I may have missed it in previous posts, but I think an important point is being missed in much of this discussion: take rate. An assumption being made is one of widespread long time usage. I would argue consumers have little interest in viewing content for more than a few hundred seconds on their PC. Further, existing solutions for media extension to the television are gaining very little foothold outside of technophiles. They tend to be more complex for the average user than many vendors seemingly realize. While Apple may help in this arena, there are many other obstacles to widespread usage of streaming video outside of media extension. In entertainment, content is king. More specifically, new release content is king. While internet distribution may help breathe life into the long tail market, it is hard to imagine any major shift from existing distribution methods. People simply like the latest TV shows and the latest movies. So, this leaves us with little more than what is already offered by the MSOs: linear TV and VoD. This is where things become complex. The studios will never (not any time soon) allow for a subscription based VoD on new content. They would instantly be sued by Time Warner (HBO). This leaves us with a non-subscription VoD option, which still requires an agreement with the each of the major studios, and would likely cost a fortune to obtain. CinemaNow and MovieLink have done this successfully, and use a PushVoD model to distribute their content. CinemaNow allows DVD burning for some of their content, but both companies are otherwise tied to the PC (without a media extender). Furthermore, the download wait is a pain. Their content is good quality 1200-1500 kbps VC-1 *wince*. It is really hard to say when and if either of these will take off as a service. It is a good service, with a great product, and almost no market at the moment. Get it on the TV and things may change dramatically. This leaves us with linear TV, which is another acquisition nightmare. It is very difficult to acquire pass-through/distribution rights for linear television, especially via IP. Without deep pockets, a company might be spinning their wheels trying to get popular channels onto their lineup. And good luck trying to acquire the rights to push linear TV outside of a closed network. The studios will hear none of it. I guess where I am going with all this is simply it is very hard to make this work from a business and marketing side. The network constraints are, likely, a minor issue for some time to come. Interest is low in the public at large for primary (or even major secondary) video service on the PC. By the time interest in the product swells and content providers ease some of their more stringent rules for content distribution, a better solution for multicasting the content will have presented itself. I would argue streaming video across the Internet to a large audience, direct to subscribers, is probably 4+ years away at best. I am not saying we throw in the towel on this problem, but I do think unicast streaming has a limited scope and short life-span for prime content. IPv6 multicast is the real long term solution for Internet video to a wide audience. Of course, there is the other argument. The ILECs and MSOs will keep it from ever getting beyond a unicast model. Why let the competition in, right? *sniff* I smell lobbyists and legislation. :-) Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc.

Well, yes. My view on this subject is U.S.-centric. In fairness to me, this is NANOG, not AFNOG or EuroNOG or SANOG. I would also argue storage and distribution costs are not asymptotically zero with scale. Well designed SANs are not cheap. Well designed distribution systems are not cheap. While price does decrease when scaled upwards, the cost of such an operation remains hefty, and increases with additions to the offered content library and a swelling of demand for this content. I believe the graph becomes neither asymptotic, nor anywhere near zero. You are correct on the long tail nature of music. But music is not consumed in a similar manner as TV and movies. Television and movies involve a little more commitment and attention. Music is more for the moment and the mood. There is an immediacy with music consumption. Movies and television require a slight degree more patience from the consumer. The freshness (debatable :-) ) of new release movies and TV can often command the required patience from the consumer. Older content rarely has the same pull. I agree there is a market for ethnic and niche content, but it is not the broad market many companies look for. The investment becomes much more of a gamble than marketing the latest and greatest (again debatable :-) ) to the larger market of...well...everyone. 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 8, 2007, at 5:15 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:

...

-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Gian Constantine Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 7:18 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

<snip>

...

In entertainment, content is king. More specifically, new release content is king. While internet distribution may help breathe life into the long tail market, it is hard to imagine any major shift from existing distribution methods. People simply like the latest TV shows and the latest movies.

What's new to you is very different from what's new to me?

I am very happy watching 1 year old episodes of Top Gear whereas if you are located in the UK, you may consider this as old news.

The story here is about the cost of storing the video content (which is asymptotically zero) and the cost of distributing it (which is also asymptotically approaching zero, despite the ire of the SPs).

...

So, this leaves us with little more than what is already offered by the MSOs: linear TV and VoD. This is where things become complex.

The studios will never (not any time soon) allow for a subscription based VoD on new content. They would instantly be sued by Time Warner (HBO).

This is a very US-centric view of the world. I am sure there are hundreds of TV stations from India, Turkey, Greece, etc that would love to put their content online and make money off the long tail.

...

I guess where I am going with all this is simply it is very hard to make this work from a business and marketing side. The network constraints are, likely, a minor issue for some time to come. Interest is low in the public at large for primary (or even major secondary) video service on the PC.

Again, your views are very US centric, and are mono-cultural.

If you open your horizons, I think there is a world of content out there that the content owners would be happy to license and sell at < 10 cents a pop. To them it is dead content, but it turns out that they are worth something to someone out there. This is what iTunes, and Rhapsody are doing with music. And the day of the video is coming.

Bora

-- Off to raise some venture funds now. (Just kidding ;)

There may have been a disconnect on my part, or at least, a failure to disclose my position. I am looking at things from a provider standpoint, whether as an ISP or a strict video service provider. I agree with you. From a consumer standpoint, a trickle or off-peak download model is the ideal low-impact solution to content delivery. And absolutely, a 500GB drive would almost be overkill on space for disposable content encoded in H.264. Excellent SD (480i) content can be achieved at ~1200 to 1500kbps, resulting in about a 1GB file for a 90 minute title. HD is almost out of the question for internet download, given good 720p at ~5500kbps, resulting in a 30GB file for a 90 minute title. Service providers wishing to provide this service to their customers may see some success where they control the access medium (copper loop, coax, FTTH). Offering such a service to customers outside of this scope would prove very expensive, and likely, would never see a return on the investment without extensive peering arrangements. Even then, distribution rights would be very difficult to attain without very deep pockets and crippling revenue sharing. The studios really dislike the idea of transmission outside of a closed network. Don't forget. Even the titles you mentioned are still owned by very large companies interested in squeezing every possible dime from their assets. They would not be cheap to acquire. Further, torrent-like distribution is a long long way away from sign off by the content providers. They see torrents as the number one tool of content piracy. This is a major reason I see the discussion of tripping upstream usage limits through content distribution as moot. I am with you on the vision of massive content libraries at the fingertips of all, but I see many roadblocks in the way. And, almost none of them are technical in nature. 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 8, 2007, at 7:51 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:

Please see my comments inline:

...

-----Original Message----- From: Gian Constantine [mailto:constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 4:27 PM To: Bora Akyol Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

<snip>

...

I would also argue storage and distribution costs are not asymptotically zero with scale. Well designed SANs are not cheap. Well designed distribution systems are not cheap. While price does decrease when scaled upwards, the cost of such an operation remains hefty, and increases with additions to the offered content library and a swelling of demand for this content. I believe the graph becomes neither asymptotic, nor anywhere near zero.

To the end user, there is no cost to downloading videos when they are sleeping. I would argue that other than sports (and some news) events, there is pretty much no content that needs to be real time. What the downloading (possibly 24x7) does is to stress the ISP network to its max since the assumptions of statistical multiplexing goes out the window. Think of a Tivo that downloads content off the Internet 24x7.

