Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
A remark and a question: 1. 2 GB/day per user would indeed require tossing everyone's CURRENT baseline network usage metrics out the window, IF IT WERE TO BE ACHIEVED INSTANTANEOUSLY. The key question is, how quickly and widely will this application spread? Back in 1997, when I first started collecting Internet usage statistics, there were concerns that pre-fetching applications like WebWhacker (anyone remember that?) would lead to a collapse of networks and business plans. With flat rate dial access, staying connected for 24 hours per day would have (i) exhausted the modem pools, which were built on a 5-10 oversubscription ratio, and (ii) broken the aggregation and backbone networks, generating about 240 MB/day or traffic per subscriber (on a 19.2 Kbps modem, about standard then). But the average user was online just 1 hour per day, and download traffic was about 2 Kbps during that hour, leading to about 1 MB/day of traffic, and the world did not come to a halt. (And yes, I am suppressing some details, such as ISPs TOSs forbidding applications like WebWhacker, and technical measures to keep them limited.) Today, download rates per broadband subscriber range (among the few industrialized countries for which I have data or at least decent estimates) from about 60 MB in Australia to 1 GB in Hong Kong. So 2 GB/day is not that far out of range for Hong Kong (or South Korea) even today. And in a few years (which is what you always have to allow for, even Napster and Skype did not take over the world in the proverbial "Internet time" of 8 months or less), other places might catch up. 2. The question I don't understand is, why stream? In these days, when a terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real-time rates, if possible), and play it back. Andrew
On Sat, 6 Jan 2007, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
Note that 220 MB per hour (ugly units) is 489 Kbps, slightly less =20 than our current usage.
The more popular the content is, the more sources it can be pulled =20 from and the less redundant data we send, and that number can be as low as 220MB per hour viewed. (Actually, I find this a tough thing to explain to people in general; it's really counterintuitive to see that more peers =3D=3D less bandwidth - I'm still searching for a useful = user-facing metaphor, anyone got any ideas?).
Why not just say, the more peers, the more efficient it becomes as it =20= approaches the bandwidth floor set by the chosen streaming ? Regards Marshall On Jan 6, 2007, at 9:07 AM, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 03:18:03AM -0500, Robert Boyle wrote:
At 01:52 AM 1/6/2007, Thomas Leavitt <thomas@thomasleavitt.org> =20 wrote:
If this application takes off, I have to presume that everyone's baseline network usage metrics can be tossed out the window...
That's a strong possibility :-)
I'm currently the network person for The Venice Project, and busy building out our network, but also involved in the design and planning work and a bunch of other things.
I'll try and answer any questions I can, I may be a little =20 restricted in revealing details of forthcoming developments and so on, so please forgive me if there's later something I can't answer, but for now I'll try and answer any of the technicalities. Our philosophy is to pretty open about how we work and what we do.
We're actually working on more general purpose explanations of all =20 this, which we'll be putting on-line soon. I'm not from our PR dept, or a spokesperson, just a long-time NANOG reader and ocasional poster answering technical stuff here, so please don't just post the archive link to digg/slashdot or whatever.
The Venice Project will affect network operators and we're working =20 on a range of different things which may help out there. We've designed =20=
our traffic to be easily categorisable (I wish we could mark a DSCP, =20 but the levels of access needed on some platforms are just too restrictive) =20=
and we know how the real internet works. Already we have aggregate per-AS usage statistics, and have some primitive network proximity =20 clustering. AS-level clustering is planned.
This will reduce transit costs, but there's not much we can do for =20 other infrastructural, L2 or last-mile costs. We're L3 and above only. Additionally, we predict a healthy chunk of usage will go to our "Long tail servers", which are explained a bit here;
http://www.vipeers.com/vipeers/2007/01/venice_project_.html
and in the next 6 months or so, we hope to turn up at IX's and arrange private peerings to defray the transit cost of that traffic too. Right now, our main transit provider is BT (AS5400) who are at some well-known IX's.
Interesting. Why does it send so much data?
It's full-screen TV-quality video :-) After adding all the overhead =20=
for p2p protocol and stream resilience we still only use a maximum of =20 320MB per viewing hour.
The more popular the content is, the more sources it can be pulled =20 from and the less redundant data we send, and that number can be as low as 220MB per hour viewed. (Actually, I find this a tough thing to explain to people in general; it's really counterintuitive to see that more peers =3D=3D less bandwidth - I'm still searching for a useful = user-facing metaphor, anyone got any ideas?).
To put that in context; a 45 minute episode grabbed from a file-=20 sharing network will generally eat 350MB on-disk, obviously slightly more is used after you account for even the 2% TCP/IP overhead and p2p =20 protocol headers. And it will usually take longer than 45 minutes to get there.
Compressed digital telivision works out at between 900MB and 3GB an =20=
hour viewed (raw is in the tens of gigabytes). DVD is of the same order. YouTube works out at about 80MB to 230MB per-hour, for a mini-screen (though I'm open to correction on that, I've just multiplied the bitrates out).
Is it a peer to peer type of system where it redistributes a portion of the stream as you are viewing it to other users?
Yes, though not neccessarily as you are viewing it. A proportion of =20=
what you have viewed previously is cached and can be made available to =20 other peers.
--=20 Colm MacC=E1rthaigh Public Key: colm=20 +pgp@stdlib.net
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 09:09:19AM -0600, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
2. The question I don't understand is, why stream?
There are other good reasons, but fundamentally; because of live telivision.
In these days, when a terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real-time rates, if possible), and play it back.
That might be worse for download operators, because people may download an hour of video, and only watch 5 minutes :/ -- Colm MacCárthaigh Public Key: colm+pgp@stdlib.net
On Jan 6, 2007, at 10:19 AM, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 09:09:19AM -0600, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
2. The question I don't understand is, why stream?
There are other good reasons, but fundamentally; because of live telivision.
In these days, when a terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real-time rates, if possible), and play it back.
That might be worse for download operators, because people may download an hour of video, and only watch 5 minutes :/
Our logs show that, for every 100 people who start to watch a stream, only 2 or 5 % watch over 30 minutes in one sitting, even for VOD where they presumably have some interest in the movie up front, and more more than 9% will watch all of VOD movie, even over multiple viewings. This is also very consistent with time, but I don't have any pretty plots handy. (Our cumulative audience in 2006 was 2.74 million people, I have lots of statistics.) So, from that standpoint, making a video file available for download is wasting order of 90% of the bandwidth used to download it. Regards Marshall
-- Colm MacCárthaigh Public Key: colm +pgp@stdlib.net
That might be worse for download operators, because people may download an hour of video, and only watch 5 minutes :/
So, from that standpoint, making a video file available for download is wasting order of 90% of the bandwidth used to download it.
