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Netflix Dominates North American Internet
nairnr writes "Accounting for 29.7% of all information downloaded during peak usage hours by North American broadband-connected households in March, Netflix Inc. received the title in the latest Global Internet Phenomena Report released by Sandvine Corp. on Tuesday.
In its ninth such report, Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine found the amount of data consumed by users streaming television shows and movies from Netflix's online service exceeded even that of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology BitTorrent."
Since Netflix uses almost 30% of the whole North American traffic during peak hours, they should really improve their technology. Most of the traffic is in peak hours. Instead of sending individual streams over the internet to every customer, they could develop some kind of protocol which could be used to broadcast all the streams to everyone at the same time. To make sure they don't clog the existing internet lines, they should lay down their own lines. Then they have full control over the infrastructure too. Broadcasting so many different streams probably doesn't work, so Netflix could instead start showing specific programs at certain times and people would tune in at those times to watch their favorite shows. For example once a week Netflix would show episode of every tv show and maybe movies at certain times and days. Since they own the infrastructure too, Netflix could stop worrying about all the different devices and just sell a product you put in your living room and use it to watch Netflix.
If you build it, they will pay.
(Screaming is for the media conglomerates)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
We must punish these freeloading thieves! They're stealing our bandwidth!
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Gee, they actually made it MORE convenient and people are willing to pay for it. Compare this to what the movie/tv studios do on a regular basis. They make it harder to get the content and people tend to find alternative sources.
See my blog at Who's Who
That went right over your head, huh?
What I don't understand is why Netflix doesn't go to a BitTorrent style P2P swarm type streaming. This would so much get them around how the cable companies are trying to screw them over for doing nothing more than providing programming that I want over a pipe THAT I PAID FOR.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Think what that percentage would be if they supported Linux, too.
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-traffic-surges-after-limewire-shutdown-110517/ not according to that.
J.
U.S. Internet
Yours In Krasnoyarsk,
Kilgore Trout
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With net throttling and pressure by cable and other internet providers for NO net neutrality (and the beginnings already of quotas), Netflix is doomed. And that's (part) of the point. The providers (Comcast, AT&T, etc) want to provide their own movie streaming services but with the big gorilla in the room, that would be Netflix, they see a problem. Thus they are already setting up tiers, throttling, pricing schedules, quotas, all to murder outside competitors for the services they want to (over) charge captive customers for.
The real Netflix fix, instead of streaming the movie within the tight constraints and impaired quality necessary to prevent buffering, would be for me to order up the movie I wanted that morning like I order up DVD's from them, have them remove a previous movie to make room for the new one, and then d/l it over the day. By the time I'm home in the evening, even a slow DSL line could have a true DVD-level copy available for watching without interruption. The next morning I order another movie or two and the old ones are deleted as part of the new ones arriving. Seriously, this would be such an improvement over the existing system and the expense of mailing much better quality DVDs could go away entirely.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is good. It means they can no longer say, "Bittorrent is saturating our lines! We need Congress to ban these pirates." Now the blame is falling on LEGAL watching, and there's no way they can get Congress to ban legal usage of videos.
So instead they are implementing 150 GB caps. :-|
Bastards.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
From TFA:
“Netflix has surpassed file sharing and BitTorrent, but BitTorrent hasn’t really declined,” explained Tom Donnelly, co-founder and executive vice president of network technology maker Sandvine.
In other news, ISPs plan to invest heavily in DPI gear and slow the Internet even further as it becomes readily apparent that they are losing the fight for online video delivery. Netflix and P2P combined dwarf other content sources -- I wonder why? Is it the lack of obnoxious advertising? The mysterious paucity of older episodes on places like Hulu in order to encourage DVD sales? The ability to view content on demand? A corporate board not consisting entirely of old men who screech that capital investment is a terrible thing to do to your bottom line if you want to see year-on-year growth?
Being 30% of the traffic merely tells me there is a market there waiting for more competitors. What I am curious about is whose lines are they saturating if any? Is there usage becoming a burden on some and if so who are those weaker players?
What your asking for has already been done, they are cable companies. Next thing down the road we would see people screaming that NetFlix should share all those lines they put down and such and such.
While I agree they probably need to work on making content delivery more efficient we don't have those numbers in the article. Is there caching going on? How many sites are providing the data?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
As a snail mail Netflix user, I'll point this out: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a fleet of federally owned Grumman LLVs driving down residential streets and laden with DVDs.
Simultaneously add the user to the most recent multicast group for that movie.
That'll become possible once it becomes possible to set up and tear down multicast groups over the public Internet.