The user is still paying for only what they pay each month, and this is "network neutrality 2.0" all over again.

...

You are correct on the long tail nature of music. But music is not consumed in a similar manner as TV and movies. Television and movies involve a little more commitment and attention. Music is more for the moment and the mood. There is an immediacy with music consumption. Movies and television require a slight degree more patience from the consumer. The freshness (debatable :-) ) of new release movies and TV can often command the required patience from the consumer. Older content rarely has the same pull.

I would argue against your distinction between visual and auditory content. There is a lot of content out there that a lot of people watch and the content is 20-40+ years old. Think Brady Bunch, Bonanza, or archived games from NFL, MLB etc. What about Smurfs (for those of us with kids)?

This is only the beginning.

If I can get a 500GB box and download MP4 content, that's a lot of essentially free storage.

Coming back to NANOG content, I think video (not streamed but multi- path distributed video) is going to bring the networks down not by sheer bandwidth alone but by challenging the assumptions behind the engineering of the network. I don't think you need huge SANs per se to store the content either, since it is multi-source/multi-sink, the reliability is built-in.

The SPs like Verizon & ATT moving fiber to the home hoping to get in on the "value add" action are in for an awakening IMHO.

Regards

Bora ps. I apologize for the tone of my previous email. That sounded grumpier than I usually am.

My contention is simple. The content providers will not allow P2P video as a legal commercial service anytime in the near future. Furthermore, most ISPs are going to side with the content providers on this one. Therefore, discussing it at this point in time is purely academic, or more so, diversionary. Personally, I am not one for throttling high use subscribers. Outside of the fine print, which no one reads, they were sold a service of Xkbps down and Ykbps up. I could not care less how, when, or how often they use it. If you paid for it, burn it up. I have questions as to whether or not P2P video is really a smart distribution method for service provider who controls the access medium. Outside of being a service provider, I think the economic model is weak, when there can be little expectation of a large scale take rate. Ultimately, my answer is: we're not there yet. The infrastructure isn't there. The content providers aren't there. The market isn't there. The product needs a motivator. This discussion has been putting the cart before the horse. A lot of big pictures pieces are completely overlooked. We fail to question whether or not P2P sharing is a good method in delivering the product. There are a lot of factors which play into this. Unfortunately, more interest has been paid to the details of this delivery method than has been paid to whether or not the method is even worthwhile. From a big picture standpoint, I would say P2P distribution is a non- starter, too many reluctant parties to appease. From a detail standpoint, I would say P2P distribution faces too many hurdles in existing network infrastructure to be justified. Simply reference the discussion of upstream bandwidth caps and you will have a wonderful example of those hurdles. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 8, 2007, at 9:49 PM, Thomas Leavitt wrote:

So, kind of back to the original question: what is going to be the reaction of your average service provider to the presence of an increasing number of people sucking down massive amounts of video and spitting it back out again... nothing? throttling all traffic of a certain type? shutting down customers who exceed certain thresholds? or just throttling their traffic? massive upgrades of internal network hardware?

Is it your contention that there's no economic model, given the architecture of current networks, which would would generate enough revenue to offset the cost of traffic generated by P2P video?

Thomas

Gian Constantine wrote:

...

There may have been a disconnect on my part, or at least, a failure to disclose my position. I am looking at things from a provider standpoint, whether as an ISP or a strict video service provider.

I agree with you. From a consumer standpoint, a trickle or off- peak download model is the ideal low-impact solution to content delivery. And absolutely, a 500GB drive would almost be overkill on space for disposable content encoded in H.264. Excellent SD (480i) content can be achieved at ~1200 to 1500kbps, resulting in about a 1GB file for a 90 minute title. HD is almost out of the question for internet download, given good 720p at ~5500kbps, resulting in a 30GB file for a 90 minute title.

Service providers wishing to provide this service to their customers may see some success where they control the access medium (copper loop, coax, FTTH). Offering such a service to customers outside of this scope would prove very expensive, and likely, would never see a return on the investment without extensive peering arrangements. Even then, distribution rights would be very difficult to attain without very deep pockets and crippling revenue sharing. The studios really dislike the idea of transmission outside of a closed network. Don't forget. Even the titles you mentioned are still owned by very large companies interested in squeezing every possible dime from their assets. They would not be cheap to acquire.

Further, torrent-like distribution is a long long way away from sign off by the content providers. They see torrents as the number one tool of content piracy. This is a major reason I see the discussion of tripping upstream usage limits through content distribution as moot.

I am with you on the vision of massive content libraries at the fingertips of all, but I see many roadblocks in the way. And, almost none of them are technical in nature.

Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. Office: 404-748-6207 Cell: 404-808-4651 Internal Ext: x22007 constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net <mailto:constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net>

On Jan 8, 2007, at 7:51 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:

...

Please see my comments inline:

...

-----Original Message----- From: Gian Constantine [mailto:constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 4:27 PM To: Bora Akyol Cc: nanog@merit.edu <mailto:nanog@merit.edu> Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

<snip>

...

I would also argue storage and distribution costs are not asymptotically zero with scale. Well designed SANs are not cheap. Well designed distribution systems are not cheap. While price does decrease when scaled upwards, the cost of such an operation remains hefty, and increases with additions to the offered content library and a swelling of demand for this content. I believe the graph becomes neither asymptotic, nor anywhere near zero.

To the end user, there is no cost to downloading videos when they are sleeping. I would argue that other than sports (and some news) events, there is pretty much no content that needs to be real time. What the downloading (possibly 24x7) does is to stress the ISP network to its max since the assumptions of statistical multiplexing goes out the window. Think of a Tivo that downloads content off the Internet 24x7. The user is still paying for only what they pay each month, and this is "network neutrality 2.0" all over again.

...

You are correct on the long tail nature of music. But music is not consumed in a similar manner as TV and movies. Television and movies involve a little more commitment and attention. Music is more for the moment and the mood. There is an immediacy with music consumption. Movies and television require a slight degree more patience from the consumer. The freshness (debatable :-) ) of new release movies and TV can often command the required patience from the consumer. Older content rarely has the same pull.

I would argue against your distinction between visual and auditory content. There is a lot of content out there that a lot of people watch and the content is 20-40+ years old. Think Brady Bunch, Bonanza, or archived games from NFL, MLB etc. What about Smurfs (for those of us with kids)?

This is only the beginning.

If I can get a 500GB box and download MP4 content, that's a lot of essentially free storage.

Coming back to NANOG content, I think video (not streamed but multi-path distributed video) is going to bring the networks down not by sheer bandwidth alone but by challenging the assumptions behind the engineering of the network. I don't think you need huge SANs per se to store the content either, since it is multi-source/multi-sink, the reliability is built-in.

The SPs like Verizon & ATT moving fiber to the home hoping to get in on the "value add" action are in for an awakening IMHO.

Regards

Bora ps. I apologize for the tone of my previous email. That sounded grumpier than I usually am.

