO.

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[Joe Tie.]

People on slashdot do probably tend to a social group not overly concerned with most sports. But I have to say that I've had the same experience in terms of apathy. I literally know nobody, young or old, who actually cares about the olympics. Nationalism + watching sports instead of participating = not interesting for anyone I know.

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[telbij]

I don't see how YouTube's traffic is relevant at all. If you slice the stats as views per video then do the Olympics have the most awesome video site ever?

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[vandoravp]

Honestly I fined those numbers rather impressive, considering several things. First, YouTube has a huge variety, and amount, of content, whereas the Olympics are extremely narrow by comparison. If you took a specific set of videos on YouTube that was more comparable to the Olympic coverage, the numbers would be a lot less disparate. Also, YouTube has been around a while and is firmly established as a place to watch video online. The kind of coverage being made available online and at the specific sites is not something people are used to.

Having a different kind of plugin required sure doesn't help the NBC online coverage either. NBCOlympics.com also has a huge competitor, the NBC networks themselves. YouTube doesn't exactly have to compete with major primetime coverage. The advantage to online was that it could be live without having to worry about timeslots and such, especially important given the time difference. However, since it's a full 12-hour or more difference for everyone in the US, they're asleep during the live streams, so the non-time limited advantage is lost.

I do think the whole thing could've been executed a bit better, but my viewing experience has been great so far. I really enjoyed being able to watch various sports that aren't on the mainstream coverage, such as sailing and fencing. I've even noticed some automatic bandwidth adjustment to keep the stream smooth, handy as I'm sharing a low-end cable connection with four others.

On a related note, being able to torrent British coverage of the games was especially interesting as the focus is, for the most part, quite different, both in terms of athletes and events.

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[nimbius]

good point. i was in a pub and caught the opening ceremony. USA took the field, and we heard one or two cries of "usa" from the pool tables. as soon as the next team took the field, we switched it back to Setanta.

after all, rugby was on.

Re:Because it was about 2% of YouTubes traffic?

[fishbowl]

Modding THIS post "Flamebait" is an insult to all my *actual* flamebait posts.

Vista market share

[lucm]

> Those running more expensive versions of Vista...

-and not using their soundcard simultaneously (network slowdown!)
-and not having problem with Windows Activation...
-and not living in China (where only 244 copies of Vista were purchased)

For sure that's a web server log that won't take time to analyze in Splunk!

News flash...

[damn_registrars]

The Olympics aren't over yet. Just because Phelps won 8 medals in swimming doesn't mean there are no games left to be played. Several team sports (volleyball and basketball come to mind) haven't even reached their finals yet.

Wait for the medal ceremonies for the big team events, and the closing ceremonies, before you start talking about the Olympics in past tense.

Re:News flash...

[afabbro]

Wait for the medal ceremonies for the big team events, and the closing ceremonies, before you start talking about the Olympics in past tense.

And we still don't care.

Re:News flash...

[damn_registrars]

And we still don't care.

Though clearly some people do, or nobody would have been concerned about the effect of the Olympics on the internet.

Re:News flash...

[entrylevel]

Nobody was. This is an ad for Limelight.

Re:News flash...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"And we still don't care."

I laugh that you actually say that with a sense of pride. I look at your statement as one more example of how out of touch typical slashdotters are.

Over a billion people (normal people) watched Usain Bolt run 100 meters at a blistering 9.69 seconds, and were thrilled at the spectacle. But the typical slashdotter cares more about recompiling his kernel.

What about Neutrality?

[Adrian Lopez]

Let me get this straight. Olympics content is getting special treatment due to commercial deals between the Olympics Committee, Limelight Networks, and a bunch of ISPs?

How does this bode for Net Neutrality?

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Dwedit]

In this case, there is a distributed bunch of servers, so when a user requests a file, it's not even reaching the internet backbone, it's reaching a dedicated video server which is local to the ISP. Net neutrality has nothing to do with this, this is just agreements between companies to make highly demanded video available to users without costing the ISPs as much bandwidth.

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: has nothing to do with it. Let me demonstrate why by switching a couple words around:

Let me get this straight. World of Warcraft content is getting special treatment due to commercial deals between Blizzard, Blizzard's Hosting Networks, and a bunch of subscribers?

Do you see how both your question and my altered question have absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality?

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Stray7Xi]

In this case, there is a distributed bunch of servers, so when a user requests a file, it's not even reaching the internet backbone, it's reaching a dedicated video server which is local to the ISP. Net neutrality has nothing to do with this, this is just agreements between companies to make highly demanded video available to users without costing the ISPs as much bandwidth.

Yes it does. Because it places a content provider onto a special tier. Why do you think many ISP's cached it locally, because they were getting paid. That's the primary fear of net neutrality. That if you don't pay both your ISP and your customer's ISP the data will be deprioritized. The road to a non-neutral net starts with content providers voluntarily paying for "higher tiers".

The very fact that ISP's choose what goes on their caching servers, means its non-neutral. Even if it was made free and the ISP's used discretion accepting videos, still non-neutral. The only neutral network is one the ISP doesn't make choices for me on what content gets prioritized.

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Alsn]

Actually, it kind of does, just in reverse(everything else gets less priority than the olympics).

With enough deals like this Net neutrality could be threatened. You'll have the different "fast" services which certain companies pay good money for and the rest of the internet in "regular" mode.

Then again, as long as it only happens for extremely big events like the olympics and such then what is there to worry about...

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Kalriath]

The commercial deals are just to co-locate content. You too can co-locate content with your ISP as part of a commercial deal. How can this bode anything for net neutrality anyway?

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Legion_SB]

Yes it does. Because it places a content provider onto a special tier. Why do you think many ISP's cached it locally, because they were getting paid. That's the primary fear of net neutrality. That if you don't pay both your ISP and your customer's ISP the data will be deprioritized.

