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Netflix Isn't Swamping the Internet
itwbennett writes "Remember the Sandvine report from earlier this week that said Netflix gobbles up 30% of Internet traffic during peak hours? It needs clarification on a couple of important points, says blogger Kevin Fogarty. First, yes, Netflix traffic spikes during prime time, but only across the last mile. Second, ISPs underestimate what a 'normal' level of Internet use really is. 'When AT&T announced its data caps – 150GB per month for DSL users and 250GB for broadband – it called the data levels generous and said limits would only affect 2 percent of its customers. It turns out Netflix users take up an average of 40GB per month just from streaming media, according to a different Sandvine report (PDF).'"
So the last mile is the tightest, and contended. And we now know the data caps are a joke. So, still a problem.
This is because Netflix hosts their shit with caching companies. You get people like Akamai that do data hosting. Now they have big data centers that hold lots of data as you'd expect, but they also have cache engines all over the place. They contact ISPs and say "Hey, we'd like to put cache engines in your data center. We'll provide you all the equipment, free of charge, and tell you how to configure it. This will reduce the amount of bandwidth you use."
You can see why ISPs like this and go for it. Of course the other side of it, the reason Akamai does it, is because it reduces their bandwidth usage a lot. Win-win situation.
This happened on campus like 8 years ago. Akamai gave us some cache engines and they got set up on the network. Now anything on them is just stupidly fast. Windows updates just fly down. It also made quite a noticeable dent in off campus bandwidth usage.
I don't think Netflix uses Akamai themselves, but I do know they use a service like it.
"40 gig just from streaming data" with a lowball 150 gig allowance, with recent slashdot articles saying netflix is a large minority of people's traffic... sounds like the ISPs are correct, that 150 gig is generous.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
presumably, in poster's mind, broadband = cable. Maybe it means fiber but i would think cable. Most of the dsl implementations are pretty crappy around the states (based on setups around the east coast mainly, seattle was good). Because of this, most people think dsl is inherently inferior to cable broadband. having used some excellent dsl providers in london, it definitely comes down to the service provider.
fiber-based "triple play" internet/quasi-cableTV/telephone being rolled out by the telcos generally split the available downsteam bandwidth between the real, user-visible, internet bandwidth used for the internet connection part of things, and the non-user-visible bandwidth dedicated to sending digital media streams down the wire that are sold as "cable" rather than "internet streaming".
Actually, the way Verizon FiOS is set up, you have one light carrier dedicated specifically for video broadcasting. It runs through an optical transducer, which outputs a real QAM modulated digital cable signal, directly usable by any TV or PC tuner card that supports QAM.
So a company that sells network control and monitoring software, and who has a dodgy past, says the bandwidth caps are OK.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Adblock/Adblock plus is your saviour. (or if you're super uber nerdy, a custom hosts file)
On the one hand I feel bad that I know that I'm not contributing to the continued survival of some of my favorite websites by providing them with adviews impressions (and certainly not with click-throughs), but on the other hand I work in the business of, among many other things, saving PCs that have become corrupted by malware that likely showed up in a drive-by ad-based browser attack. I feel no need to risk it.
On a somewhat related note, the sheer annoyance of today's ads have gone overboard. The days of a static tower jpg on the side of an article seem to be going the way of the dodo, where now everything is animated, full of sound, wants to jump out in front of the damn text I'm reading, or even replace the text itself (and often somehow take up an entire modern cpu core, wtf, I've got more processing power than nasa sent men to the moon with, and a "click-here-to-win-a-ps3!" ad is using all of it?!). When they have a custom "X" button on their ad that I have to click on to close the damn thing, I am ALWAYS wary, because I don't want to click on ANYTHING nonstandard. ever. That's just asking for trouble, even in today's modern sandboxed browsers.
It is sad to say, but I personally am more concerned with keeping my own system safe and secure than I am with "supporting" my favorite websites by letting their ads rape my eyes and ears at the very least, and quite possibly my system as well. They'll have to depend on other people for that, just hopefully not people I personally support.
They don't buy, they rent from limelight and level3. They used akamai before that as a cdn (and I think might still use it some). Between these 3 the backbone infrastructure is pretty well covered. If they really do make up 30% of peek traffic it is reasonable to imagine that netflix has localized storage of at least the most popular content at most of these nodes, and the fact that limelight specializes in video transfer (even before netflix) makes it even more likely.
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