-- Thomas Leavitt - thomas@thomasleavitt.org - 831-295-3917 (cell)

*** Independent Systems and Network Consultant, Santa Cruz, CA ***

<thomas.vcf>

Those numbers are reasonably accurate for some networks at certain times. There is often a back and forth between BitTorrent and NNTP traffic. Many ISPs regulate BitTorrent traffic for this very reason. Massive increases in this type of traffic would not be looked upon favorably. If you considered my previous posts, you would know I agree streaming is scary on a large scale, but unicast streaming is what I reference. Multicast streaming is the real solution. Ultimately, a global multicast network is the only way to deliver these services to a large market. 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 9, 2007, at 11:01 AM, Joe Abley wrote:

On 8-Jan-2007, at 22:26, Gian Constantine wrote:

...

My contention is simple. The content providers will not allow P2P video as a legal commercial service anytime in the near future. Furthermore, most ISPs are going to side with the content providers on this one. Therefore, discussing it at this point in time is purely academic, or more so, diversionary.

There are some ISPs in North America who tell me that something like 80% of their traffic *today* is BitTorrent. I don't know how accurate their numbers are, or whether those ISPs form a representative sample, but it certainly seems possible that the traffic exists regardless of the legality of the distribution.

If the traffic is real, and growing, the question is neither academic nor diversionary.

However, if we close our eyes and accept for a minute that P2P video isn't happening, and all growth in video over the Internet will be in real-time streaming, then I think the future looks a lot more scary. When TSN.CA streamed the World Junior Hockey Championship final via Akamai last Friday, there were several ISPs in Toronto who saw their transit traffic *double* during the game.

Joe

You are correct. Today, IP multicast is limited to a few small closed networks. If we ever migrate to IPv6, this would instantly change. One of my previous assertions was the possibility of streaming video as the major motivator of IPv6 migration. Without it, video streaming to a large market, outside of multicasting in a closed network, is not scalable, and therefore, not feasible. Unicast streaming is a short-term bandwidth-hogging solution without a future at high take rates. 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 9, 2007, at 11:47 AM, Joe Abley wrote:

On 9-Jan-2007, at 11:29, Gian Constantine wrote:

...

Those numbers are reasonably accurate for some networks at certain times. There is often a back and forth between BitTorrent and NNTP traffic. Many ISPs regulate BitTorrent traffic for this very reason. Massive increases in this type of traffic would not be looked upon favorably.

The act of regulating p2p traffic is a bit like playing whack-a- mole. At what point does it cost more to play that game than it costs to build out to carry the traffic?

...

If you considered my previous posts, you would know I agree streaming is scary on a large scale, but unicast streaming is what I reference. Multicast streaming is the real solution. Ultimately, a global multicast network is the only way to deliver these services to a large market.

The trouble with IP multicast is that it doesn't exist, in a wide- scale, deployed, inter-provider sense.

Joe

The available address space for multicast in IPv4 is limited. IPv6 vastly expands this space. And here, I may have been guilty of putting the cart before the horse. Inter-AS multicast does not exist today because the motivators are not there. It is absolutely possible, but providers have to want to do it. Consumers need to see some benefit from it. Again, the benefit needs to be seen by a large market. Providers make decisions in the interest of their bottom line. A niche service is not a motivator for inter-AS multicast. If demand for variety in service provider selection grows with the proliferation of IPTV, we may see the required motivation for inter- AS multicast, which places us in a position moving to the large multicast space available in IPv6. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 9, 2007, at 1:09 PM, Joe Abley wrote:

On 9-Jan-2007, at 13:04, Gian Constantine wrote:

...

You are correct. Today, IP multicast is limited to a few small closed networks. If we ever migrate to IPv6, this would instantly change. One of my previous assertions was the possibility of streaming video as the major motivator of IPv6 migration. Without it, video streaming to a large market, outside of multicasting in a closed network, is not scalable, and therefore, not feasible. Unicast streaming is a short-term bandwidth-hogging solution without a future at high take rates.

So you are of the opinion that inter-domain multicast doesn't exist today for technical reasons, and those technical reasons are fixed in IPv6?

Joe

This is a little presumptuous on my part, but what other reason would motivate a migration to IPv6. I fail to see us running out of unicast addresses any time soon. I have been hearing IPv6 is coming for many years now. I think video service is really the only motivation for migrating. I am wrong on plenty of things. This may very well be one of them. :-) Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 9, 2007, at 1:21 PM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

On Jan 9, 2007, at 1:04 PM, Gian Constantine wrote:

...

You are correct. Today, IP multicast is limited to a few small closed networks. If we ever migrate to IPv6, this would instantly change.

I am curious. Why do you think that ?

Regards Marshall

...

One of my previous assertions was the possibility of streaming video as the major motivator of IPv6 migration. Without it, video streaming to a large market, outside of multicasting in a closed network, is not scalable, and therefore, not feasible. Unicast streaming is a short-term bandwidth-hogging solution without a future at high take rates.

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 9, 2007, at 11:47 AM, Joe Abley wrote:

...

On 9-Jan-2007, at 11:29, Gian Constantine wrote:

...

Those numbers are reasonably accurate for some networks at certain times. There is often a back and forth between BitTorrent and NNTP traffic. Many ISPs regulate BitTorrent traffic for this very reason. Massive increases in this type of traffic would not be looked upon favorably.

The act of regulating p2p traffic is a bit like playing whack-a- mole. At what point does it cost more to play that game than it costs to build out to carry the traffic?

...

If you considered my previous posts, you would know I agree streaming is scary on a large scale, but unicast streaming is what I reference. Multicast streaming is the real solution. Ultimately, a global multicast network is the only way to deliver these services to a large market.

The trouble with IP multicast is that it doesn't exist, in a wide- scale, deployed, inter-provider sense.

Joe

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 13:21:38 -0500 Marshall Eubanks <tme@multicasttech.com> wrote:

...

You are correct. Today, IP multicast is limited to a few small closed networks. If we ever migrate to IPv6, this would instantly change.

I am curious. Why do you think that ?

I could have said the same thing, but with an opposite end meaning. You take one 10+ year technology with minimal deployment and put it on top of another 10+ year technology also far from being widely deployed and you end up with something quickly approaching zero deployment, instantly. :-) John

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007, Gian Constantine wrote:

Those numbers are reasonably accurate for some networks at certain times. There is often a back and forth between BitTorrent and NNTP traffic. Many ISPs regulate BitTorrent traffic for this very reason. Massive increases in this type of traffic would not be looked upon favorably.

If you considered my previous posts, you would know I agree streaming is scary on a large scale, but unicast streaming is what I reference. Multicast streaming is the real solution. Ultimately, a global multicast network is the only way to deliver these services to a large market.

Which is why ISPs will see all of the above. There will be store-and-forward video, streaming video, on demand video, real-time interactive video, and probably 10 other types I can't think of. The concern for university or ISP networks isn't that some traffic uses 70% of their network, its that 5% of the users is using 70%, 80%, 90%, 100% of their network regardless of what that traffic is. It isn't "background" traffic using "excess" capacity, it peaks at the same time as other peak traffic times. P2P congestion isn't constrained to a single transit bottleneck, it causes bottlenecks in every path local and transit. Local congestion is often more of a concern than transit. The big question is whether the 5% of the users will continue to pay for 5% of the network, or if they use 70% of the network will they pay for 70% of the network? Will 95% of the users see their prices fall and 5% of the users see their prices rise?