And how does the fact that all the other content out there BENEFITTED from *not* having the Olympic video feeds "tie up teh tubez" jive with that argument?

Unfairly prioritizing someone's network traffic over someone else's is bad. Locally caching high-demand content, which provides the win-win of improving that content's availability and maintaining the availability of everything else on the would-have-been-flooded network, is not.

Re:What about Neutrality?

[mibus]

Yes it does. Because it places a content provider onto a special tier.

Anybody that wants the same treatment as LLN (and Akamai for that matter), can just put servers in the datacentres of all major ISPs. That's really what's made a difference here, not some sort of back-room deal that's going to disturb Net Neutrality.

(personal opinion, not speaking official for my employer, yada yada)

Re:What about Neutrality?

[uassholes]

I think this story is a plant. Note that the idiot uses "partner" as a verb in the past tense. Definitely from the marketing dept.

He also says "When you download videos from NBCOlympics.com, your computer isn't actually going to the Internet to get content."

I guess my computer is getting the bits via telepathy then.

"blah...center in 30 Rockefeller Plaza ("30 Rock") in New York City where the encoding to Windows Media Format (WMF) tak..blah blah"

He also forgot to mention NBC's altering reality:

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/09/2231231&from=rss

Re:What about Neutrality?

[nomadic]

How can this bode anything for net neutrality anyway?

In my opinion there's way too much boding going on. I mean, you can't turn around without something boding something else.

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Rakishi]

Yes let's ban any company from hosting from multiple colos. Who cares if they have operation in India, China, Europe, the US and South America. They get one colo or we round them all up and shoot them for getting preferential treatment to the poor bastards who can't afford to do that. Then we need to round up all the companies who are big enough to get multiple dedicates links to the internet. Then the ones who get to run their own colos and manage routing at a higher level.

There is a difference between "pay money or get worse treatment because we wish to make more money" and "pay money to bypass technological/physical restrictions."

Re:What about Neutrality?

[zippthorne]

Indeed. It's like there's some kind of Bode plot!

Re:What about Neutrality?

[Deadplant]

No, the ISPs are not extorting money from limelight.

Limelight went out and built their own high-capacity network and connected it to as many other networks as they could.
That is the Internet.
That is how it is supposed to work.

Why the Olympics Didn't Melt the Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the tubes are made of copper which is quite heat conductive.

Re:The next time someone uses the word

[thermian]

"cloud" in reference to the internet he will he recieve a digital kick in the balls.

Fuck "clouds" and "Web2.0".
(But fuck clouds more)

In a manner of speaking the entire Internet is a cloud of computers.

AAAARRGGHH!

[whimper]

Re:The next time someone uses the word

[Daimanta]

Imagine you're the guy in the green/white shirt and I'm the guy in the red shirt(lol).

Re:The next time someone uses the word

[Daimanta]

forgot linky, http://www.bongonews.com/StoryImages/kick_in_the_balls_2005-04-13.JPG

Re:A good old fashion slashdotting...

[X10]

NBCOlympics.com doesn't support linux for their videos. That's why the internet didn't melt: linux users can't watch.

Because Linux's banned?

[Ossifer]

I still don't know why web sites "support" video on specific browser/OS combinations -- why not just show us the format options and leave it up to us to deal with it?

Re:Because Linux's banned?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Because big companies can afford to provide support, or more accurately can't afford to lose customers because they don't know how to get it working.

However, their support department obviously can't be capable of dealing with every configuration out there, so they only officially support a small subset.

Re:Because Linux's banned?

[Dannybolabo]

Because Linux is a minority. You don't make money supporting a minority.

Re:Because Linux's banned?

[Ossifer]

Uh, that's why I wrote "support" in quotes -- the sites are effectively BLOCKING linux by not simply passing through their streams. They're trying to use some fancy auto-selection, which never works well on the "supported" platforms anyway. My linux box is well-configured to show just about any stream they could throw at me--if I could get at it. Instead I have to do some light hacking if I want to view it at all. (Starting with the user-agent string...)

Re:Because Linux's banned?

[dosun88888]

I do like how both other replies to you at this point in time have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Re:Because Linux's banned?

[petermgreen]

because for some reason they are paraniod about people ripping them despite the fact that the online streams are usually of lower quality than an analog recording made from the TV.

Re:A good old fashion slashdotting...

[Anonymous Coward]

LimeLight runs quite a lot of Linux internally.

Akamai "don't use public Internet" either

[anti-NAT]

I work for an ISP in Australia, we and a number of other local ISPs have local Akamai clusters. I haven't RTFA, mainly because if the summary isn't right, then the article probably isn't right either. It is mutually beneficial for content providers and ISPs to host content locally. For the content provider, they have more content distribution points, which is a selling point to use with their customers. For the ISP, it shifts typically fairly large amounts and "types" of traffic off of their Internet transit links, saving them money.

Re:Akamai "don't use public Internet" either

[rta]

Yeah TFA doesn't make much sense at all. It describes the basic concept of a CDN and somehow says LimeLight is special.

The whole point of ANY CDN is that it caches copies of the data in various locations that are close to the viewers. Whether the data gets to each cache location over the internet or whether it's distributed there via some private network is largely irrelevant.

As to peering relationships... Akamai (or any other CDN) is going to have peering relationships with ISPs (aka "eyeball networks" ).

If i had to guess, NBC probably used LimeLight for their video because their rates are considerably cheaper than Akamai (and they're probably willing to discount deeper to get the publicity, whereas akamai doesn't need it).

Further, the reason NBC used Akamai for their images and site chrome is likely because LL's performance dealing with small objects isn't as good. Most CDNs (including LL) are optimized for dealing out relatively large files (say > 250k) , like PDFs, flash files, ISOs and videos rather than the .js, .css and small images that make up most of a website.

Re:Akamai "don't use public Internet" either

[Rick Bentley]

Wait, what about peering relationships?