Considering that this is supposed to be a technically oriented list, I am shocked at the level of ignorance of networking technology displayed here. Have folks never heard of content-delivery networks, Akamai, P2P, BitTorrent, EMule? --Michael Dillon
Dear Michael; On Jan 7, 2007, at 8:18 AM, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
That might be worse for download operators, because people may download an hour of video, and only watch 5 minutes :/
So, from that standpoint, making a video file available for download is wasting order of 90% of the bandwidth used to download it.
Considering that this is supposed to be a technically oriented list, I am shocked at the level of ignorance of networking technology displayed here.
Have folks never heard of content-delivery networks, Akamai, P2P, BitTorrent, EMule?
Most of the video sites I know of in detail or have researched do not use Akamai or other local caching services. (Youtube uses Limelight for delivery, for example, as AFAIKT they do no caching outside of that network. Certainly, the Youtube video I have looked at here through tcpdump and traceroute seems to transit the network.) And P2P services like BitTorrent do not conserve network bandwidth. (Although, they might in the future.) What does save network bandwidth is progressive download; if people actually look at what they downloading, they may stop it in progress if they don't want it. (I know I do.)
--Michael Dillon
Regards Marshall
In the mobile world, there is a lot of telco-led activity around providing streaming video ("TV"), which always seems to boil down to the following points: 1) Just unicasting it over the radio access network is going to use a lot of capacity, and latency will make streaming good quality tough. 2) Therefore, it has to be delivered in some sort of defined-QOS fashion or else over a dedicated, broadcast or one-way only radio link. 3) That means either a big centralised server we own, or another big radio network we own. 4).... 5) PROFIT!! The unexamined assumptions are of course that: 1) Streaming is vital. 2) By definition, just doing it in TCP/IP must mean naive unicasting. 3) Only telco control can provide quality. 4) Mobile data latency is always and everywhere a radio issue. Critique: Why would you want to stream when you can download? *Because letting them download it means they can watch it again, share it with their friends, edit it perhaps?* Why would you want to stream in unicast when there are already models for effective multicast content delivery (see Michael's list)? *See point above!* In my own limited experience with UMTS IP service, it struck me that the biggest source of latency was the wait for DNS resolution, a highly soluble problem with methods known to us all. *But if it's inherent in mobility itself, then only our solutions can fix it...* On 1/7/07, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com <Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com> wrote:
That might be worse for download operators, because people may download an hour of video, and only watch 5 minutes :/
So, from that standpoint, making a video file available for download is wasting order of 90% of the bandwidth used to download it.
Considering that this is supposed to be a technically oriented list, I am shocked at the level of ignorance of networking technology displayed here.
Have folks never heard of content-delivery networks, Akamai, P2P, BitTorrent, EMule?
--Michael Dillon
Dear Alexander; On Jan 7, 2007, at 8:59 AM, Alexander Harrowell wrote:
In the mobile world, there is a lot of telco-led activity around providing streaming video ("TV"), which always seems to boil down to the following points:
We (AmericaFree.TV) simulcast everything in 3GPP and 3GPP2 at a lower bit rate for mobiles. At present, the mobile audience for our video is - 0.3% of the total for the last month - doubling every 2 months or less. It's not clear if this glass is mostly empty or half full, but there is a data point FWIW.
1) Just unicasting it over the radio access network is going to use a lot of capacity, and latency will make streaming good quality tough.
2) Therefore, it has to be delivered in some sort of defined-QOS fashion or else over a dedicated, broadcast or one-way only radio link.
3) That means either a big centralised server we own, or another big radio network we own.
4)....
5) PROFIT!!
I have heard that several big mobile providers are shortly going to come out with 802.16 networks in support (I assume) of point 3. Regards Marshall
Why would you want to stream in unicast when there are already models for effective multicast content delivery (see Michael's list)? *See point above!*
The word "multicast" in the above quote, does not refer to the set of protocols called "IP multicast". Content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai are also, inherently, a form of multicasting. So are P2P networks like BitTorrent and EMule. If this sounds odd to you, perhaps you don't really understand the basics of either multicast or P2P. Check out Wikipedia to see what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast If your data absolutely, positively, must be delivered simultaneously to multiple destinations, i.e. time is of the essence, then I agree that P2P and IP multicast are not comparable. But the context of this discussion is not NYSE market data feeds, but entertainment video. The use-cases for entertainment mean that timing is of little importance. More important are things like consistency and control. --Michael Dillon
Michael Dillon said: The word "multicast" in the above quote, does not refer to the set of protocols called "IP multicast". Content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai are also, inherently, a form of multicasting. So are P2P networks like BitTorrent and EMule. That's precisely what I mean. Marshall Eubanks said: I have heard that several big mobile providers are shortly going to come out with 802.16 networks in support (I assume) of point 3 I don't know whether Sprint Nextel's big 802.16e deployment is going to be used for this, although their keenness on video/TV argues for it. A wide range of technologies are in prospect, including DMB, DAB-IP, DVB-H, Qualcomm's MediaFLO and IPWireless's TDTV. These are radio broadcast systems of various kinds - MediaFLO and TDTV are adaptations of 3G mobile technologies, from the CDMA2000 world and UMTS respectively. TDTV, the one I am most familiar with, is essentially a UMTS-TDD network with all the timeslots set to send (from the base station's viewpoint). 3GPP and 3GPP2 are standardising a Multimedia Broadcast-Multicast Subsystem as an add-on to the R99 core network, expected in 2008.
From an IP perspective, most of these are fairly orthogonal, being essentially alternative access networks on the other side of the MBMS control function.
On Jan 7, 2007, at 8:59 AM, Alexander Harrowell wrote:
1) Just unicasting it over the radio access network is going to use a lot of capacity, and latency will make streaming good quality tough.
I'm confused why high latency makes "streaming good quality tough"? Perhaps this goes back to the "streaming" vs. "downloading" problem, but every player I've ever seen on a personal computer buffers the content for at least a second, and usually multiple seconds. Latency is measured in, at most, 10th of a second, and jitter another order of magnitude less at least. High latency links with stable throughput are much better for streaming than low latency links with any packet loss, even without buffering. IOW: Latency is irrelevant. -- TTFN, patrick
Yes, on reflection that should also have been filed under "unexamined assumptions." On 1/7/07, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> wrote:
On Jan 7, 2007, at 8:59 AM, Alexander Harrowell wrote:
1) Just unicasting it over the radio access network is going to use a lot of capacity, and latency will make streaming good quality tough.
I'm confused why high latency makes "streaming good quality tough"?
Perhaps this goes back to the "streaming" vs. "downloading" problem, but every player I've ever seen on a personal computer buffers the content for at least a second, and usually multiple seconds. Latency is measured in, at most, 10th of a second, and jitter another order of magnitude less at least.
High latency links with stable throughput are much better for streaming than low latency links with any packet loss, even without buffering.
IOW: Latency is irrelevant.