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

Multicast streaming may be a big win when you're only streaming the top 5 or 10 networks (for some value of 5 or 10). What's the performance characteristics if you have 300K customers, and at any given time, 10% are watching something from the "long tail" - what's the difference between handling 30K unicast streams, and 30K multicast streams that each have only one or at most 2-3 viewers?

1/2, 1/3, etc the bandwidth for each additional viewer of the same stream? The worst case for a multicast stream is the same as the unicast stream, but the unicast stream is always the worst case. Multicast doesn't have to be real-time. If you collect interested subscribers over a longer time period, e.g. scheduled downloads over the next hour, day, week, month, you can aggregate more multicast receivers through the same stream. TiVo collects its content using a broadcast schedule. A "long tail" distribution includes not only the tail, but also the head. 30K unicast streams may be the same as 30K multicast streams, but 30K multicast streams is a lot better than 300,000 unicast streams. Although the long tail steams may have 1, 2, 3 receivers of a stream, the Parato curve also has 1, 2, 3 streams with 50K, 25K, 12K receivers. With Source-Specific Multicast addressing there isn't a shortage of multicast addresses for the typical broadcast usage. At least not until we also run out of IPv4 unicast addresses. There is rarely only one way to solve a problem. There will be multiple ways to distribute data, video, voice, etc.

Sean Donelan wrote:

1/2, 1/3, etc the bandwidth for each additional viewer of the same stream? The worst case for a multicast stream is the same as the unicast stream, but the unicast stream is always the worst case.

However unicast stream does not require state in the intermediate boxes (unless they are intentionally keeping some) while even single receiver multicast stream generates state all along the path. This will quite quickly limit the number of groups feasible. Pete

On Jan 10, 2007, at 1:49 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

Dear Valdis;

On Jan 9, 2007, at 10:02 PM, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

...

On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:29:32 EST, Gian Constantine said:

...

If you considered my previous posts, you would know I agree streaming is scary on a large scale, but unicast streaming is what I reference. Multicast streaming is the real solution. Ultimately, a global multicast network is the only way to deliver these services to a large market.

Multicast streaming may be a big win when you're only streaming the top 5 or 10 networks (for some value of 5 or 10). What's the performance characteristics if you have 300K customers, and at any given time, 10% are watching something from the "long tail" - what's the difference between handling 30K unicast streams, and 30K multicast streams that each have only one or at most 2-3 viewers?

This is a very good point. It is very reasonable to expect viewing choices to follow a Pareto distribution (such as Zipf's law or the 80-20 rule). That plus some reasonable economic assumptions make 30K commercial channels not an unreasonable assumptions in a few years. But that also implies that it is _not_ realistic to have "30K multicast streams that each have only one or at most 2-3 viewers." You may have 30K streams, most may have only a few viewers, and still have fairly large savings.

To flesh out your example, if you have 1 million viewers on your network, and if you assume 30K channels and the same Pareto distribution as web sites,

- the largest channel has 1.8% of the audience - 50% of the audience is in the largest 2700 channels - the least watched channel has ~ 10 simultaneous viewers - the multicast bandwidth usage would be 3% of the unicast.

These same models IMHO makes cell phone RF multicast not incredibly compelling. Because there is less feedback on a multicast RF, the power has to be greater for a multicast channel, and in that case the bandwidth (or RF power) savings are small or even negative, because you only have maybe 100 people on a cell watching.

s/watching/watching content from your 30K channels/ Regards

Regards Marshall

Hi Marshall,

- the largest channel has 1.8% of the audience - 50% of the audience is in the largest 2700 channels - the least watched channel has ~ 10 simultaneous viewers - the multicast bandwidth usage would be 3% of the unicast.

I'm a bit skeptic for future of channels. For making money from the long tail, you have to have to adapt your distribution to user's needs. It is not only format, codec ... but also time frame. You can organise your programs in channels, but they will not run simultaneously for all the users. I want to control my TV, I don't want to my TV jockey my life. For the distribution, you as content owner have to help the ISP find the right way to distribute your content. In example: having distribution center in Tier1 ISP network will make money from Tier2 ISP connected directly to Tier1. Probably, having CDN (your own or pay for service) will be the only one way for large scale non synchronous programing. Regards Michal

I am pretty sure we are not becoming a VoD world. Linear programming is much better for advertisers. I do not think content providers, nor consumers, would prefer a VoD only service. A handful of consumers would love it, but many would not. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 12, 2007, at 10:05 AM, Frank Bulk wrote:

If we're becoming a VOD world, does multicast play any practical role in video distribution?

Frank

-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Michal Krsek Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 2:28 AM To: Marshall Eubanks Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

Hi Marshall,

...

- the largest channel has 1.8% of the audience - 50% of the audience is in the largest 2700 channels - the least watched channel has ~ 10 simultaneous viewers - the multicast bandwidth usage would be 3% of the unicast.

I'm a bit skeptic for future of channels. For making money from the long tail, you have to have to adapt your distribution to user's needs. It is not

only format, codec ... but also time frame. You can organise your programs in channels, but they will not run simultaneously for all the users. I want to control my TV, I don't want to my TV jockey my life.

For the distribution, you as content owner have to help the ISP find the right way to distribute your content. In example: having distribution center

in Tier1 ISP network will make money from Tier2 ISP connected directly to Tier1. Probably, having CDN (your own or pay for service) will be the only one way for large scale non synchronous programing.

Regards Michal

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Gian Constantine wrote:

I am pretty sure we are not becoming a VoD world. Linear programming is much better for advertisers. I do not think content providers, nor consumers, would prefer a VoD only service. A handful of consumers would love it, but many would not.

My experience is that when you show people VoD, they like it. A lot of people won't abandon linear programming because it's easy to just watch whatever is "on", but if you give them the possibility of watching VoD (DVD sales of TV series for instance) some will definately start doing both. Same thing with HDTV, until you show it to people they couldn't care less, but when you've shown them they do start to get interested. I have been trying to find out the advertising ARPU for the cable companies for a prime time TV show in the US, ie how much would I need to pay them to get the same content but without the advertising, and then add the cost of VoD delivery. This is purely theoretical, but it would give a rough indication on what a VoD distribution model might cost the end user if we were to add that distribution channel. Does anyone know any rough figures for advertising ARPU per hour on primetime? I'd love to hear it. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Its the Energizer Bunny thread of 2007 ... 135 messages so far and still going strong. Steve Sobol wrote:

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

...

My experience is that when you show people VoD, they like it.

I have to admit the wow factor is there. But I already have access to VoD through my cable company and its set-top boxes. TV over IP brings my family exactly zero additional benefits.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Bora Akyol wrote:

The question I asked earlier was, whether the last-mile SP networks can handle 24x7 100% link utilization for all of their customers. I don't think they can. And frankly, I don't know how they are going to get revenue from the content distributors to upgrade the networks. Does Apple reimburse Comcast (my SP) when I download a song? I don't think so? What about a movie? Again, I don't think so.

You see where I am going with this.