Such an approach would dramatically reduce the traffic overhead
Exactly how dramatic would it be? Are most people watching the same film, or are people watching different films in the long tail?
Isn't Sandvine one of the companies that sells IP monitoring, DPI, and throttling products? I'd take anything they say with an ocean of salt.
OMG, what's wrong with the world?
Add to that: It would result in more total data going across the ISP's network.
Unless the peer selection prefers nodes that are faster to you and/or share a longer IP address prefix. BitTyrant incorporates techniques like these, which end up choosing more efficient routes to spread pieces within an ISP as opposed to between ISPs. So the edge gets more data going across it, but the upstream doesn't.
... start noticing and thus upgrading INFRASTRUCTURE, and not so it can handle today's usage (which they already can't handle) but TOMORROW'S use.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I will pay more for what I actually want. Its when there is no choice and it is never what I want that I have an issue. Dropped from 8MB cable that is over-saturated to 3MB DSL that is only a little over-saturated. $20 savings, but I would gladly pay the cable price for the DSL if it was always ideal.
The Netflix business model is proving that a payed-for distributed content is 'working' and successful model! Hats off for Netflix's ability to be innovative with client pull-on-demand content that is shifting TV and online media at its core. The mere $9 a month I pay (and that's ALL I pay for TV since I cancelled my cable) is a drop in the bucket to what I would pay if I could get more content.
What MPAA has to learn is that consumers like a business model where actually 'owning' DVD's is not a choice that most want. I've been also saying that Blu-ray is dead (long live blu-ray) ever since it came out. I really don't care to own a plastic disc with a movie burned on it when I can fire up my laptop or PC or Playstation or Wii and watch any move I want, anywhere I have an internet connection. Heck, my P2P downloading of movies and shows has fallen drastically since I subscribed to Netflix. Would I pay to have access to even more content - YOU BETCHA! Would I stop downloading if I could pay monthly fees to have access to quality Disney, Paramount, Sony, et al studio movies and TV shows? YES!!!!
If I, a lone consumer, can figure this out, why can't they? I just want access - irregardless how I get it. If I can pay for it, brilliant! If I have to pirate it to get access, so bit it. But it's their loss, not mine if I'm forced to be a criminal because the studios can get their heads out of there legal asses and figure out their market and customers are screaming to have access to their content.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Love it how the Silverlight haters say "show me one implementation of silverlight", well there you go.
I am still disappointed by the lack of HD films. At least give us 720p with 5.1 ... :/
Time for the movie studios to just STFU and accept reality. But they still want to go down tooth & nail while clinging to their concepts of copyrights, licensing, and royalties...
I remember in the early 2000s going,"If only someone could stream movies and television shows legally, they'd dominate." I told a couple people and a Comcast rep told me that they're rolling out,"On Demand" which as it turns out is moderately effective. I could never get the business model right to figure out how to legally stream movies without the movie makers going,"You can't stream out copies of our work at all." I even thought,"As long as I have one copy of their product per stream, that could be ok, right?" I never thought,"Open up a mail order delivery system, then transition into streaming later." That was the key to get to where they are now.
God spoke to me.
Making content delivery 'more efficient'? WTF?
Do you know anything about VIDEO and AUDIO? ITS BIG DATA. And in 2012 it will be bigger, and in 2013 it will be bigger... Because people will be wanting 720 and 1080p. Better compression algorithms will only go so far so as to slow down the expansion of demand for that data.
Everyone on slashdot actually knows the truth, which is that our network providers need to be upgrading infrastructure AHEAD OF TIME. They are already behind current times with so much oversaturation, throttling, and capping to attempt to compensate.
WHY NOT JUST DO THE HONEST THING. UPGRADE INFRASTRUCTURE, PASS THE BUCK TO CONSUMER. THAT'S HOW HONEST BUSINESS IS DONE, AND LAST YEAR AT&T STATED THEY COULD DOUBLE INFRASTRUCTURE BANDWIDTH AT A COST OF $6/line. ( I'd urge less profits to upper exectives to afford it, but everyone knows that CEOs run America and its doey-eyed sheep that can't even spell anymore, let alone stop buying from walmart.)
Oh wait.... maybe they can get google to co-opt the upgrade by putting out an ad-sponsored version of internet connectivity! YAY! We can do it the new-american way!
*BARF*.
Am I the only person left that would gladly pay MORE for something BETTER? Must it all be chinese crap of poor design and quality assurance? How many appliances must we throw in the dump, and how many evenings must we sit through lag, for people to realize that cheap-ass business gets you cheap ass product!
So people would pay for premium content if it is served up fast enough and at a decent price and available to play on there computers or set top boxes (xbox/ps3/wii) rather than pirate it? Gotta find a new job FFFFFFFFFFFF!