-- TTFN, patrick
That's because most of these people are watching the stream on their computer (Mac or PC). Bring that box to the living room in an attractive package and the stats will be very different.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Marshall Eubanks Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 7:45 AM To: colm@stdlib.net Cc: Andrew Odlyzko; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Jan 6, 2007, at 10:19 AM, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 09:09:19AM -0600, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
2. The question I don't understand is, why stream?
There are other good reasons, but fundamentally; because of live telivision.
In these days, when a terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real-time rates, if possible), and play it back.
That might be worse for download operators, because people may download an hour of video, and only watch 5 minutes :/
Our logs show that, for every 100 people who start to watch a stream, only 2 or 5 % watch over 30 minutes in one sitting, even for VOD where they presumably have some interest in the movie up front, and more more than 9% will watch all of VOD movie, even over multiple viewings. This is also very consistent with time, but I don't have any pretty plots handy. (Our cumulative audience in 2006 was 2.74 million people, I have lots of statistics.)
So, from that standpoint, making a video file available for download is wasting order of 90% of the bandwidth used to download it.
Regards Marshall
-- Colm MacCárthaigh Public Key: colm +pgp@stdlib.net
On 1/8/07, Bora Akyol <bora@broadcom.com> wrote:
That's because most of these people are watching the stream on their computer (Mac or PC).
Bring that box to the living room in an attractive package and the stats will be very different.
This isn't part of the same project, but I suspect this will more or less bring a video stream from a Slingbox (in the other room or halfway around the earth) to the living room: http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2007-01/slingcatcher-is-real/ Regards, Al Iverson -- Al Iverson -- www.aliverson.com Visit my blog: www.spamresource.com This is my "list" address. Remove "lists" from the email address to reach me faster. The contents of this message are copyrighted by Al Iverson. Permission is denied to archivesat.com to archive, store, share, or otherwise reproduce the contents of this message.
I'm working on it. On Jan 8, 2007, at 3:29 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:
That's because most of these people are watching the stream on their computer (Mac or PC).
Bring that box to the living room in an attractive package and the stats will be very different.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Marshall Eubanks Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 7:45 AM To: colm@stdlib.net Cc: Andrew Odlyzko; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Jan 6, 2007, at 10:19 AM, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 09:09:19AM -0600, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
2. The question I don't understand is, why stream?
There are other good reasons, but fundamentally; because of live telivision.
In these days, when a terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real-time rates, if possible), and play it back.
That might be worse for download operators, because people may download an hour of video, and only watch 5 minutes :/
Our logs show that, for every 100 people who start to watch a stream, only 2 or 5 % watch over 30 minutes in one sitting, even for VOD where they presumably have some interest in the movie up front, and more more than 9% will watch all of VOD movie, even over multiple viewings. This is also very consistent with time, but I don't have any pretty plots handy. (Our cumulative audience in 2006 was 2.74 million people, I have lots of statistics.)
So, from that standpoint, making a video file available for download is wasting order of 90% of the bandwidth used to download it.
Regards Marshall
-- Colm MacCárthaigh Public Key: colm +pgp@stdlib.net
Bring that box to the living room in an attractive package and the stats will be very different.
This kind of box is very popular in England. It is called a digital TV receiver and it receives MPEG-2 streams broadcast freely over the airwaves. Some people, myself included, have a receiver that with a hard disk that allows pausing live TV and scheduling recording from the electronic program guide which is part of the broadcast stream. Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit? --Michael Dillon
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver? If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do. With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it). Simon
Simon An additional point to consider is that it takes a lot of effort and $$$$ to get a channel allocated to your content in a cable network. This is much easier when TV is being distributed over the Internet.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Simon Lockhart Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 2:42 PM To: Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
It would not be any easier. The negotiations are very complex. The issue is not one of infrastructure capex. It is one of jockeying between content providers (big media conglomerates) and the video service providers (cable companies). Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 9, 2007, at 7:57 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:
Simon
An additional point to consider is that it takes a lot of effort and $$$$ to get a channel allocated to your content in a cable network.
This is much easier when TV is being distributed over the Internet.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Simon Lockhart Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 2:42 PM To: Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
On Jan 9, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Gian Constantine wrote:
It would not be any easier. The negotiations are very complex. The issue is not one of infrastructure capex. It is one of jockeying between content providers (big media conglomerates) and the video service providers (cable companies).
Not necessarily. Depends on your business model. Regards Marshall
Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.
On Jan 9, 2007, at 7:57 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:
Simon
An additional point to consider is that it takes a lot of effort and $$$$ to get a channel allocated to your content in a cable network.
This is much easier when TV is being distributed over the Internet.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Simon Lockhart Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 2:42 PM To: Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
Marshall, I completely agree, and due diligence on business models will show that fact very clearly. And nothing much has changed here in terms of substance over the last 4+ yrs either. Costs and opportunities have changed or evolved rather, but not the mechanics. Infrastructure capital is very much the gating factor in every major video distribution infrastructure (and the reason why DOCSIS 3.0 is just such a neato thing). The carriage deals are merely table stakes, and that doesn't mean they're easy. They are obtainable. And some business models are just fundamentally broken. Examples for infrastructure costs are size of CSA's or cost upgrading CPE is a far bigger deal than carriage. And if you can't get into RT's in a ILEC colo arrangement, that doesn't per se globally invalidate business models, but rather provides unique challenges and limitations on a given specific business model. What has changed is that ppl are actually 'doing it'. And that proves that several models are viable for funding in all sorts of flavors and risks. IPTV is fundamentally subject to the analog fallacies of VoIP replacing 1FR/1BR service on 1:1 basis (toll arbitrage or anomalies aside). There seems to be plenty of that. A new IP service offering no unique features over specialzed and depreciated infrastructure will not be viable until commoditized and not at an early maturity level like where IPTV is at. Unless an IPTV service offers a compelling cost advantage, mass adoption will not occur. And any cost increase will have to be justifiable to consumers, and that cannot be underestimated. But, some just continue to ignore those fundamentals and those business models will fail. And we should be thankful for that self cleansing action of a functioning market. Enough rambling after a long day at CES, I suppose. Thanks for reading this far. Best regards, Christian -- Sent from my BlackBerry. -----Original Message----- From: Marshall Eubanks <tme@multicasttech.com> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 01:52:06 To:Gian Constantine <constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net> Cc:Bora Akyol <bora@broadcom.com>,"Simon Lockhart" <simon@slimey.org>, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com,nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously? On Jan 9, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Gian Constantine wrote:
It would not be any easier. The negotiations are very complex. The issue is not one of infrastructure capex. It is one of jockeying between content providers (big media conglomerates) and the video service providers (cable companies).
Not necessarily. Depends on your business model. Regards Marshall
Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.
On Jan 9, 2007, at 7:57 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:
Simon
An additional point to consider is that it takes a lot of effort and $$$$ to get a channel allocated to your content in a cable network.