The past solution to repetitive requests for the same content has been caching, either reactive (webcaching) or proactive (Akamaizing.) I think it is the latter we will see; service providers will push reasonably cheap servers close to the edge where they aren't too oversubscribed, and stuff their content there. A cluster of servers with terabytes of disk at a regional POP will cost a lot less than upgrading the upstream links. And even if the SPs do not want to invest in developing this product platform for themselves, the price will likely be paid by the content providers who need performance to keep subscribers. I think the biggest stumbling block isn't technical. It is a question of getting enough content to attract viewers, or alternately, getting enough viewers to attract content. Plus, you're going to a format where the ability to fast-forward commercials is a fact, not a risk, and you'll have to find a way to get advertisers' products in front of the viewer to move past pay-per-view. It's all economics and politics now. - -Dave -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFq/hz+dqB2cHPe1URAkNIAJ9/juPTl45djTF3ijZdYubXdFJoqwCgiZDm Sv2cacmnM6Lld0cRRFo9vlo= =tFPO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Said Sprunk: Caching per se doesn't apply to P2P networks, since they already do that

as part of their normal operation. The key is getting users to contact peers who are topologically closer, limiting the bits * distance product. It's ridiculous that I often get better transfer rates with peers in Europe than with ones a few miles away. The key to making things more efficient is not to limit the bandwidth to/from the customer premise, but limit it leaving the POP and between ISPs. If I can transfer at 100kB/s from my neighbors but only 10kB/s from another continent, my opportunistic client will naturally do what my ISP wants as a side effect.

The second step, after you've relocated the rate limiting points, is for ISPs to add their own peers in each POP. Edge devices would passively detect when more than N customers have accessed the same torrent, and they'd signal the ISP's peer to add them to its list. That peer would then download the content, and those N customers would get it from the ISP's peer. Creative use of rate limits and acess control could make it even more efficient, but they're not strictly necessary.

Good thinking. Where do I sign? Regarding your first point, it's really surprising that existing P2P applications don't include topology awareness. After all, the underlying TCP already has mechanisms to perceive the relative nearness of a network entity - counting hops or round-trip latency. Imagine a BT-like client that searches for available torrents, and records the round-trip time to each host it contacts. These it places in a lookup table and picks the fastest responders to initiate the data transfer. Those are likely to be the closest, if not in distance then topologically, and the ones with the most bandwidth. Further, imagine that it caches the search - so when you next seek a file, it checks for it first on the hosts nearest to it in its "routing table", stepping down progressively if it's not there. It's a form of local-pref. The third step is for content producers to directly add their torrents

to the ISP peers before releasing the torrent directly to the public. This gets "official" content pre-positioned for efficient distribution, making it perform better (from a user's perspective) than pirated content.

The two great things about this are (a) it doesn't require _any_ changes to existing clients or protocols since it exploits existing behavior, and (b) it doesn't need to cover 100% of the content or be 100% reliable, since if a local peer isn't found with the torrent, the clients will fall back to their existing behavior (albeit with lower performance).

Importantly, this option makes it perform better without making everyone else's perform worse, a big difference to a lot of proposed QOS schemes. This non-evilness is much to be preferred. Further, it also makes use of the Zipf behaviour discussed upthread - if 20 per cent of the content and 20 per cent of the users eat 80 per cent of the bandwidth, forward-deploying that 20 per cent of the content will save 80 per cent of the inter-provider bandwidth (which is what we care about, right, 'cos we're paying for it).

One thing that _does_ potentially break existing clients is forcing all of the tracker (including DHT) requests through an ISP server. The ISP could then collect torrent popularity data in one place, but more importantly it could (a) forward the request upstream, replacing the IP with its own peer, and (b) only inform clients of other peers (including the ISP one) using the same intercept point. This looks a lot more like a traditional transparent cache, with the attendant reliability and capacity concerns, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were the first mechanism to make it to market.

It's a nice idea to collect popularity data at the ISP level, because the decision on what to load into the local torrent servers could be automated. Once torrent X reaches a certain trigger level of popularity, the local server grabs it and begins serving, and the local-pref function on the clients finds it. Meanwhile, we drink coffee. However, it's a potential DOS magnet - after all, P2P is really a botnet with a badge. And the point of a topology-aware P2P client is that it seeks the nearest host, so if you constrain it to the ISP local server only, you're losing part of the point of P2P for no great saving in peering/transit. However, it's going to be competing with a deeply-entrenched pirate

culture, so the key will be attractive new users who aren't technical enough to use the existing tools via an easy-to-use interface. Not surprisingly, the same folks are working on deals to integrate BT (the protocol) into STBs, routers, etc. so that users won't even know what's going on beneath the surface -- they'll just see a TiVo-like interface and pay a monthly fee like with cable.

As long as they don't interfere with the user's right to choose someone else's content, fine. Alex

There 's other developments as well... Simple Minds and Motorpyscho live. Mashed Up. Still need to get a better grip on what the new world of Mashup business models <http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2006/11/mashup_corporations_the_shape.php>really is leading to? Have a look at this new mashup service of Fabchannel<http://www.fabchannel.com/>: until now 'just' an award-winning website which gave its members access to videos of rock concerts in Amsterdam's famous Paradiso<http://www..paradiso.nl/>concert hall. Not any more. Today Fabchannel launched a new, unique service<http://fabchannel.blogspot.com/2007/01/fabchannel-releases-unique-embedded.html>which enables music fans to create their own, custom made concert videos and then share them with others through their blogs, community profiles, websites or any other application. So suppose you have this weird music taste, which sort of urges you to create an ideal concert featuring the Simple Minds, Motorpsycho, The Fun Loving Criminals, Ojos de Brujo and Bauer & the Metrople Orchestra. *Just suppose it's true*. The only thing you need to do is click this concert together at Fabchannel's site – choosing from the many hundreds of videos available -, customize it with your own tags, image and description and then have Fabchannel automatically create the few lines of html code that you need to embed this tailor-made concert in whatever web application you want. As Fabchannel put it in their announcement, "this makes live concerts available to fans all over the world. Not centralised in one place, but where the fans gather online". And this is precisely the major concept behind the Mashup Corporation <http://www.mashupcorporations.com/>: - supply the outside world with simple, embeddable, services – support and facilitate the community that starts to use them and – watch growth and innovation take place in many unexpected ways. Fabchannel expects to attract many more fans than they currently do. Not by having more hits at their website, but rather through the potentially thousands and thousands of blogs, myspace pages, websites, forums and desktop widgets that all could reach their own niche group of music fans, mashing up the Fabplayer service with many other services that the Fabchannel crew – no matter how creative – would have never thought of. Maximise your growth, attract less people to your site. Sounds like a paradox. But not in a Mashup world. By all means view my customised concert, underneath. I'm particularly fond of the Barcelonan band Ojos de Brujo, with their very special mix of classic flamenco, hip hop and funk. Mashup music indeed. In all respects. http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2007/01/simple_minds_and_motorpyscho_l.php On 1/21/07, Joe Abley <jabley@ca.afilias.info> wrote:

On 21-Jan-2007, at 07:14, Alexander Harrowell wrote:

...

Regarding your first point, it's really surprising that existing P2P applications don't include topology awareness. After all, the underlying TCP already has mechanisms to perceive the relative nearness of a network entity - counting hops or round-trip latency. Imagine a BT-like client that searches for available torrents, and records the round-trip time to each host it contacts. These it places in a lookup table and picks the fastest responders to initiate the data transfer. Those are likely to be the closest, if not in distance then topologically, and the ones with the most bandwidth. Further, imagine that it caches the search - so when you next seek a file, it checks for it first on the hosts nearest to it in its "routing table", stepping down progressively if it's not there. It's a form of local-pref.