- MPAA Lawyer
How much data is being pushed over Cable TV broadcasts and On-Demand programming?
I bet that completely dwarfs the amount that Netflix pushes.
If I were Comcast, I would buy Netflix out quick, assuming the new FCC allows it after being lobbied by the old FCC chairman.
So 30% of all Internet traffic is DRMd video, and is beating non-DRMd, free-as-in-beer video.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Gee, they actually made it MORE convenient and people are willing to pay for it. Compare this to what the movie/tv studios do on a regular basis. They make it harder to get the content and people tend to find alternative sources.
Hello!
The studios are the providers - Netflix is one of their licensed distributors.
Better still, the Netflix "app" is on the HDTV, video game console and set top box. The PC is sidelined and with it the BT client.
Now go to congress and explain, why letting Comcast buy NBC rather than upgrade their network for the bandwidth we should have for such services, is a bad idea for every one, including Comcast.
I work at home and have stopped using my home office in favor of the couch -- while streaming from Netflix all day long. Reruns of X-Files, Dr. Who and Twilight Zone are dominating this week. I don't watch many movies during working hours, but TV shows don't require any real attention, so I can watch while working and not be distracted.
Flash Player Video does this already, as of flash 10.1
Oh wait, everyone hates flash here. I forgot.
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So wait, you give consumers what they want for a reasonable price, and they'll pay for it? Who would have thought! One can hope they'll learn from this, but somehow I suspect not :P.
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Awwkwarrd, someone doesn't understand sarcasm...
Am I the only person left that would gladly pay MORE for something BETTER?
You're absolutely right. The problem is that we do pay more for something that isn't better. The classic example is to look at Southeast Asian bandwidth/$ rates and compare them to ours. And while I'm aware of the inconsistencies in terrain, culture and government I guess I'm just still a sucker for the bs Nationalist crap that says, "if they can do it so can we - and better."
It's that kind of ego that could really push innovation in this field but alas, I don't think that guys like you and I are all that common. I'd pay more for better to be better, but that's really just one part of a much, much larger equation.
What your asking for has already been done, they are cable companies.
WHOOSH!
people don't actually have an issue with paying to access content and will do so even though they can download the same stuff for free on bittorrent.
How the content industry let netflix take that market that was open for them to grab and how the music industry managed to let a niche computer company take over a similar music market that was open for them to grab I will never know.
Well actually of course I will know, too busy clinging to the distribution model they already had.
Google (via YouTube) and Facebook are way ahead of you on figuring that one out.
Incidentally, the last I heard before this, Netflix had something like 26.9% of prime time traffic (and were #1) with YouTube and Facebook distant #2 and #3 (at 19% and 17% I believe), so the only news here is their % went up ~3% (I made a post on that about a month ago).
Read it out-loud in your UT announcer voice and it's even more awesome...
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
ISPs won't cut into their revenue and spend money on infrastructure without external pressure. It's obvious Internet speed and availability in the US is lagging behind other, more developed, countries. Maybe the great swathes of Netflix users can make enough of a stink to their elected officials that the gov't has to start mandating infrastructure improvements? I think the odds are slim, ISPs have more power in DC than the people do. Either way, it'll be an interesting ride.
they actually had new releases of popular movies as well as recent seasons of popular TV shows. Sorry, but I'm not feeling nostalgic enough to watch the shitty movies and tv shows I grew up with. A few of them, fine, but the vast majority of stuff Netflix streams is utter garbage. Their network would fail miserably if they streamed more popular content.
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You just have to give value for money. Music industry: it's pretty obvious why people either only buy singles or pirate whole albums.
Netflix lets me watch something once that I don't want to pay to own permanently, and I can watch up to 720 hours of movies/TV (i.e. leave it on constantly) a month for 10 bucks. Beats the hell out of pay-per-view as well, of course.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
In all seriousness, there is this thing called Multicast.. that works for both IPv4 and IPv6...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
...I was on vacation the first week in May, and I didn't do JACK except watch two entire seasons of The Office and a few dozen movies. It really was amazing how much Netflix I watched. I almost need another vacation from how much work I did with the remote control in one hand and fattening food in the other.
Though not very well for IPv4. A better solution might be some sort of caching network, with a system of distributed nodes ran by the ISPs. Something like how usenet works, but more modern. A problem though: In order to be successful, it'd have to be open to all to submit data. Netflix, linux distros, your new video of your cat jumping at a door handle. But that would also make it the perfect tool for piracy. It isn't the eighties any more - ISPs arn't going to lend their support to something like that. They'd insist on only allowing content from approved, cryto-signed companies, which further turns the web into a tool used by the rich to get richer while making sure small startups can't compete.