This is much easier when TV is being distributed over the Internet.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Simon Lockhart Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 2:42 PM To: Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
Many of the small carriers, who are doing IPTV in the U.S., have acquired their content rights through a consortium, which has since closed its doors to new membership. I cannot stress this enough: content is the key to a good industry- changing business model. Broad appeal content will gain broad interest. Broad interest will change the playing field and compel content providers to consider alternative consumption/delivery models. The ILECs are going to do it. They have deep pockets. Look at how quickly they were able to get franchising laws adjusted to allow them to offer video. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 10, 2007, at 2:30 AM, Christian Kuhtz wrote:
Marshall,
I completely agree, and due diligence on business models will show that fact very clearly. And nothing much has changed here in terms of substance over the last 4+ yrs either. Costs and opportunities have changed or evolved rather, but not the mechanics.
Infrastructure capital is very much the gating factor in every major video distribution infrastructure (and the reason why DOCSIS 3.0 is just such a neato thing). The carriage deals are merely table stakes, and that doesn't mean they're easy. They are obtainable.
And some business models are just fundamentally broken.
Examples for infrastructure costs are size of CSA's or cost upgrading CPE is a far bigger deal than carriage. And if you can't get into RT's in a ILEC colo arrangement, that doesn't per se globally invalidate business models, but rather provides unique challenges and limitations on a given specific business model.
What has changed is that ppl are actually 'doing it'. And that proves that several models are viable for funding in all sorts of flavors and risks.
IPTV is fundamentally subject to the analog fallacies of VoIP replacing 1FR/1BR service on 1:1 basis (toll arbitrage or anomalies aside). There seems to be plenty of that. A new IP service offering no unique features over specialzed and depreciated infrastructure will not be viable until commoditized and not at an early maturity level like where IPTV is at.
Unless an IPTV service offers a compelling cost advantage, mass adoption will not occur. And any cost increase will have to be justifiable to consumers, and that cannot be underestimated.
But, some just continue to ignore those fundamentals and those business models will fail. And we should be thankful for that self cleansing action of a functioning market.
Enough rambling after a long day at CES, I suppose. Thanks for reading this far.
Best regards, Christian
-- Sent from my BlackBerry.
-----Original Message----- From: Marshall Eubanks <tme@multicasttech.com> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 01:52:06 To:Gian Constantine <constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net> Cc:Bora Akyol <bora@broadcom.com>,"Simon Lockhart" <simon@slimey.org>, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com,nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Jan 9, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Gian Constantine wrote:
It would not be any easier. The negotiations are very complex. The issue is not one of infrastructure capex. It is one of jockeying between content providers (big media conglomerates) and the video service providers (cable companies).
Not necessarily. Depends on your business model.
Regards Marshall
Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.
On Jan 9, 2007, at 7:57 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:
Simon
An additional point to consider is that it takes a lot of effort and $$$$ to get a channel allocated to your content in a cable network.
This is much easier when TV is being distributed over the Internet.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Simon Lockhart Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 2:42 PM To: Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
You mean the NCTC? Yes, they did close their doors for new membership, but there are regional head ends that represent a larger number of ITCs that have been able to directly negotiate with the content providers. And then there's the turnkey vendors: IPTV Americas, SES Americom' IP-PRIME, and Falcon Communications. It's not entirely impossible. Frank ________________________________ From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Gian Constantine Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 7:47 AM To: kuhtzch@corp.earthlink.net Cc: Marshall Eubanks; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously? Many of the small carriers, who are doing IPTV in the U.S., have acquired their content rights through a consortium, which has since closed its doors to new membership. I cannot stress this enough: content is the key to a good industry-changing business model. Broad appeal content will gain broad interest. Broad interest will change the playing field and compel content providers to consider alternative consumption/delivery models. The ILECs are going to do it. They have deep pockets. Look at how quickly they were able to get franchising laws adjusted to allow them to offer video. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.
Yes, the NCTC. I have spoken with two of the vendors you mentioned. Neither have pass-through licensing rights. I still have to go directly to most of the content providers to get the proper licensing rights. There are a few vendors out there who will help a company attain these rights, but the solution is not turnkey on licensing. To be clear, it is not turnkey for the major U.S. content providers. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 12, 2007, at 10:14 AM, Frank Bulk wrote:
You mean the NCTC? Yes, they did close their doors for new membership, but there are regional head ends that represent a larger number of ITCs that have been able to directly negotiate with the content providers.
And then there's the turnkey vendors: IPTV Americas, SES Americom' IP-PRIME, and Falcon Communications.
It's not entirely impossible.
Frank
________________________________
From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Gian Constantine Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 7:47 AM To: kuhtzch@corp.earthlink.net Cc: Marshall Eubanks; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
Many of the small carriers, who are doing IPTV in the U.S., have acquired their content rights through a consortium, which has since closed its doors to new membership.
I cannot stress this enough: content is the key to a good industry- changing business model. Broad appeal content will gain broad interest. Broad interest will change the playing field and compel content providers to consider alternative consumption/delivery models.
The ILECs are going to do it. They have deep pockets. Look at how quickly they were able to get franchising laws adjusted to allow them to offer video.
Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.
Gian: I ahven't spoken to any of those turnkey providers. Sounds like just the hardware, plant infrastructure, and transport is turnkey. =) Getting content rights is a #@#$!. That and the associated price tag is probably the largest non-technical barrier to IP TV deployments today. Frank _____ From: Gian Constantine [mailto:constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 9:24 AM To: frnkblk@iname.com Cc: kuhtzch@corp.earthlink.net; Marshall Eubanks; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously? Yes, the NCTC. I have spoken with two of the vendors you mentioned. Neither have pass-through licensing rights. I still have to go directly to most of the content providers to get the proper licensing rights. There are a few vendors out there who will help a company attain these rights, but the solution is not turnkey on licensing. To be clear, it is not turnkey for the major U.S. content providers. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 12, 2007, at 10:14 AM, Frank Bulk wrote: You mean the NCTC? Yes, they did close their doors for new membership, but there are regional head ends that represent a larger number of ITCs that have been able to directly negotiate with the content providers. And then there's the turnkey vendors: IPTV Americas, SES Americom' IP-PRIME, and Falcon Communications. It's not entirely impossible. Frank ________________________________ From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Gian Constantine Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 7:47 AM To: kuhtzch@corp.earthlink.net Cc: Marshall Eubanks; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously? Many of the small carriers, who are doing IPTV in the U.S., have acquired their content rights through a consortium, which has since closed its doors to new membership. I cannot stress this enough: content is the key to a good industry-changing business model. Broad appeal content will gain broad interest. Broad interest will change the playing field and compel content providers to consider alternative consumption/delivery models. The ILECs are going to do it. They have deep pockets. Look at how quickly they were able to get franchising laws adjusted to allow them to offer video. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.