Wouldn't it be better for an ISP to accept all the inbound traffic from the host's ISP, again and again, rather than cache-it locally? My understanding of the relationship between ISP's is that the more data an ISP takes from another ISP the more data they can send back eventually.

Re:Akamai "don't use public Internet" either

[Lennie]

I didn't read the summary and read the article instead, I thought it might be interresting. Well not much. But I also think they aren't correct concerning Akamai. For starters, Akamai doesn't use the public internet. Well unless ofcourse they dont' have an agreement with your ISP.

Re:Akamai "don't use public Internet" either

[MeditationSensation]

I haven't RTFA, mainly because if the summary isn't right, then the article probably isn't right either.

You must be new here.

Re:Akamai "don't use public Internet" either

[rastoboy29]

I like your sig, but I think I get more deer-in-headlights looks with: "the internet IS a peer-to-peer file sharing program".

Mind you that's the _good_ kind of deer in headlights look.

Re:Akamai "don't use public Internet" either

[petermgreen]

On the other hand if you are receiving the data down a transit link where you pay for data in both directions I imagine you would be very interested in getting the data hosted locally.

I can tell you why in Australia...

[spoco2]

Because our esteemed broadcaster, Channel 7, decided that it wouldn't stream anything of note at all online live.... at all.

Rather than, oh, I don't know, streaming what was being shown on tv onto the web (with ads and all, hence just the damn same revenue possibility, only with more viewers), they decided to occasionally stream some match that no-one was actually interested in at all, while they showed the 'good stuff' on tv. Which sucked, because in Australia most of the good stuff is happening while we're at work.

Except, well, channel seven's coverage has been ABYSMAL.

They:
* Spend half their time showing recaps and highlights of stuff that's already happened instead of showing things that are ACTUALLY ON RIGHT NOW
* Spend a sizeable chunk of their time broadcasting Australian Rules Football matches instead of the Olympics! For god sakes! I'm sure the footy fans can live without a bloody live football match during the Olympics... show the games when the Olympics are not happening RIGHT NOW!
* Spend a huge amount of time advertising all the shows we don't want to watch on their channel that will be on after the olympics, including one horrendously insulting one where they show some Olympic gold moment, then a bit from one of their shows, then an olympic moment, then one of their shows, all the while with soaring music and a voice over being overly earnest. Trying to suggest that they are reaching for gold, and doing their personal best and trying to compare themselves to Olympic athelets when showing Australia's next Top Model is, frankly disgusting.
* Then when they do show anything live, they seem to like showing heats and almost entire matches of deciding games of hockey or the like rather than showing finals of things that are happening RIGHT NOW.

Urgh, the coverage of the games in Australia this year has been downright pathetic, and I hope Channel 7 gets a downturn rather than an upturn in their ratings to punish them for treating them with the utter contempt they have.

Re:I can tell you why in Australia...

[Chuck Chunder]

SBS has had coverage too, which has been good and relatively uninterrupted for some events.

I have been a bit lucky, my ISP has some IPTV channels so as well as Channel 7 and SBS I have had two Chinese channels of Olympics, an (English language) Indian channel and occasional coverage from other asian stations on there (and all not included in data caps too).

Re:I can tell you why in Australia...

[VoltageX]

Unfortunately they don't seem to be bleeding money. They deserve to be.

Re:I can tell you why in Australia...

[Areyoukiddingme]

The rest of the world knows about their incompetence too. One of the first Opening Ceremonies bittorrents was of channel 7 coverage. They managed to hose up their audio for over 20 minutes, so we were listening to technicians making occasional remarks to each other and not hearing their commentators at all.

The bittorrent video file was badly corrupted, to the point of crashing the player, but I guess I can't blame channel 7 for that.

Did anybody else check YouTube for Opening Ceremony footage only to find that NBC must have had an employee sitting there puking up a steady stream of DMCA takedown notices and Youtube must have had their own employees responding to DMCA notices in real time? Did anybody find Opening Ceremony footage on nbcolympics.com that night? I couldn't. I missed the first hour because I was at work. I don't have a Tivo or Tivo-alike. So how did I first see the artistic portion of the Opening Ceremony? Bittorrent of the Hong Kong tv station's coverage, in beautiful high quality, with commentary in Cantonese. NBC network logo nowhere to be seen.

NBC missed the boat on that one...

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[brouski]

NBC provided streaming video for only a small proportion of Internet-connected computers: Those running more expensive versions of Vista -- what proportion of all the desktop computers connected to the Internet is this?

This isn't the first time I've seen "Vista-only" referenced in this thread. Are we talking about streaming via a mechanism other than nbcolympics.com?

The true reason...

[fireman sam]

Most people can watch the Olympics on their TV. A lot of people are not interested in the Olympics.

Re:A good old fashion slashdotting...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

NBCOlympics.com doesn't support linux for their videos.

The Olympics, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[HappySmileMan]

The website said that it was Vista only, on the main page when I checked, even if the stream worked fine on every platform, a lot of people would have seen that and not bothered going any further

multicast is dead

[r00t]

Multicast was in trouble before.
Now it has opposition with money.

The proprietary and expensive solution wins again. :-(

Yep

[Sycraft-fu]

Not sure how big you have to be, but if you are of sufficient size, Akamai will approach you. They did to the university where I work. Their deal was simple: They cover all the costs, you put their computers in your datacentre. Basically the provide a number of cache engine computers and a switch to connect them to. You then mess with your routing so that traffic prefers those over their central site.

It's win-win. It costs you nothing other than some staff time, reduces your bandwidth usage (we knocked off an average of like 5mbps) and increases the speeds your users see. They of course also get the benefit of reduced bandwidth usage.

I'm sure they don't do it for every tiny ISP out there, but you you are of reasonable size (may be if you have your own ASN), expect Akamai to take notice and come offering cache engines.