Remember though that the dynamics of the system need to assume that individual clients will be selfish, and even though it might be in the interests of the network as a whole to choose local peers, if you can get faster *throughput* (not round-trip response) from a remote peer, it's a necessary assumption that the peer will do so.

Protocols need to be designed such that a client is rewarded in faster downloads for uploading in a fashion that best benefits the swarm.

...

The third step is for content producers to directly add their torrents to the ISP peers before releasing the torrent directly to the public. This gets "official" content pre-positioned for efficient distribution, making it perform better (from a user's perspective) than pirated content.

If there was a big fast server in every ISP with a monstrous pile of disk which retrieved torrents automatically from a selection of popular RSS feeds, which kept seeding torrents for as long as there was interest and/or disk, and which had some rate shaping installed on the host such that traffic that wasn't on-net (e.g. to/from customers) or free (e.g. to/from peers) was rate-crippled, how far would that go to emulating this behaviour with existing live torrents? Speaking from a technical perspective only, and ignoring the legal minefield.

If anybody has tried this, I'd be interested to hear whether on-net clients actually take advantage of the local monster seed, or whether they persist in pulling data from elsewhere.

Joe

-- Evolution favors speed and that's why bacteria rule and we're just baggage living off their ecology. --Bob Frankston

Joe Abley wrote:

If anybody has tried this, I'd be interested to hear whether on-net clients actually take advantage of the local monster seed, or whether they persist in pulling data from elsewhere.

The local seed would serve bulk of the data because as soon as a piece is served from it, the client issues a new request and if the latency and bandwidth is there, as is the case for ADSL/cable clients, usually

80% of a file is served "locally". I don't think additional optimization is done nor needed in the client.

Pete

On 21-Jan-2007, at 14:07, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

Every torrent indexing site I'm aware of has RSS feeds for newly- added torrents, categorized many different ways. Any ISP that wanted to set up such a service could do so _today_ with _existing_ tools. All that's missing is the budget and a go-ahead from the lawyers.

Yes, I know.

...

If anybody has tried this, I'd be interested to hear whether on- net clients actually take advantage of the local monster seed, or whether they persist in pulling data from elsewhere.

[...] Do I have hard data? No. [...]

So, has anybody actually tried this? Speculating about how clients might behave is easy, but real experience is more interesting. Joe

Gibbard: It seems like if there's an issue here it's that different parties have different self-interests, and those whose interests aren't being served

aren't passing on the costs to the decision makers. The users' performance interests are served by getting the fastest downloads possible. The ISP's financial interests would be served by their flat rate customers getting their data from somewhere close by. If it becomes enough of a problem that the ISPs are motivated to deal with it, one approach would be to get the customers' financial interests better aligned with their own, with differentiated billing for local and long distance traffic.

That could be seen as a confiscation of a major part of the value customers derive from ISPs. Perth, on the West Coast of Australia, claims to be the world's most

isolated "capitol" city (for some definition of capitol). Next closest is probably Adelaide, at 1300 miles. Jakarta and Sydney are both 2,000 miles away. Getting stuff, including data, in and out is expensive. Like Seattle, Perth has many of its ISPs in the same downtown sky scraper, and a very active exchange point in the building. It is much cheaper for ISPs to hand off local traffic to each other than to hand off long distance traffic to their far away transit providers. Like ISPs in a lot of similar places, the ISPs in Perth charge their customers different rates for cheap local bandwidth than for expensive long distance bandwidth.

When I was in Perth a couple of years ago, I asked my usual questions about what effect this billing arrangement was having on user behavior. I was told about a Perth-only file sharing network. Using the same file sharing networks as the rest of the world was expensive, as they would end up hauling lots of data over the expensive long distance links and users didn't want to pay for that. Instead, they'd put together their own, which only allowed local users and thus guaranteed that uploads and downloads would happen at cheap local rates.

Googling for more information just now, what I found were lots of stories about police raids, so I'm not sure if it's still operational.

Brendan Behan: There is no situation that cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman. -Steve

Sprunk:

...

It's a nice idea to collect popularity data at the ISP level, because the decision on what to load into the local torrent servers could be automated.

Note that collecting popularity data could be done at the edges without forcing all tracker requests through a transparent proxy.

Yes. This is my point. It's a good thing to do, but centralising it is an ungood thing to do, because...

Once torrent X reaches a certain trigger level of popularity, the

...

local server grabs it and begins serving, and the local-pref function on the clients finds it. Meanwhile, we drink coffee. However, it's a potential DOS magnet - after all, P2P is really a botnet with a badge.

I don't see how. If you detect that N customers are downloading a torrent, then having the ISP's peer download that torrent and serve it to the customers means you consume 1/N upstream bandwidth. That's an anti-DOS :)

All true. My point is that forcing all tracker requests through a proxy makes that machine an obvious DDOS target. It's got to have an open interface to all hosts on your network on one side, and to $world on the other, and if it goes down, then everyone on your network loses service. And you're expecting traffic distributed over a large number of IP addresses because it's a P2P application, so distinguishing normal traffic from a botnet attack will be hard.

And the point of a topology-aware P2P client is that it seeks the

...

nearest host, so if you constrain it to the ISP local server only, you're losing part of the point of P2P for no great saving in peering/transit.

That's why I don't like the idea of transparent proxies for P2P; you can get 90% of the effect with 10% of the evilness by setting up sane rate-limits.

OK.

As long as they don't interfere with the user's right to choose

...

someone else's content, fine.

If you're getting it from an STB, well, there may not be a way for users to add 3rd party torrents; how many users will be able to figure out how to add the torrent URLs (or know where to find said URLs) even if there is an option? Remember, we're talking about Joe Sixpack here, not techies.

You would, however, be able to pick whatever STB you wanted (unless ISPs deliberately blocked competitors' services).

Please. Joe has a right to know these things. How long before Joe finds out anyway?

On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 12:14:56PM +0000, Alexander Harrowell wrote:

After all, the underlying TCP already has mechanisms to perceive the relative nearness of a network entity - counting hops or round-trip latency. Imagine a BT-like client that searches for available torrents, and records the round-trip time to each host it contacts. These it places in a lookup table and picks the fastest responders to initiate the data transfer.

Better yet, I was reading some introductory papers on machine learning, and there are a number of algorithms for learning. The one I think might be relevant is to use these various network parameters to predict high speed downloads, and treat as "oracles", adjusting their weights to reflect their judgement accuracy. They typically give performance e-close to the best "expert", and can easily learn which expert is the best over time, even if that changes. -- ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' -- Albert Einstein -><- <URL:http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/>

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

For the US, an analysis by Kenneth Wilbur http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=885465 , table 1, from this recent meeting in DC http://www.web.virginia.edu/media/agenda.html

Couldn't read the PDFs so I'll just go from your below figures:

shows that the cost per thousand per ad (the CPM) averaged over 5 networks and all nights of the week, was $ 24 +- 9; these are 1/2 minute ads. The mean ad level per half-hour is 5.15 minutes, so that's 10.3 x $ 24 or $ 247 / hour / 1000. This is for the evening; rates and audiences at other times or less. So, for a 1/2 hour evening show, on average the VOD would need to cost at least $ 0.12 US to re-coup the ad revenues. Popular shows get a higher CPM, so they would cost more. The Wilbur paper and some of the other papers at this conference present a lot of breakdown of these sorts of statistics, if you are interested.