----- Original Message ----- From: Gian Constantine Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 5:24 AM Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
Yes, the NCTC. I have spoken with two of the vendors you mentioned. Neither have pass-through licensing rights. I still have to go directly to most of the content providers to get the proper licensing rights. There are a few vendors out there who will help a company attain these rights, but the solution is not turnkey on licensing. To be clear, it is not turnkey for the major U.S. content providers.<<
Back in the 'day', these folks were great to work with, but I have no idea of how they would deal with "IPTV". http://www.4com.com/Company-Profile.html Btw, I thought VoD was one of the main drivers of IPTV, at the local level at least. --Michael
I have spoken with a colleague in the industry regarding 4com. Apparently, they have been able to acquire some sort of pass-through licensing on much of the content, but I have not spoken directly with 4com. I heard the same of Broadstream and SES Americom, but both proved to be more of an aid in acquisition, and not outright pass- through rights. VoD is one of the main drivers, along with HD, but neither are a full- service alone. Consumers will demand linear programming. They have become accustomed to it. More importantly, the advertisers have become accustomed to it. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 12, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Michael Painter wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: Gian Constantine Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 5:24 AM Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
Yes, the NCTC. I have spoken with two of the vendors you mentioned. Neither have pass-through licensing rights. I still have to go directly to most of the content providers to get the proper licensing rights. There are a few vendors out there who will help a company attain these rights, but the solution is not turnkey on licensing. To be clear, it is not turnkey for the major U.S. content providers.<<
Back in the 'day', these folks were great to work with, but I have no idea of how they would deal with "IPTV". http://www.4com.com/Company-Profile.html
Btw, I thought VoD was one of the main drivers of IPTV, at the local level at least.
--Michael
I think it depends more on one's position within the industry and the depth of their pockets. Every business model will depend on the type of content one can offer to subscribers. While their is a market for niche content, which is relatively easy and cheap to acquire, the returns are small. Smaller market will translate to smaller returns. For a small company this may be fine. But, this model will unlikely revolutionize the video distribution industry. Content with broad appeal is extremely difficult and expensive to acquire. Ultimately, this dictates the business model. It is going to take a substantial amount of time to refocus the entrenched culture of content providers on new delivery methods. Often the terms content providers present are too cumbersome and restrictive to allow a profitable business case. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. Office: 404-748-6207 Cell: 404-808-4651 Internal Ext: x22007 constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net On Jan 10, 2007, at 1:52 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
On Jan 9, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Gian Constantine wrote:
It would not be any easier. The negotiations are very complex. The issue is not one of infrastructure capex. It is one of jockeying between content providers (big media conglomerates) and the video service providers (cable companies).
Not necessarily. Depends on your business model.
Regards Marshall
Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.
On Jan 9, 2007, at 7:57 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:
Simon
An additional point to consider is that it takes a lot of effort and $$$$ to get a channel allocated to your content in a cable network.
This is much easier when TV is being distributed over the Internet.
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Simon Lockhart Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 2:42 PM To: Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
There are about 30 channels broadcast free-to-air on digital freeview in the UK. I only have so many hours in the day so I never have a problem in finding something. Some people are TV junkies or they only want some specific content so they get satellite dishes. Any Internet TV service has a limited market because it competes head-on with free-to-air and satellite services. And it is difficult to plug Internet TV into your existing TV setup. --Michael Dillon
On Wed Jan 10, 2007 at 09:43:11AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
And it is difficult to plug Internet TV into your existing TV setup.
Can your average person plug a cable / satellite / terrestrial (in the UK, the only mainstream option here for self-install is terrestrial)? Power, TV, and antenna? Then why can't they plug in Power, TV & phone line? That's where IPTV STBs are going... Simon
On 1/10/07, Simon Lockhart <simon@slimey.org> wrote:
On Wed Jan 10, 2007 at 09:43:11AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
And it is difficult to plug Internet TV into your existing TV setup.
Can your average person plug a cable / satellite / terrestrial (in the UK, the only mainstream option here for self-install is terrestrial)? Power, TV, and antenna? Then why can't they plug in Power, TV & phone line? That's where IPTV STBs are going...
Simon
Especially as more and more ISPs/telcos hand out WLAN boxen of various kinds - after all, once you have some sort of Linux (usually) networked appliance in the user's premises, it's quite simple to deploy more services (hosted VoIP, IPTV, media centre, connected storage, maybe SIP/Asterisk..) on top of that. Slingbox-like features and mobile-world things like UMA are also pushing us that way.
Then why can't they plug in Power, TV & phone line? That's where IPTV STBs are going...
OK, I can see that you could use such a set-top box to sell broadband to households which would not otherwise buy Internet services. But that is a niche market.
Especially as more and more ISPs/telcos hand out WLAN boxen of various kinds - after all, once you have some sort of Linux (usually) networked appliance in the user's premises, it's quite simple to deploy more services (hosted VoIP, IPTV, media centre, connected storage, maybe SIP/Asterisk..) on top of that.
He didn't say that his STB had an Ethernet port. And I'm not aware of any generic Linux box that can be used to deploy additional services other than do-it-yourself. And that too is a niche market. Also, note that the proliferation of boxes, each needing its own power connection and some place to sit, is causing its own problems in the household. Stacking boxes is not straightforward because some have air vents on top and others are not flat on top. The TV people have not learned the lessons of that the hi-fi component people learned back in the 1960s. --Michael Dillon
On 1/10/07, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com <Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com> wrote:
Then why can't they plug in Power, TV & phone line? That's where IPTV STBs are going...
OK, I can see that you could use such a set-top box to sell broadband to households which would not otherwise buy Internet services. But that is a niche market.
Especially as more and more ISPs/telcos hand out WLAN boxen of various kinds - after all, once you have some sort of Linux (usually) networked appliance in the user's premises, it's quite simple to deploy more services (hosted VoIP, IPTV, media centre, connected storage, maybe SIP/Asterisk..) on top of that.
He didn't say that his STB had an Ethernet port. And I'm not aware of any generic Linux box that can be used to deploy additional services other than do-it-yourself. And that too is a niche market.
For example: France Telecom's consumer ISP in France (Wanadoo) is pushing out lots and lots of WLAN boxes to its subs, which it brands Liveboxes. As well as the router, they also carry their carrier-VoIP and IPTV STB functions. If they can be remotely managed, then they are a potential platform for further services beyond that. See also 3's jump into Slingboxes.
Also, note that the proliferation of boxes, each needing its own power connection and some place to sit, is causing its own problems in the household. Stacking boxes is not straightforward because some have air vents on top and others are not flat on top. The TV people have not learned the lessons of that the hi-fi component people learned back in the 1960s.
Analogous to the question of whether digicams, iPods etc will eventually be absorbed by mobile devices. Will convergence on IP, which tends towards concentration of functions on a common box, outpace the creation of new boxes? CES this year saw a positive rash of "home server" products.