Re:Yep

[Lennie]

I don't thienk there is a network that is big enough to have Lime Light or Akamai talk to them that doesn't have their own ASN. Also it's a lot easier if they location supports dynamic routing.

Re:Yep

[slim]

I attended an Akamai presentation a while back (some of my colleagues were reselling Akamai services). At the time, and I see no reason why it would change, they said each cache location deal was negotiated individually.

As you said, there are gains on both sides. Akamai gain performance for their customers by having a cache on the ISP's network. The ISP saves on traffic leaving their own network, and their customers see improved performance from Akamai-enabled sites.

Who wins most, depends on the network. Hence, in some cases, Akamai pay to have their server at your site. In other cases, no money changes hands. In some cases, the ISP actually pays Akamai.

LimeLight is probably no different.

So they....

[maz2331]

...just set up caching and some dedicated links to keep the traffic off of the "main backbone" links. That just sounds like someone actually hired a halfway decent network engineer.

If you want to distribute a lot of high-bandwidth content, then you need a lot of bandwidth.

Yawn.

A simple set of reasons

[Opportunist]

1. Olympics are already broadcasted almost 24/7 on TV.

2. Few people besides geeks have "real" internet media centers that allow streaming to their TVs, which are usually larger than their computer monitors (again, unless they're hopeless geeks).

3. Geeks MIGHT have a certain spot interest for martial arts or similar sports, but generally, I doubt that watching people sweat and moan is high on their priority. If at all, they get their dose of sweat-and-moan from other sources. Through the internet, granted, but I doubt there's anything olympic about it.

In short, the only ones that would probably use net streams rather than TV programs are also the ones that aren't interested in the content provided.

Re:A good old fashion slashdotting...

[Brett Johnson]

Neither could most Macintosh users. Silverlight 2 only supports intel-based Macs. It won't run on any of the 3 Macs or 2 PCs I have at home.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[VertigoAce]

I think you're referring to the Media Center content from TVTonic. This article is about the Silverlight streaming video on nbcolympics.com, which is viewable on any OS that Silverlight 2 is supported on (Win2k+, Mac OS 10.4.8+, and eventually Linux via Moonlight).

Re:I can tell you why in Australia... and...

[swordfishBob]

Prime relays 7 to regional areas. They have a few digital tv channels, all showing the same content. If ever there was a use for multiple channels or even multiple "views", this'd be it.
Have one channel show highlights as per analog tv, but allow other channels to stick with e.g. soccer, hockey, beach volleyball, whatever's on track/field.. Some people find only the team sports interesting, and the various races kind-of like watching progress bars. Keep the additional views going while putting the AFL on the main channel to satisfy that commitment.
So many opportunities left dangling.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[edalytical]

((Mac OS) - (All PowerPC Macs)) = (WTF?)

Who cares.

[pubwvj]

The internet didn't melt because the olympics just aren't that important or interesting.

Re:Who cares.

[cuby]

Of course note... and the estimated 4 billion who watched the inaugural ceremony think you should play less video games and make more exercise.

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_television_broadcasts#World

Re:Who cares.

[Neoprofin]

Really? Almost 2/3rds of the people in the world watched the opening ceremony? I appreciate that the Wikipedia article cites their source, but the article it quotes doesn't give any metric for their estimation.

I can't believe that between people who couldn't watch it, people who didn't want to watch it, and people who just didn't despite urge and ability, that 4 billion people still caught it.

Re:Who cares.

[cuby]

Yes I know, this ratings are always bloated, but the point I want to highlight is the global nature of the event. It is one of the few things in the world that are truly universal and common to almost every culture... That has to be important.

Net Neutrality

[nurb432]

In reverse.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[Brett Johnson]

Win2K is not supported. Neither are PowerPC-based Macs (the majority of the Macintosh installed base).

Comcast

[nurb432]

And yet, if i use the little bit of bandwidth they are so kind in giving me i get throttled.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[symbolset]

(.... and eventually Linux via Moonlight).

I think on the sad day that Moonlight for Linux is feature complete enough to watch the 2008 Beijing Olympics, that content will no longer be available. It will have vanished into the DRM vaults of the license holders and dribble out as expensively licensed clips and stills. Although copyrights are granted "for a limited time" this content will never become a part of the commons. By 2012 we'll know as much these games as we know about the 65th Olympiad in 520BCE. A shame, too, because if the content were made public after a few weeks it would immensely increase interest in the games, thereby exponentially increasing the value of live coverage. Instead MSNBC and the IOC will suffocate their golden goose rather than let the world see its eggs.

So, meh. Some guys went to some stinky chinese city and did some stuff I'll never see. When they were done they had created nothing durable nor useful. They had learned nothing. For all I care they might as well have been playing competitive Nintendo Wii. Along the way a great deal of money had been passed around, most of it advertising to promote "brand awareness" instead of anything concrete. The olympics have become a "so, what?" thing for me.

it didn't melt because..

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Timezones: The majority of content was encoded outside of the timezone for North America where the traffic was targeted so there was a huge opportunity to store and forward the content, in this case on limelight although it could have been handled by any of the major CDNs such as Akamai or Highwinds
2. I think there was a lot of last second optimizations done at the ISPs to make sure that fingers didn't point at them.

the original article was really speaking to the live streams which cannot be cached beyond a few seconds. Lets pull up the statistics.

http://nbcumv.com/release_detail.nbc/sports-20080814000000-olympicsontrackto.html

22 million streams served, 4 million of which were live streams, and additional 3 million stream served via the mobile platform and other VOD outlets.

Its going to break a lot of records. But i think that the original article and the OP here missed the point totally. If an event of this magnitude can go off with hardly a hitch, then why is it exactly that we need (the ISPs need) traffic shaping, bandwidth caps, and throttling? The ISPs among others have been saying for years that the internet is going to melt under the load of video, and using it as an excuse to add these technologies. The article on ZDnet asks the question.. is it really and we will find out in a few days (article was prior to the olympics). The real question remains that if 22 million videos at an average of 20 minutes per video and an average bitrate of 700kb weren't enough (3.5Million hours of content) in ADDITION to whatever people are doing everyday then 'why do we need traffic shaping and bandwidth management?'