Thanks for the figures. So basically if we can encode a 23 minute show (30 minutes minus ads) into a gig of traffic the network (precomputed HD 1080i with high VBR) cost would be around $0.2 (figure from my previous email, on margin) and pay $0.2 to the content owner, they would make the same amount of money as they do now? So basically the marginal cost of this service would be around $0.4-0.5 per show, and double that for a 45 minute episode (current 1 hour show format)? So question becomes whether people might be inclined to pay $1 to watch an adfree TV show? If they're paying $1.99 to iTunes for the actual download right now, they might be willing to pay $0.99 to watch it over VoD? As you said, of course this would take enormous amount of time and effort to convince the content owners of this model. Wonder if ISPs would be interested at these levels, that's also a good question. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

A technical issue that I have to deal with is that you get a 30 minute show (actually 24 minutes of content) as 30 minutes, _with the ads slots included_. To show it without ads, you actually have to take the show into a video editor and remove the ad slots, which costs video editor time, which is expensive.

Well, in this case you'd hopefully get the show directly from whoever is producing it without ads in the first place, basically the same content you might see if you buy the show on DVD.

In the USA at least, the cable companies make you pay for "bundles" to get channels you want. I have to pay for 3 bundles to get 2 channels we actually want to watch. (One of these bundle is apparently only sold if you are already getting another, which we don't actually care about.) So, it actually costs us $ 40 + / month to get the two channels we want (plus a bunch we don't.) So, it occurs to me that there is a business selling solo channels on the Internet, as is, with the ads, for order $ 5 - $ 10 per subscriber per month, which should leave a substantial profit after the payments to the networks and bandwidth costs.

There is zero problem for the cable companies to immediately compete with you by offering the same thing, as soon as there is competition. Since their channel is the most established, my guess is that you would have a hard time succeeding where they already have a footprint and established customers. Where you could do well with your proposal, is where there is no cable TV available at all. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

The cable companies have been chomping at the bit for unbundled channels for years, so have consumers. The content providers will never let it happen. Their claim is the popular channels support the diversity of not-so-popular channels. Apparently, production costs are high all around (not surprising) and most channels do not support themselves entirely. The MSOs have had a la carte on their Santa wish list for years and the content providers do not believe in Santa Claus. :-) They believe in Benjamin Franklin...lots and lots of Benjamin Franklin. Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 13, 2007, at 7:14 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

In the USA at least, the cable companies make you pay for "bundles" to get channels you want. I have to pay for 3 bundles to get 2 channels we actually want to watch. (One of these bundle is apparently only sold if you are already getting another, which we don't actually care about.) So, it actually costs us $ 40 + / month to get the two channels we want (plus a bunch we don't.) So, it occurs to me that there is a business selling solo channels on the Internet, as is, with the ads, for order $ 5 - $ 10 per subscriber per month, which should leave a substantial profit after the payments to the networks and bandwidth costs.

On Jan 13, 2007, at 3:01 PM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

Consumers, OTOH, want to buy _programs_, not _channels_.

This is a very important point - perceived disintermediation, perceived unbundling, ad reduction/elimination, and timeshifting are the main reasons that DVRs are so popular (and now, placeshifting with things like Slingbox and Tivo2Go, though it's very early days in that regard). So, at least on the face of it, there appears to be a high degree of congruence between the things which make DVRs attractive and things which make P2P attractive. As to an earlier comment about video editing in order to remove ads, this is apparently the norm in the world of people who are heavy uploaders/crossloaders of video content via P2P systems. It seems there are different 'crews' who compete to produce a 'quality product' in terms of the quality of the encoding, compression, bundling/remixing, etc.; it's very reminiscent of the 'warez' scene in that regard. I believe that many of the people engaged in the above process do so because it's become a point of pride with them in the social circles they inhabit, again a la the warez community. It's an interesting question as to whether or not the energy and 'professional pride' of this group of people could somehow be harnessed in order to provide and distribute content legally (as almost all of what people really want seems to be infringing content under the current standard model), and monetized so that they receive compensation and essentially act as the packaging and distribution arm for content providers willing to try such a model. A related question is just how important the perceived social cachet of editing/rebundling/ redistributing -infringing- content is to them, and whether normalizing this behavior from a legal standpoint would increase or decrease the motivation of the 'crews' to continue providing these services in a legitimized commercial environment. As a side note, it seems there's a growing phenomenon of 'upload cheating' taking place in the BitTorrent space, with clients such as BitTyrant and BitThief becoming more and more popular while at the same time disrupting the distribution economies of P2P networks. This has caused a great deal of consternation in the infringing- oriented P2P community of interest, with the developers/operators of various BitTorrent-type systems such as BitComet working at developing methods of detecting and blocking downloading from users who 'cheat' in this fashion; it is instructive (and more than a little ironic) to watch as various elements within the infringing- oriented P2P community attempt to outwit and police one another's behavior, especially when compared/contrasted with the same classes of ongoing conflict between the infringing-oriented P2P community, content producers, and SPs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Technology is legislation. -- Karl Schroeder

On Sat, Jan 13, 2007 at 06:11:32PM -0800, Roland Dobbins wrote:

This is a very important point - perceived disintermediation, perceived unbundling, ad reduction/elimination, and timeshifting are the main reasons that DVRs are so popular

I am an unusual case, not having much time or interest in passive entertainment, but I have moved to a MythTV box for my entertainment center. I don't have cable TV and my broadcast quality is such that I don't bother with it. I can find sufficient things on the net to occupy those idle times, and can watch them on my limited schedule and terms. The BBC in particular has some interesting documentaries, and I point you to a doubly relevant video series below. Some others have mentioned that a pay system that was significantly easier to use than the infringing technologies would turn the tide in illicit copying. Those interested in the direction things are going should read up on Peter Gutmann's paper on the costs of Vista Content Protection. It is unfortunate the content owners are more interested in making illicit copying hard than in making legal purchase and use of the content easy. I don't intend to pay for systems that I don't control, don't intend to store my data in formats I don't have documentation for, and don't anticipate paying for DRM-encoded files ever, mostly because I'd have to pay for a crippled system which reminds me of buying a car with the hood welded shut in order to have the privilege of renting content. Usually in such situations the industry is willing to engage in some loss leaders; I'd take a free crippled media player, but probably in the end would resent its closed nature, its lack of flexibility or expandability, and all the things that led me to personal computers and software in the first place.

As to an earlier comment about video editing in order to remove ads, this is apparently the norm in the world of people who are heavy uploaders/crossloaders of video content via P2P systems. It seems there are different 'crews' who compete to produce a 'quality product' in terms of the quality of the encoding, compression, bundling/remixing, etc.; it's very reminiscent of the 'warez' scene in that regard.

This is an interesting free video series on the illicit movie copying "scene": http://www.welcometothescene.com/ It is somewhat unusual in that most of the videos are split screenshots, and most of the conversation is typed, and that an understanding of various technical topics is necessary to be able to follow the show at all.