Ladies & Gentlemen, A while ago I posted some questions about transport from the U.S., peering in London and received very good technical feedback from this group. We've determined that the best option for our problem is not peering, but the purchase of service from a provider with a good network in the U.K. and on the continent. We'd like to receive proposals based on this requirement. The customer has equipment colocated with Sprint fiber in Champaign Illinois and this appears to be the only sensible route out of their network. Existing IP service is from Sprint and McLeod. The current network is cisco 7507s and we don't envision any changes here beyond an upgrade from RSP4 to RSP8 at some point in the future. We expect to receive a DS3 level interface but based on traffic we think we'd need perhaps one third of its total capacity. Feel free to email me if you need more information. -- mailto:Neal@Layer3Arts.com // IM:layer3arts voice: 402 408 5951 cell : 402 301 9555 fax : 402 408 6902
We've determined that the best option for our problem is not peering, but the purchase of service from a provider with a good network
in the U.K. and on the continent. We'd like to receive proposals based on this requirement.
Then you should write up an RFP and send it to companies that meet your requirement. Otherwise you risk only getting quotes from people who troll the mailing lists, desperate for business. --Michael Dillon
Alexander Harrowell wrote:
Analogous to the question of whether digicams, iPods etc will eventually be absorbed by mobile devices.
I guess eventually it will go the other way around as well. I was very surprised not to see Steve Jobs announce an iPod Nano-Phone. A iPod Nano with bare-bone GSM functionality as provided by one of the recent single-chip developments from TI and SiLabs AeroFon. Would fit nicely and cover 85% of all use cases, that is voice and SMS. True mass-market. Pop in your SIM and you're ready to rock. A slightly enhanced click-wheel would make a nice input device too (and no, do not emulate a rotary phone). All together would cost only $15 more than the base iPod. GSM single chip is really cheap. Yeah, I'm a dreamer. -- Andre
Alexander Harrowell writes:
For example: France Telecom's consumer ISP in France (Wanadoo) is pushing out lots and lots of WLAN boxes to its subs, which it brands Liveboxes. As well as the router, they also carry their carrier-VoIP and IPTV STB functions. [...]
Right, and the French ADSL ecosystem mostly seems to be based on these "boxes" - Proxad/free.fr has its Freebox, Alice ADSL (Telecom Italia) the AliceBox, etc. All these have SCART ("peritelevision") TV plugs in their current incarnations, in addition to the WLAN access points and phone jacks that previous versions already had. Personally I don't like this kind of bundling, and I think being able to choose telephony and video providers indepenently of ISP is better. But the business model seems to work in that market. Note that I don't have any insight or numbers, just noticing that non-technical people (friends and family in France) do seem to be capable of receiving TV over IP (although not "over the Internet") - confirming what Simon Lockhart claimed. Of course there are still technical issues such as how to connect two TV sets in different parts of an appartment to a single *box. (Some boxes do support two simultaneous video channels depending on available bandwidth, which is based on the level of unbundling ("degroupage") in the area.) As far as I know, the French ISPs use IP multicast for video distribution, although I'm pretty sure that these IP multicast networks are not connected to each other or to the rest of the multicast Internet. -- Simon.
On 1/10/07, Simon Leinen <simon@limmat.switch.ch> wrote:
Alexander Harrowell writes:
For example: France Telecom's consumer ISP in France (Wanadoo) is pushing out lots and lots of WLAN boxes to its subs, which it brands Liveboxes. As well as the router, they also carry their carrier-VoIP and IPTV STB functions. [...]
Right, and the French ADSL ecosystem mostly seems to be based on these "boxes" - Proxad/free.fr has its Freebox, Alice ADSL (Telecom Italia) the AliceBox, etc. All these have SCART ("peritelevision") TV plugs in their current incarnations, in addition to the WLAN access points and phone jacks that previous versions already had.
Personally I don't like this kind of bundling, and I think being able to choose telephony and video providers indepenently of ISP is better. But the business model seems to work in that market. Note that I don't have any insight or numbers, just noticing that non-technical people (friends and family in France) do seem to be capable of receiving TV over IP (although not "over the Internet") - confirming what Simon Lockhart claimed.
This is one of those "competition vs. deployment" conundrums. Yes, independent is better, but awareness is required, so someone's got to make the initial investment. Of course there are still technical issues such as how to connect two
TV sets in different parts of an appartment to a single *box. (Some boxes do support two simultaneous video channels depending on available bandwidth, which is based on the level of unbundling ("degroupage") in the area.)
As far as I know, the French ISPs use IP multicast for video distribution, although I'm pretty sure that these IP multicast networks are not connected to each other or to the rest of the multicast Internet. -- Simon.
ADSL2+ deployment has been quicker in France (well, metro areas) than the UK, which means this is a question of which devices get an IP address, or rather an RFC1918 behind the box. For the time being, this has to be a question of assigning IPs to SCART sockets in the box. The last time I called on my relatives there, I didn't have the opportunity to investigate the network architecture - they got unaccountably excited...
It seems to me that multi-cast is a technical solution for the bandwidth consumption problems precipitated by real-time Internet video broadcast, but it doesn't seem to me that the bulk of current (or even future) Internet video traffic is going to be amenable to distribution via multi-cast - or, at least, separate and apart from whatever happens with multi-cast, a huge and growing volume of video traffic will be flowing over the 'net... I don't think consumers are going to accept having to wait for a "scheduled broadcast" of whatever piece of video content they want to view - at least if the alternative is being able to download and watch it nearly immediately. That said, for the most popular content with the widest audience, scheduled multi-cast makes sense... especially when the alternative is waiting for a large download to finish - contrawise, it doesn't seem reasonable to be constantly multi-casting *every* piece of video content anyone might ever want to watch (that in itself would consume an insane amount of bandwidth). How many pieces of video content are there on YouTube? How many more can we expect to emerge over the next decade, given the ever decreasing cost of entry for reasonably decent video production? All of which, to me, leaves the fundamental issue of how the upsurge in traffic is going to be handled left unresolved. Thomas Simon Lockhart wrote:
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
-- Thomas Leavitt - thomas@thomasleavitt.org - 831-295-3917 (cell) *** Independent Systems and Network Consultant, Santa Cruz, CA ***
On Jan 10, 2007, at 11:19 PM, Thomas Leavitt wrote:
It seems to me that multi-cast is a technical solution for the bandwidth consumption problems precipitated by real-time Internet video broadcast, but it doesn't seem to me that the bulk of current (or even future) Internet video traffic is going to be amenable to distribution via multi-cast - or, at least, separate and apart from whatever happens with multi-cast, a huge and growing volume of video traffic will be flowing over the 'net...
I would fully agree with this.
I don't think consumers are going to accept having to wait for a "scheduled broadcast" of whatever piece of video content they want to view - at least if the alternative is being able to download and watch it nearly
That's the pull model. The push model will also exist. Both will make money.
immediately. That said, for the most popular content with the widest audience, scheduled multi-cast makes sense... especially when the alternative is waiting for a large download to finish - contrawise, it doesn't seem reasonable to be constantly multi- casting *every* piece of video content anyone might ever want to watch (that in itself would consume an insane amount of bandwidth). How many pieces of video content are there on YouTube? How many more can we expect to emerge over the next decade, given the ever decreasing cost of entry for reasonably decent video production?