Re:it didn't melt because..

[ShaunC]

If an event of this magnitude can go off with hardly a hitch, then why is it exactly that we need (the ISPs need) traffic shaping, bandwidth caps, and throttling?

Because this event, whatever the magnitude, was of precisely the downstream/"push" nature that the ISPs love. Their networks, cable in particular, are engineered in such a way that users can download orders of magnitude more than they upload, and things will work just fine; it's the uploading (p2p, etc) that scares them. It's all good when you're streaming video and surfing the web and checking your email, most of which involve very little upstream traffic.

Re:it didn't melt because..

[kabocox]

Its going to break a lot of records. But i think that the original article and the OP here missed the point totally. If an event of this magnitude can go off with hardly a hitch, then why is it exactly that we need (the ISPs need) traffic shaping, bandwidth caps, and throttling? The ISPs among others have been saying for years that the internet is going to melt under the load of video, and using it as an excuse to add these technologies. The article on ZDnet asks the question.. is it really and we will find out in a few days (article was prior to the olympics). The real question remains that if 22 million videos at an average of 20 minutes per video and an average bitrate of 700kb weren't enough (3.5Million hours of content) in ADDITION to whatever people are doing everyday then 'why do we need traffic shaping and bandwidth management?'

It was planned for and prepared alot by the major players to make it happen right. On I side note, I haven't really run into any Olympic videos, though I don't really care much one way or another. I think that the real test would be if say any half dozen cities throwing their version of a major event with say a handful of weeks notice to the local ISPs, then how will the "local" internet handle it. The difference between things like the SuperBowl and Olympics vs my local cities numerous little festival things or high school sports is that tons of planning goes into pulling the big league crap off right. If my local high school tried putting all their sporting/school events on youtube or something similar, they "might" be able to do or they could be trying to host it locally until the locals fry their server. Not to mention if their is anything slashdot worthy in the hypothetical site, then folks that would normally not even bother to look at the site would slashdot it.

Now, I think the net or youtube could handle my local highschool throwing their events up fine onto a youtube like site. Now the big will it take it will be can the net or youtube take everyone's local highschool or organization posting all their crap? Maybe. We will find out the hard way.

Re:actually...

[jtdennis]

sure, when you add the ?sort=gold it matches the other sites, however if you just go to http://stats.cbc.ca/olympics_medals.asp it sorts by total medal count by default, which is what NBC is doing.

Olympics not for those linux guys, anyway...

[MMC Monster]

Last I checked, the NBC website wouldn't work under linux, anyways. I never checked back and lost interest in watching it on TV 8 years ago.

The *ahem* mouse *ahem*

[Latinhypercube]

mouse, wacom, P5 game glove, wii finger tracking, free webcam multi finger tracking, haptic modeling devices etc...

Limelight has free peering then?

[skrpg.com]

If Limelight's servers are colocated/directlinked to the ISP, does this mean that Limelight charges others for bandwidth but doesn't have to pay for bandwidth themselves? ie: server->user, doesn't go through internet so no transit costs.

Re:Limelight has free peering then?

[_Shad0w_]

They'll be paying the ISP's for their dedicated links; I suspect they're essentially just standard transit agreements, albeit with most of the data staying inside the ISP's network.

Re:Limelight has free peering then?

[skrpg.com]

What about the previous posters who say Akamai and Limelight just approach ISPs offering free hardware (the computers) in exchange for free colocation?

Re:Limelight has free peering then?

[petermgreen]

Another poster higher up said that who pays who (if either) in akamai colocations is negotiated on a case by case basis. I would expect limelight to be similar.

I would imagine it is indeed pretty profitable for those content distribution network operators big enough to make it work. The catch of course is you have to be big to make it work.

Pushing a protocol...

[Gription]

Obviously MS has an in with msNBC but the choice to force the use of a relatively uncommon 'Flash wannabe' is close to Vista marketing tactics.

If given a choice any web designer would choose Flash or just go straight for wmv/mpg/avi. The only reason to choose an unadopted distribution method is because of the arrogance of the distributor.

Re:Pushing a protocol...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be honest, at this point, I'd rather have silverlight.

At least then I won't have to look forward to months of non-support for something as passe as 64 bit processors.

We all know that's never going to fly.

Ever since then, I've had nothing but utter disdain for Flash, whether from Macromedia or now at Adobe. When you're that stupid, you won't be getting a smidgen of respect until you earn it.

Re:Pushing a protocol...

[pcolaman]

Good point. Most people bash MS when a lot of times they do it for the same reason that Republicans bash Democrats and vice versa, just because they are. It would be nice to see MS get it to work on Linux and open it up, but then again it'd also be nice to see pigs fly and myself win the lotto. I won't hold my breath.

Re:Pushing a protocol...

[Tofystedeth]

You could choose to watch in Flash. It wasn't as fancy, but it was there.

The Real Reason Why There Was No Meltdown

[TheHawke]

We got capped in a godawful manner by our ISP's.

That's all.

Nothing else to see here, move along now.

I'd always thought that this was a solution

[goldcd]

to traffic problems like bittorrent. If the ISP created some sortof 'blind' caching service (bit like nntp) - then they would provide downloads to the end user faster as it's over their network (user happy) - and less packets are requested from off the ISP network (ISP happy).
To pull this analogy into the real world - the current situation is like a local library that has to order every book in from a central office. By stocking a small selection of popular books locally, your local library can easily satisfy the vasy majority of their clients - and still has the option of giving the minority access to everything they might possibly require.
In fact surely this would be a massive selling point for an ISP - surely not that hard to cache say 50% of the content your average customer downloads.