Technologically doable, politically undesireable.
Before I got my Apple TV which I use almost 100% for NetFlix my monthly home use was about 6GB. Now it is about 30GB.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
In all seriousness, there is this thing called Multicast.. that works for both IPv4 and IPv6...
Wait, you used multicast and serious in the same sentence? ;) It's way, WAY far from anything practical over the Internet in general.
Plus, it's not very useful for video-on-demand apps, since so few people will be simultaneously streaming from the same position in the same content. It could be used for live video broadcast, but as has been pointed out there are a few implementations of that already, and the cable/sat/DSL companies have little interest in changing their model at present (or enabling multicast on their IP networks to let someone else use that model)...
that this isn't due to Netflix having a great business model, but is due to the wonderful success of the "sue every p2p downloader we can find" campaign.
It's all perspective.
Unfortunately for us, many 'internet providers' are part of large conglomerates that also provide content and are part of the skewed perspective.
As much as I love the ideology of Netflix, I fear it's fight just may not prevail.
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Making content delivery 'more efficient'? WTF?
Do you know anything about VIDEO and AUDIO? ITS BIG DATA. And in 2012 it will be bigger, and in 2013 it will be bigger...
I wouldn't worry so much about that 2013 problem.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
I hope you're joking, but if not, I have a joke for you.
Dude1: what is two thousand twelve???
Dude2: a doomsday? The end?
Dude1: no, it is two thousand, plus twelve.
you SHOULD pay MORE to SLASHDOT for EXCESSIVE and RANDOM use of CAPS.
I can't help imagining the random-capitalizers as either banging the table, shouting, or e-nun-ci-a-ting IRL... makes me smile. Actually, everyone has probably already tagged them as sententious bores, so they only have the internets left for their preaching.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I was, sir. I was.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Whew... I was about to start hoping you don't vote.
Vote onward, citizen.
Subject says it all, Silverlight has no vsync on Windows XP, only on Vista and later and even then not on all hardware. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Seriously tired of tearing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In my case, it is used for EMPHASIS. This is to attract the eye to spend more time on the word that is capitalized, and thus ensuring clearer and more specific understanding. When a whole line is capitalized, it means the whole line, in its entirety, is emphasized and should be more seriously read and understood as well.
I'm laughing at you for 1) not knowing this, or 2) being bothered by the difference in how a letter appears on a screen.
I could use asterisks, or italics, or colors, or font size. Using caps is the easiest way, and as you unknowingly have witnessed, is also the most common way to achieve this purpose.
Run Windows in a VM
nope, sorry, didn't read your post ^^
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
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This particular aspect of the cable industry does tie in with this story. The idea is, is that people wonder why I have to pay for any Mickey Mouse channel(Disney, ESPN, etc etc) when I don't have kids or kids young enough for Disney and I dont like sports much. The cable company will tell you that the distributors like Disney will not agree to separate their programming and if the cable companies were to try then they(Disney) would not do business with them at all. I think Comcast tried to do this - that is they tried to move ESPN to a higher tier cable package but of course they were cowards and gave in to ESPN. We all know ESPN loves subsidies from people that don't want to watch. People are paying for channels from every spectrum of television shows that they do no watch.
Please don't compare this to people paying taxes on interstates and local roadways that they never use. Having extra cable channels has no chance whatsoever in helping and maintaining the overall community in which you live.
To finalize my point - I would like it where people could pay monthly, quarterly or yearly packages for a set of channels that they want to watch. Comcast would just focus on delivering the content. This is cable only mind you. I dont think cable companies should also be ISP's but in this case they should be forced to separate those businesses as to not share conflicting interests. I know that ESPN and their "smaller" channels that are bundled with them will both complain and say something like, "Well if we have total a la carte programming then we(the smaller channels) would not survive". My response is, "How in the HELL is that my problem?" If you want to advertise your upcoming channel so that people will buy it then figure out a way to market it how you see fit. But don't cry to me about how your channel won't survive.
thoughts?
Because many of the Internet Service Provider companies also have video (TV) offerings. They see Internet Video (e.g. Netflix) as a threat. After all, why should you pay $60 a month for cable TV plus extra for Showtime, HBO and a dozen other premium channels when Netflix can deliver a better good for much less money? So they *could* improve their infrastructure, but then they risk losing on their video revenues. Instead, they cry about full pipes and put caps on customers with overage charges. Then they sit back, say "Let's see how much of a deal Netflix is now when you rack up $50 a month in overage fees!" and laugh.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The key factor for this piece of news to me is that Bittorrent is using less bandwidth than Netflix. Does this prove that being allowed to watch tv on the computer swayed people from downloading "illegally", or is this just a coincidence? I think it is likely a coincidence since Netflix has been expanding customers and increasing their titles for "Watch Instantly". But I would be very curious to know of the affect Netflix has on swaying people who were just really looking for a way to watch tv online and were willing to pay for it.