Lots. Remember, of course, Sturgeon's law. But, lots. If you want numbers, 10^4 channels, billions of pieces of uncommercial content, and millions of pieces of commercial content.
All of which, to me, leaves the fundamental issue of how the upsurge in traffic is going to be handled left unresolved.
I think that technically, we have a pretty good idea how. I think that the real fundamental question is whose business models will allow them to make a profit from this upsurge.
Thomas
Regards Marshall
Simon Lockhart wrote:
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Given that the broadcast model for streaming content is so successful, why would you want to use the Internet for it? What is the benefit?
How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?
If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed to do.
With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).
Simon
-- Thomas Leavitt - thomas@thomasleavitt.org - 831-295-3917 (cell)
*** Independent Systems and Network Consultant, Santa Cruz, CA ***
<thomas.vcf>
Thus spake "Marshall Eubanks" <tme@multicasttech.com>
On Jan 10, 2007, at 11:19 PM, Thomas Leavitt wrote:
I don't think consumers are going to accept having to wait for a "scheduled broadcast" of whatever piece of video content they want to view - at least if the alternative is being able to download and watch it nearly
That's the pull model. The push model will also exist. Both will make money.
There's a severe Layer 8 problem, though, because most businesses seem to pursue only one delivery strategy, instead of viewing them as complementary and using _all_ of them as appropriate. When IP STBs start appearing, most of them _should_ have some sort of feature to subscribe to certain programs. That means when a program is released for distribution, there will be millions of people waiting for it. Push it out via mcast or P2P at 3am and it'll be waiting for them when they wake up (or 3pm, ready when they come home from work). Folks who want older programs would need to select a show and the STB would grab it via P2P or pull methods. Mcast has the advantage that STBs could opportunistically cache all "recent" content in case the user wants to browse the latest programs they haven't subscribed to, aka channel surfing. This doesn't make sense with P2P due to the the waste of bandwidth, and it's not very effective with pull content because most folks still can't get a high enough bitrate from some distant colo into their homes to pull content as fast as they consume it. The TV pirates have figured most of this out. Most BitTorrent clients these days support RSS feeds, and there are dozens of sites that will give you a feed for particular shows (at least those popular enough to be pirated) so that your client will start pulling it as soon as it hits the 'net; shows like "24" will have _tens of thousands_ of clients downloading a new episode within minutes. Likewise, the same sites offer catalogs going back several years so that you can pick nearly any episode and watch it within a couple hours. Mcast is the one piece missing, but perhaps if it's not being used that's just yet another sign it's a solution in search of a problem, as critics have been saying for the last decade? There is no technical challenge here; what the pirates are already doing works pretty well, and with a little UI work it'd even be ready for the mass market. The challenges are figuring out how to pay for the pipes needed to deliver all these bits at consumer rates, and how to collect revenue from all the viewers to fairly compensate the producers -- both business problems, though for different folks. Interesting problems to solve, but NANOG probably isn't the appropriate forum. S Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
There is no technical challenge here; what the pirates are already doing works pretty well, and with a little UI work it'd even be ready for the mass market. The challenges are figuring out how to pay for the pipes needed to deliver all these bits at consumer rates, and how to collect revenue from all the viewers to fairly compensate the producers -- both business problems, though for different folks.
Will the North American market change from using speed to volume for pricing Internet connections? Web hosting and other markets around the world already use GB/transferred packages instead of the port speed. What happens if a 100Mbps port is $19.95/month with $1.95 per GB transferred up and down? Are P2P swarms as attractive?
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Sean Donelan wrote:
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
There is no technical challenge here; what the pirates are already doing works pretty well, and with a little UI work it'd even be ready for the mass market. The challenges are figuring out how to pay for the pipes needed to deliver all these bits at consumer rates, and how to collect revenue from all the viewers to fairly compensate the producers -- both business problems, though for different folks.
Will the North American market change from using speed to volume for pricing Internet connections? Web hosting and other markets around the world already use GB/transferred packages instead of the port speed.
The North American market started with charging per GB transfered and went away from it because the drop in cost per Mbps for both circuits and transit made costs low enough so that providers could statistically multiplex their user base and offer "unlimited" service (unlimited for marketing departments is being able to offer something to 99 percent of your customer base, which explains all residential service clauses that state unlimited doesn't really mean unlimited). You can see this repeatedly for all sorts of products as costs have come down in the long view. For example, consumer Internet dialup, long distance calling plans, local phone service plans, some aspects of cell phone service, it might be happening with online storage right now (i.e. google gmail/gfs and the browser plugins that let you store files in your gmail account). What might or might not be trending is a digression, the "unlimited" service is a marketing condition that seems to occur when 99 percent of your customer base uses less than the cost equal to the benefit of offering "unlimited" service. Mike. +----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Sean Donelan wrote:
What happens if a 100Mbps port is $19.95/month with $1.95 per GB transferred up and down? Are P2P swarms as attractive?
$1.95 is outrageously expensive. Let's say we want to pass on our costs to the users with the highest usage: 1 megabit/s for a month is: 1/8*60*60*24*30=324000M=324 gigabytes Let's say this 1 megabit/s costs us $20 (which is fairly high in most markets), that means the price of a gigabyte transferred should be $0.06, let's say we increase that (because of peak usage, administrative costs etc) to $0.2. Now, let's include 35 gigs of traffic in each users alottment to get rid of usage based billing for most users (100 kilobit/s average usage) and add that to your above 100 meg port, and we end up with around $28, let's make that $29.95 a month including the 35 gigs. Hey, make it 50 gigs for good measure. Now, my guess is that 90% of the users will never use more than 50 gigs, and if they do, their increased usage will be quite marginal, but if someone actually uses 5 megabit/s on average (1.6terabytes per month (not unheard of) that person will have to fork out some money ($300 extra per month). Oh, this model would also require that you pay for bw you PRODUCE, not what you receive (since you cannot control that (DDoS, scanning etc)). So basically anyone sourcing material to the internet would have to pay in some way, the ones receiving wouldn't have to pay so much (only their monthly fee). The bad part is that this model would most likely hinder a lot of content-producers from actually publishing their content, but on the other hand it might be a better deal to distribute content more closer to the customers as carriers might be inclined to let you put servers in their network that only can send traffic to their network, not anybody else. It might also preclude a model where carriers charge each other on the amount of incoming traffic they see from peers. Personally, I don't think I want to see this but it does make sense in a economical/technical way, somewhat like road tolls. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
Dear Andrew; On Jan 6, 2007, at 10:09 AM, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
A remark and a question:
<snip>
2. The question I don't understand is, why stream? In these days, when a terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real- time rates, if possible), and play it back.