Re:I'd always thought that this was a solution

[petermgreen]

I think the reason ISPs don't get involved with trying to cache bittorrent is twofold

1: bittorrent is quite awkward to cache unless the client is cooperative. To do it effectively you would have to somehow seperate tracker http traffic from other http traffic and/or seperate tracker wire traffic from other TCP traffic.

2: bittorrent is mostly used for illegal traffic

Also in the UK there is the problem that for ISPs using BT wholesale ADSL (e.g. all but the biggest ISPs) most of the cost of bandwidth is on the BT side not the internet side.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[superphreak]

To download video requires Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate required because it uses Windows Media Center. To watch video requires Silverlight... which requires Windows.

The Reason: SilverLight

[bussdriver]

People refused to install more untrustworthy MS software.

I will not infect my system with MS SlitherLight.

Bad enough I have to use flash bloatware (its going to get worse.)

Furthermore, trying to get around windows media center requirements is not worth the time.

This has nothing to do with "trunk capacity"!

[dj42]

You don't seem to understand. The Internet data isn't carried by cars in the trunk. It is a series of tubes. It can only go so fast in the tubes, kind of like how the water in your sink won't come out any faster. Unless you install pumps on your tubes, but then it may pump faster than you can fill it!

Most of the world can't watch...

[Roger W Moore]

That's why the internet didn't melt: linux users can't watch.

Funny, but the real reason it didn't melt is because they refuse to stream video across international boundaries so most of the world cannot access it. Living in Canada my wife cannot access the NBC videos and I cannot access the BBC videos. Given the UK's fantastic performance so far this Olympics is it incredibly frustrating to have to read about it or to catch the odd event on CBC - who actually are very good at covering non-Canadian centric events but obviously don't give foreign medal wins top billing so they are hard to catch unless you watch them live.

Given that the Olympic ideal is bringing the world together perhaps they might like to extend that to web video coverage and allow all of us to watch our home countries athletes wherever we are in the world instead of going out of their way to implement technological barriers to obstruct this?

Re:Most of the world can't watch...

[Lachlan Hunt]

Funny, but the real reason it didn't melt is because they refuse to stream video across international boundaries so most of the world cannot access it...

I'm from Australia, currently living in Norway, and I definitely wanted to watch the Aussies and also be able to watch with English commentary, rather than Norwegian. So I bypassed those regional restrictions to stream video from both NBC and Yahoo7. It can be done with either a VPN or SSH tunnelling to a server in the USA (for NBC) or Australia (for Yahoo7).

If you have a server available to do it, SSH tunnelling is as simple as:

ssh -D 8080 -fN username@example.com

Then set your browser to use localhost:8080 as a SOCKS 5 host.

Otherwise, eurosport apparently has streaming available in Europe, but it costs a few dollars; and, if it works in your country, I'm told youtube.com/beijing2008 has some videos, but I'm not sure which countries that's available in (It doesn't seem to be available in either Australia, Norway or the USA)

Finally, as a last resort, you can try downloading events recorded from TV through either usenet, bittorrent or other P2P networks.

Re:Most of the world can't watch...

[laddiebuck]

You can find the BBC's coverage on several UK-centric torrent sites, fyi. It's a hassle, I know, but if you are a desperate expat, not unjustifiable.

Re:Most of the world can't watch...

[mgblst]

Agree, this system is a joke. I guess it only effects the small number of foreign nationals, but still bloody annoying.

Re:Most of the world can't watch...

[HoppQ]

For Europeans on MS Windows EBU's olympics pages would probably be the best source for net coverage (all televised events are shown live there, no commentary). Don't know how if it works outside Europe without trickery, or if it can be gotten to work outside Windows. (I haven't personally bothered to test it even IN Windows yet).

Re:Most of the world can't watch...

[old and new again]

in canada your wife could get 14 live feeds on the CBC website, you just didnt take any time to look around didnt you

Re:Most of the world can't watch...

[Roger W Moore]

Great so if we happen to be lying awake at 4am we can watch stuff live. However the recorded coverage of non-Canadian medal wins is not at all easy to find unless it is a big story (like Phelps or Bolt). That's completely fine and understandable but is EXTREMELY annoying given that what I want to watch is really easy to find on the BBC site.

Re:Most of the world can't watch...

[billn]

Disclaimer: I work for Limelight.

Limelight hat on -
The reason for this actually extends all the way to the Olympics committee and how they choose to license the broadcasting of events to each particular country. NBC does not have license to provide this content outside the US. That requirement propagates to every edge of their service offering. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality of it.

Limelight hat off -
Given the scope of NBC's offering, and how well it's all gone off, I would hope that what was done this year set's the bar for future events, and offers a new dimension to including the entire world. This event was a real kick in the pants to work on, and the ramifications it has for live content over the internet is staggering. Until Congress fucks up net neutrality.

Re:Sounds like it violated network neutrality

[mysidia]

If the link is a point-to-point link owned by limelight networks, then only their data is going through it.

It's not a special prioritized internet link: it's a dedicated telecommunications link that allows limelight to serve their content directly to the ISP then to their customers without them having to share other non-dedicated links used by non-limelight material.

This is an old trick...

[Newer Guy]

This is an old trick that we used when I worked for www.worldclassrock.com. Our audio streaming ISP did it back in 2000. It's called "edge streaming"-you establish relationships with ISPs all over and you distrubute your content directly to them via satellite. This way the content never goes out over the public Intenet-and it also minimizes the number of (packet dropping) routers it has to go through. If these guys try to patent what they did-we beat them to it by 8 years! Prior art applies here fellas!

Re:This is an old trick...

[petermgreen]

The satalite stuff seems a little pointless, surely it would be simpler and cheaper to just send one stream over the internet to each ISP.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sounds like multicast?

[Kludge]

Whatever happened to multicast? Their plan just sounds like a poor hack of multicast. NASA was multicasting their channel almost 10 years ago.

