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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).'"
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.
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