I hope you're joking, but if not, I have a joke for you.
Dude1: what is two thousand twelve??? Dude2: a doomsday? The end? Dude1: no, it is two thousand, plus twelve.
You seem to have omitted the joke.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In my case, it is used for EMPHASIS.
Using all capital letters is generally considered to be the equivalent of shouting on the internet, a lot of people will ignore any post that looks like yours above, as it suggests that the poster is being rude for no good reason, and/or thinks the Time Cube Guy is a model of wit and elegance..
Is it really that difficult to use bold for emphasis?.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The studios are the providers - Netflix is one of their licensed distributors.
This is certainly true now that Netflix is big into streaming, but I'm not sure that it was true when they were only doing mail delivery. I don't know Netflix history that well, but I do know that Redbox ran into a lot of opposition from studios precisely because they did not have licensing agreements - they would purchase DVDs off the shelf and stick them in vending machines. Under US copyright law, that is allowed (contrast with CDs or software, where it is not allowed). I would bet Netflix did not have licensing agreements with studios when it was just doing mail order delivery.
Probably the only reason the studios were willing to strike streaming license agreements with Netflix was because of its prior success with mail order delivery - they weren't getting as big a chunk of that cash as they wanted, and knew they couldn't ignore Netflix anymore.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Time to start thinking about a BitTorrent type of approach. Pushing large volumes of data from central servers is not sustainable.
You could use a windowing system so that everyone who requested stream X in, oh, let's say a 5 second period gets on the same multicast. But without Netflix's records of how many people started what at what times, I can't really say whether that would be a worthwhile change.
If the same shows are being constantly streamed over the ISP's network, it might make sense for the large ISPs to strike a deal with Netflix to cache their data within the ISP's network and avoid the need for upstream traffic.
There are so many more reasons why the complexity doesn't justify potential advantages, though...
Since multicast is UDP, it's not reliable like HTTP streaming, meaning yet another layer would have to be built on it allowing efficient retransmission to any client(s) that missed a packet (there are some really rough experiments with this but they are even farther away from practicality than multicast itself).
Also, many (most?) people pause, rewind, or fast forward at some time during playback of a streaming movie, so you'd have to constantly be searching for and joining new multicasts.
And, of course, multicast would not take advantage of the huge existing infrastructure of CDNs and HTTP proxies/caches, etc that are currently usable with HTTP streaming.
Not to mention most decent streaming these days supports dynamic bitrate switching, meaning any client can seamlessly switch bitrates depending on their current bandwidth. This is easy to do with HTTP and range requests, etc, but I'd imagine yet another nightmare of complexity and inefficiency with multicast...
Oh, and, of course, IP streaming of most movies (from a "licensing" point of view) is only possible because these streams are encrypted and protected with a variety of DRM solutions, some of which rely on HTTP/HTTPS/SSL, etc, which would take major changes to work with multicast.
I could go on, but you get the idea... those are a few of the issues involved. :)
Anyway, it's theoretically possible (though not realistic, given the current cable/telco monopolies over the last mile) that multicast with some sort of forward error correction (same method used by broadcast transport stream) could be admopted for live broadcasts. But VOD is a completely different animal...
Your kids, especially your 2-year-old, don't need to be watching the same shows over and over again. They are very young. They need to be doing activities (note that the word is based on "active"), not sitting in front of a screen. Sheesh, if you insist on using the Automatic Babysitter, at least make them watch a variety of stuff. You are likely stunting their development and teaching very bad habits. Learn to say "no" to your children and teach them how to accept "no"--eventually they will learn to say "no" to themselves and develop into mature adults who can delay gratification and manage things (like money) responsibly.
I've been online since BBS days and caps is more for emphasis than shouting, but if one must receive it as 'shouting' maybe one ought read it anyway and turn down their personal perception of the 'shouting' part of it so as to still receive the message.... Or be whiny about the difference between capital and lower case letters, lol.
The future looks bleak since the bandwidth requirements will always increase and there is no hope of any ISP coping with that demand. With ever increasing media file sizes aimed at better resolution the need of the hour is an improvement in compression technology which has remained stagnant for decades. Sensing this www.chazzstudios.com is developing a new set of media compression technologies which will level the field.