Re:Sounds like multicast?

[Deadplant]

Ya, but if we were using multicast then the entire thing would have been broadcast by a single rack of computers in China for a few grand.

This way a dozen different companies, each with their own geo-blocked market spent millions on farms of servers and megawatts of power.
Not to mention all the time and money spent trying to make it harder to watch using DRM.

Past Tense??

[kiwioddBall]

Last I heard the Olympics were still on! Still plenty of melting scope yet - the olympics don't start and stop with Phelps... There are other places other than USA...

Re:A good old fashion slashdotting...

[cashman73]

But, if you run linux with vmware/Windows XP, the streaming works fine. Just make sure you have enough RAM and you'll be ok. I've accessed the site from my work PC running Suse Linux 10.2, 2 GB RAM, nvidia graphics (512 mb) with vmware/XP running in a second monitor. I get the occasional hiccup, but I think that's mostly due to lack of RAM -- mostly, it runs fine.

Tell me again how that is NOT like Akamai ...

[mxs]

Akamai does the exact same thing. Limelight is nothing special. The technique is the same. Any CDN worth its salt will have boxes colocated with major ISPs -- the more, the better.

Furthermore, why didn't it melt the internet ? Oh, that's easy. The Olympics streamed a couple million streams, total. This, in the grand scheme of things, is a nice bit of engineering, but nothing special. YouTube does more traffic than the olympics did in a week, in a day. I don't know what the bigger Apple keynotes got, but I'm sure it's up in those heights, too. I have a vague idea how much BitTorrent traffic there is on the net, and it dwarfs the olympic traffic by several orders of magnitude.

The Slashdot story is a marketing piece for LLNW. They have a decent product, to be sure, but they didn't do anything revolutionary here.

Re:Tell me again how that is NOT like Akamai ...

[Deadplant]

Akamai does the exact same thing. Limelight is nothing special. The technique is the same. Any CDN worth its salt will have boxes colocated with major ISPs -- the more, the better.

I agree.
But just for clarity; the difference is that limelight operates a large fibre network feeding all of its caching servers.
Akamai only uses caches.

Re:Tell me again how that is NOT like Akamai ...

[mxs]

I would actually be rather surprised if LimeLight has direct fibre connectivity to ALL of its equipment, and likewise surprised if Akamai had no direct connectivity to any of them. At some point it's just cheaper to have your own fiber/crossconnects than to buy transit or be at the mercy of somebody else's capacity-planning -- and I'm sure they'll also have thought about how to guarantee inbound bandwidth so that possible streams do not get hindered.

Again, this is not to belittle LLNW or aggrandize Akamai. They both deliver decent products, and have huge overlap in their offerings -- and techniques.

Silverlight DRM

[cashman73]

When I installed it, I noticed that there was DRM technology in it. Did anybody else catch that? I'm not sure if NBC is using it for the olympics, but most likely they are.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[VertigoAce]

I don't have a Win2k machine to test this on, but according to the Silverlight site, Win2k supports Silverlight 2.0 with IE 6 (no Firefox support, and IE 7 isn't supported on Win2k). Silverlight 1.0 was not supported on Win2k, so that might be what you're referring to (the NBC site was using 2.0).

I imagine that PowerPC is unsupported because the Silverlight team didn't want to invest in creating the just-in-time .Net compiler for PowerPC. And while PowerPC Macs may well have a majority, they are a declining percentage of the installed base. In other words, it would have been a large investment to support a relatively small and shrinking market.

PPC Macs down to about 25%

[benwaggoner]

Actually, the most recent numbers I've seen is PowerPC Mac are down to about 25% of the Mac share of internet use. There may be a bunch out there, but they're being used a lot less than the Intel models, which would be no surprise. Flash can't even play 320x240 video well on the 1.33 GHz G4 I'm typing this on.

Re:PPC Macs down to about 25%

[Ash-Fox]

Actually, the most recent numbers I've seen is PowerPC Mac are down to about 25% of the Mac share of internet use.

Source?

Re:PPC Macs down to about 25%

[benwaggoner]

This was directly from a couple big consumer web sites. I haven't seen published numbers for this, but I'm sure there must be other web sites that track it.

But I was certainly surprised how quickly PPC has dropped as market share.

Re:PPC Macs down to about 25%

[Ash-Fox]

This was directly from a couple big consumer web sites. I haven't seen published numbers for this, but I'm sure there must be other web sites that track it.

The reason why I asked for sources is because I've never seen the Apple platform that large on any large scale statistics tracking systems. Then again, I don't deal with strictly US content and I hear Apple is far more popular there.

Re:PPC Macs down to about 25%

[benwaggoner]

Ah, sorry. I didn't phrase that well.

I meant that PPC is down to 25% off all Macs. Total Mac use for the site was about 4%, and PPC was 1% of them.

Re:PPC Macs down to about 25%

[Ash-Fox]

Ah, sorry. I didn't phrase that well.

I meant that PPC is down to 25% off all Macs. Total Mac use for the site was about 4%, and PPC was 1% of them.

Ah! That sounds more like the statistics I'm used to seeing :)

Microsoft is why I didn't watch

[Beau6183]

Vista-only streams and Silverlight-only clips... no thanks. I am running Vista on one computer, but I refuse to install yet another web-content plugin just because M$ wants to dirty the waters. I understand NBC is partnered with Microsoft, but NBC's sell out to exclusive software is still astounding, considering the subject at hand.

There was olympics on the internets?

[Snaller]

Nobody tells me anything!

(What's olympics?)

Surgeon General's obituary

[Flexagon]

... SilverLight...

Yes. On my Mac, I got the friendly, red "Thanks for choosing NBC Direct!" message, then the slap-in-the-face black-outlined Surgeon General's warning box "Sorry, NBC Direct currently requires Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or Windows Media Center Edition or Windows Vista.". No thanks.

