Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
Think what that percentage would be if they supported Linux, too.
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."
There are probably more people whose ISPs throttle or otherwise disrupt BitTorrent traffic than there are people whose ISPs throttle Netflix traffic.
Add to that: It would result in more total data going across the ISP's network. It would make it more complicated to alter the stream quality based on your network performance. BitTorrent isn't really very-well suited to streaming, particularly when people are accessing the movies at different times. Since people are accessing movies at different times, it would more or less require that large parts of the movie be stored, at least for a while, on the end user's computer. That means their Web client, game console client, and other embedded-device clients (smartphone, TV) wouldn't participate in the BitTorrent streaming. It also means that they'd need stronger DRM and probably still would run afoul with the movie industry. The only real benefit, besides potentially saving Netflix some bandwidth, is that it would be slightly harder to attribute the traffic to "Netflix streaming movie" and would instead attribute it as "BitTorrent". (Bothering to do DPI would make it relatively easy to determine that the traffic was, in fact, Netflix.)
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?
+1 to this.
Give people what they want at a price they're willing to pay. Everything is worth exactly what it's purchaser is willing to pay - and no more.
The media companies seem to forget that they've raised the prices to the point that purchasers are not willing to pay. Their customers are going to get the media in any case; it's just a question of whether it's paid for.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Exactly. I use Netflix streaming a lot -- the price is right and I usually have no trouble finding something I want to watch when I want to watch it. I think the fact that its bandwidth usage exceeds P2P transfers is something the industry should notice. Many people are perfectly happy obtaining their content legally -- they just need an outlet that provides it at a reasonable cost without BS ads. If the industry doesn't provide, people will get it other ways (i.e., piracy), but if it is made easily available at affordable rates without advertising and its associated delays/annoyances, people will devour it. The proof is Netflix.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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!
The mere $9 a month I pay (and that's ALL I pay for TV since I cancelled my cable)
Let me guess: You don't live with people who like to watch live news or live sports.
What MPAA has to learn is that consumers like a business model where actually 'owning' DVD's is not a choice that most want.
Unless they have single-digit-year-old kids who "wanna watch Sin-duh-weh-wuh again, Daddy."
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.
Except when traveling internationally. Your portable DVD player still works with the DVDs that you brought, but your Netflix device is IP banned. See other advantages of discs that I gleaned from a previous Slashdot discussion.
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.
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.
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.