I can answer that very simply for myself : We are now making a profit with streaming from advertising. To answer what I suspect is your deeper question : Broadcast is a push model, and will not go away. If fact, I think that the Internet will revitalize the "long tail" in video content, and broadcast will be a crucial part of that. It, after all, has been making more for over a century now. Download appears to be very similar, but is really not the same business model at all IMHO. Doesn't mean it's bad or worse, it may even be better, but it's different. And as long as you can make a profit from broadcasting / streaming...
Andrew
Regards Marshall
On Sat, 6 Jan 2007, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
Note that 220 MB per hour (ugly units) is 489 Kbps, slightly less =20 than our current usage.
The more popular the content is, the more sources it can be pulled =20 from and the less redundant data we send, and that number can be as low as 220MB per hour viewed. (Actually, I find this a tough thing to explain to people in general; it's really counterintuitive to see that more peers =3D=3D less bandwidth - I'm still searching for a useful = user-facing metaphor, anyone got any ideas?).
Why not just say, the more peers, the more efficient it becomes as it =20=
approaches the bandwidth floor set by the chosen streaming ?
Regards Marshall
On Jan 6, 2007, at 9:07 AM, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 03:18:03AM -0500, Robert Boyle wrote:
At 01:52 AM 1/6/2007, Thomas Leavitt <thomas@thomasleavitt.org> =20 wrote:
If this application takes off, I have to presume that everyone's baseline network usage metrics can be tossed out the window...
That's a strong possibility :-)
I'm currently the network person for The Venice Project, and busy building out our network, but also involved in the design and planning work and a bunch of other things.
I'll try and answer any questions I can, I may be a little =20 restricted in revealing details of forthcoming developments and so on, so please forgive me if there's later something I can't answer, but for now I'll try and answer any of the technicalities. Our philosophy is to pretty open about how we work and what we do.
We're actually working on more general purpose explanations of all =20 this, which we'll be putting on-line soon. I'm not from our PR dept, or a spokesperson, just a long-time NANOG reader and ocasional poster answering technical stuff here, so please don't just post the archive link to digg/slashdot or whatever.
The Venice Project will affect network operators and we're working =20 on a range of different things which may help out there. We've designed =20=
our traffic to be easily categorisable (I wish we could mark a DSCP, =20 but the levels of access needed on some platforms are just too restrictive) =20=
and we know how the real internet works. Already we have aggregate per-AS usage statistics, and have some primitive network proximity =20 clustering. AS-level clustering is planned.
This will reduce transit costs, but there's not much we can do for =20 other infrastructural, L2 or last-mile costs. We're L3 and above only. Additionally, we predict a healthy chunk of usage will go to our "Long tail servers", which are explained a bit here;
http://www.vipeers.com/vipeers/2007/01/venice_project_.html
and in the next 6 months or so, we hope to turn up at IX's and arrange private peerings to defray the transit cost of that traffic too. Right now, our main transit provider is BT (AS5400) who are at some well-known IX's.
Interesting. Why does it send so much data?
It's full-screen TV-quality video :-) After adding all the overhead =20=
for p2p protocol and stream resilience we still only use a maximum of =20 320MB per viewing hour.
The more popular the content is, the more sources it can be pulled =20 from and the less redundant data we send, and that number can be as low as 220MB per hour viewed. (Actually, I find this a tough thing to explain to people in general; it's really counterintuitive to see that more peers =3D=3D less bandwidth - I'm still searching for a useful = user-facing metaphor, anyone got any ideas?).
To put that in context; a 45 minute episode grabbed from a file-=20 sharing network will generally eat 350MB on-disk, obviously slightly more is used after you account for even the 2% TCP/IP overhead and p2p =20 protocol headers. And it will usually take longer than 45 minutes to get there.
Compressed digital telivision works out at between 900MB and 3GB an =20=
hour viewed (raw is in the tens of gigabytes). DVD is of the same order. YouTube works out at about 80MB to 230MB per-hour, for a mini-screen (though I'm open to correction on that, I've just multiplied the bitrates out).
Is it a peer to peer type of system where it redistributes a portion of the stream as you are viewing it to other users?
Yes, though not neccessarily as you are viewing it. A proportion of =20=
what you have viewed previously is cached and can be made available to =20 other peers.
--=20 Colm MacC=E1rthaigh Public Key: colm=20 +pgp@stdlib.net
On Sat, Jan 06, 2007, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
And as long as you can make a profit from broadcasting / streaming...
.. right until the ISP says "Oi, you changed my business model, you cough up the money to do so please, or the customer 'gets it'." Where have I heard companies wishing to do that before.. Adrian
2. The question I don't understand is, why stream? In these days, when a terabyte disk for consumer PCs is about to be introduced, why bother with streaming? It is so much simpler to download (at faster than real-time rates, if possible), and play it back.
Very good question. The fact is that people have been doing Internet TV without streaming for years now. That's why P2P networks use so much bandwidth. I've used it myself to download Russian TV shows that are not otherwise available here in England. Of course the P2P folks aren't just dumping raw DVB MPEG-2 streams onto the network. They are recompressing them using more advanced codecs so that they do not consume unreasonable amounts of bandwidth. Don't focus on the Venice project. They are just one of many groups trying to figure out how to make TV work on the Internet. Consumer ISPs need to do a better job of communicating to their customers the existence of GB/month bandwidth caps, the reason for the caps, how video over IP creates problems, and how to avoid those problems by using Video services which support high-compression codecs. If it is DVB, MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 then it is BAD. Stay away. Look for DIVX, MP4 etc. Note that video caching systems like P2P networks can potentially serve video to extremely large numbers of users while consuming reasonably low levels of upstream bandwidth. The key is in the caching. One copy of BBC's Jan 8th evening news is downloaded to your local P2P network consuming upstream bandwidth. Then local users use local bandwidth to get copies of that broadcast over the next few days. For this to work, you need P2P software whose algorithms are geared to conserving upstream bandwidth. To date, the software developers do not work in cooperation with ISPs and therefore the P2P software is not as ISP-friendly as it could be. ISPs could change this by contacting P2P developers. One group that is experimenting with better algorithms is http://bittyrant.cs.washington.edu/ --Michael Dillon
participants (22)
-
Adrian Chadd -
Al Iverson -
Alexander Harrowell -
Andre Oppermann -
Bora Akyol -
Christian Kuhtz -
Colm MacCarthaigh -
Frank Bulk -
Gian Constantine -
Marshall Eubanks -
Michael Painter -
Michael.Dillon＠btradianz.com -
Mikael Abrahamsson -
Mike Leber -
nealr -
odlyzko＠dtc.umn.edu -
Patrick W. Gilmore -
Sean Donelan -
Simon Leinen -
Simon Lockhart -
Stephen Sprunk -
Thomas Leavitt