Re:I can tell you why in Australia... and...

[spoco2]

The multiple channel thing isn't their fault actually, it's a restriction enforced by the government, they're not allowed to multicast SD channels until... erm... next year or something. It was something to do with the Foxtel deal I think.

But yeah, I long for the day when whoever is showing the olympics gives us multiple channels to pick what we want to watch.

*sigh*

ZDnet parrots a press release and it's front page?

[rustman]

I"m sorry, but this is a puff piece about Limelight and nothing more. Limelight and Akamai are both "edge servers", Akamai has been putting cache boxes into ISPs for a long time. So Limelight put stream proxies into DSL providers head ends, it's not brain surgery; it's just making a business deal.

Worst Analogy Ever

[Icarium]

You can increase the water flow by increasing water pressure. The reverse is true for them intarnet tubes.

Re:The next time someone uses the word

[egnop]

"cloud" in reference to the internet he will he recieve a digital kick in the balls.

Fuck "clouds" and "Web2.0".
(But fuck clouds more)

(Butt fuck clouds more)

So there, corrected it for you

I thought it was peer-to-peer

[hany]

"The short answer is Limelight Networks of Tempe, Arizona."

At first I read it as "The short answer is Limewire blah blah". And I've though: "yes, as usual, peer-to-peer, maybe even that "destroying *IAA profits" one. Maybe sad but quite logical - people wants control themselves so if peer-to-peer is the answer ...

Then I reread the summary and realized I got it wrong: Limelight, not Limewire.

But after thinking some more I came back: Yes, maybe this "dedicated private network optimized for this kind of delivery" did save some problems with Internet connectivity by making shortcuts around the Internet itself but at the end I think another big contributors which helped to avoid "the meltdown" are:

1. stupid (from the viewer point of view) streaming restrictions put in place by whoever is managing "streaming right", then ...
2. sometimes stupid implementation of the streaming itself (ridiculous software requirements, ...), which combined with [1] leads to ...
3. usage of peer-to-peer networks (so that viewers can get what they want in format they like at a time they almost like with transmission maybe not that efficient as multicasting but still better than unicasting)

Re:I thought it

[datan]

who knows what else

the children marching with the flag supposedly from the 56 different ethnic groups...

Paid for by LimeLight

[nitelord]

This article was obviously written by LimeLight. Speaking from personal experience their setup is inferior to Akamai. Even sites such as MySpace have dumped LimeLight in favor of Akamai.. An article about how caching helped the internet from melting would have been cool - but this thing goes overboard and is a blatent advertisement for Limelight and bashing of other companies which have a better product. I would hope Slashdot could do better and weed out this crap.

Because ...

[Jaggo]

Nobody cares about the Olympics?

PPC market share below 50% of Macs last year

[benwaggoner]

Actually, Net Applications shows PPC dropped below half of Mac users nearly a year ago. Some big consumer sites I've talked to recently say PPC is now around 25% of Macs hitting their servers, and dropping quickly.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/05/intel-macs-overtake-ppc-macs-in-october

Also, Silverlight 2 is supported on Windows 2000, it's the NBCOlympics.com web site that doesn't support it.

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx?v=2.0#sysreq

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[benwaggoner]

The website said that it was Vista only, on the main page when I checked

Really? Which web site? This is the page you go to if you click for more Silverlight information in the install dialog: http://www.nbcolympics.com/silverlight/index.html

It clearly lists out XP and Mac OS X.

Re:You are *really* pushing the wrong subject here

[Tofystedeth]

I posted it another place, but the video was available via Flash as well. No one was being forced.

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[benwaggoner]

NBC has said that the Olympics content will be availble through the end of the year.

The Moonlight guys are looking for help if you want it to work by that deadline!

http://alexzambelli.com/blog/2008/08/16/moonlight-20-help-wanted/

Re:NBC only provided streams to a small % of US PC

[benwaggoner]

Found it!

Intel Macs have made up the majority of the Mac internet user base since nearly a year ago.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/11/05/intel-macs-overtake-ppc-macs-in-october

Why I am negative about Silverlight:

[Tiro]

Silverlight is being used on these video sites to allow you to stream WMV-encoded video with Digital Rights Management (it also has Flash-like features)

Given a certain bitrate, you can get streaming video of the same quality as WMV with more open video formats (like H.264, a variant of MPEG-4 video that Apple is pushing. You can debate how open H.264 but it's an improvement.)

Microsoft wants everyone to download Silverlight so they can force consumers to use their stupid DRM system. Then they plan to use that market position to make a lot of money from paranoid network execs. I don't know how close the NBC-MSFT relationship is (anyone remember MS-NBC? admittedly that relationship crumbled) but I would not be surprised to see Hulu.com go Silverlight only in the next couple of years.

I really think the DNC shouldn't have gone with a DRM platform. We know their voter base supports DRM. Consumers always get screwed over with DRM. The harm to consumers will become apparent when Silverlight gets more widespread adoption. Already you can't watch these events if you aren't on one of the two 'approved' platforms. Of course the cynics will say that the real DNC 'base' is the content industry and corporate America. There's probably some truth in that. Regardless they should want people to use open platforms, because there's no reason to block people from recording or disseminating captured video of their politicians' speeches online.

The Olympics made Silverlight look like a miracle product. In reality it is nothing special. It's a lot easier to scale live video dissemination than video on demand (and the Olympics happened to be the first exposure to Silverlight and the first use of online live video most of my friends have experienced). The great video performance came simply because NBC's contractors used new approaches to stream high-bandwidth video streams in a more scaleable way (quotation from /. on 15 August):
"Limelight has partnered with over 800 broadband Internet providers worldwide... so that the content is either co-located in the same facility as your ISP's main communications infrastructure, or it leases a dedicated Optical Carrier line so that it actually appears as part of your ISP's internal network. In most cases, you're never even leaving your Tier 1 provider to get the video."