It's an interesting question as to whether or not the energy and 'professional pride' of this group of people could somehow be harnessed in order to provide and distribute content legally (as almost all of what people really want seems to be infringing content under the current standard model), and monetized so that they receive compensation and essentially act as the packaging and distribution arm for content providers willing to try such a model.

IMHO I fail to see how they would be (or remain) any different from the current distribution channels. It's akin to asking if the open-source community could somehow be harnessed and paid for creating software. Yes; it's already being done, and there are qualitative differences in the results. When there is no financial interest, artisanship and craftsmanship predominate as motivators. When driven by financial interests, often those languish, and the market forces of suckification move the product inexorably from one which is the most desirable to use, to one with as many built-in annoyances and advertisements as the end-user will tolerate, all the useless features necessary to confuse the purchaser into rational ignorance, and all plausible mechanisms to lock the user in over time (or otherwise raise their switching costs). But I'm not cynical... ;-) This is way off charter, but I recently read of a study where art students were asked to create some artwork. One group was given a financial reward. The results were anonymized, and evaluators judged the results. Once unblinded, the study found that the group with the financial reward was statistically significantly judged as less creative and as producing lower-quality work.

As a side note, it seems there's a growing phenomenon of 'upload cheating' taking place in the BitTorrent space, with clients such as BitTyrant and BitThief becoming more and more popular while at the same time disrupting the distribution economies of P2P networks. This has caused a great deal of consternation in the infringing- oriented P2P community of interest, with the developers/operators of various BitTorrent-type systems such as BitComet working at developing methods of detecting and blocking downloading from users who 'cheat' in this fashion; it is instructive (and more than a little ironic) to watch as various elements within the infringing- oriented P2P community attempt to outwit and police one another's behavior, especially when compared/contrasted with the same classes of ongoing conflict between the infringing-oriented P2P community, content producers, and SPs.

It has a poetic quality that one could only surpass by using someone's botnet to DDoS them every time you catch them online. Reminds me of "The Grifters". -- ``If you can't trust a fixed fight, what can you trust?'' -- Miller's Crossing -><- <URL:http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/>

On 12 Jan 2007, at 15:26, Gian Constantine wrote:

I am pretty sure we are not becoming a VoD world. Linear programming is much better for advertisers. I do not think content providers, nor consumers, would prefer a VoD only service. A handful of consumers would love it, but many would not.

There are already cheap and efficient ways of doing VoD-like services with a PVR - I timeshift almost everything that I want to watch because it's on at inconvenient times. So shows get spooled to disk whilst they're broadcasted efficiently, and I can watch them later. Any sort of Broadcast-Video-over-IP system that employed that technology would be a winner. You don't need to 'broadcast' the show in real time either if it's going to be spooled to disk, even as it is viewed. -a

On 15-Jan-2007, at 08:48, Michal Krsek wrote:

This system works perfectly in our linear-line distribution (channels). As user you can choose time you want to see the show, but not the show itself. Capacity on PVR device is finite and if you don't want to waste the space with any broadcasted content you have to program the device. I have ten channels in my cable TV and sometimes I'm confused what to record. Beeing in the US and paid for ~100 channels will make me mad to crawl channel schedules :-)

So the technology is nice, but not a "What you want is what you get". So you cannot address the long tail using this technology.

These are all UI details. The (Scientific Atlanta, I think) PVRs that Rogers Cable gives subscribers here in Ontario let you specify the *names* of shows that you like, rather than selecting specific channels and times; I seem to think you can also tell it to automatically ditch old recorded material when disk space becomes low. One thing that may not be obvious to people who haven't had this misfortune of consuming it at first hand is that North American TV, awash with channels as it is, contains a lot of duplicated content. The same episode of the same show might be broadcast tens of times per week; the same advertisement might be broadcast tens of times per hour. How much more programming would the existing networks support if they were able to reduce those retransmissions, relying on the ubiquity of set-top boxes with PVR functionality? Joe

At 09:50 a.m. 15/01/2007 -0500, Gian Constantine wrote:

The problem with this all (or mostly) VoD model is the entrenched culture. In countries outside of the U.S. with smaller channel lineups, an all VoD model might be easier to migrate to over time. In the U.S., where we have 200+ channel lineups, consumers have become accustomed to the massive variety and instant gratification of a linear lineup. If you leave it to the customer to choose their programs, and then wait for them to arrive and be viewed, the instant gratification aspect is lost. This is important to consumers here.

While I do not think an all or mostly VoD model will work for consumers in U.S. in the near term (next 5 years), it may work in the long term (7-10 years). There are so many obstacles in the way from a business side of things, though.

I don't see many obstacles for content and neither do other broadcasters. The broadcast world is changing. Late last year ABC or NBC (sorry brain fade) announced the lay off of 700 News staff, saying news is no longer king. Instead they are moving to a strategy similar to that of the BBC. ie lots of on-demand content on the Internet. Rich

On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 11:53:25AM +1300, Richard Naylor wrote: [...]

I don't see many obstacles for content and neither do other broadcasters. The broadcast world is changing. Late last year ABC or NBC (sorry brain fade) announced the lay off of 700 News staff, saying news is no longer king.

Was it ever? Allegedly Murdoch's Sky only launched their Sky News channel so they could claim to be a reputable broadcaster.

Of course, this below is for inter-domain. There is no shortage of multicast walled garden deployments. Regards Marshall On Jan 12, 2007, at 7:44 PM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

On Jan 12, 2007, at 10:05 AM, Frank Bulk wrote:

...

If we're becoming a VOD world, does multicast play any practical role in video distribution?

Not to end users.

I think multicast is used a fair amount for precaching; presumably that would increase in this scenario.

Regards Marshall

P.S. Of course, I do not agree we are moving to a pure VOD world. I agree with Michal Krsek in this regard.

...

Frank

-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Michal Krsek Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 2:28 AM To: Marshall Eubanks Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

Hi Marshall,

...

- the largest channel has 1.8% of the audience - 50% of the audience is in the largest 2700 channels - the least watched channel has ~ 10 simultaneous viewers - the multicast bandwidth usage would be 3% of the unicast.

I'm a bit skeptic for future of channels. For making money from the long tail, you have to have to adapt your distribution to user's needs. It is not

only format, codec ... but also time frame. You can organise your programs in channels, but they will not run simultaneously for all the users. I want to control my TV, I don't want to my TV jockey my life.

For the distribution, you as content owner have to help the ISP find the right way to distribute your content. In example: having distribution center

in Tier1 ISP network will make money from Tier2 ISP connected directly to Tier1. Probably, having CDN (your own or pay for service) will be the only one way for large scale non synchronous programing.

Regards Michal

On Jan 10, 2007, at 5:42 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

...

between handling 30K unicast streams, and 30K multicast streams that each have only one or at most 2-3 viewers?

My opinion on the downside of video multicast is that if you want it realtime your SLA figures on acceptable packet loss goes down from fractions of a percent into the thousands of a percent, at least with current implementations of video.

Actually, this is true with unicast as well. This can (I think) largely be handled by a fairly moderate amount of Forward Error Correction. Regards Marshall

Imagine internet multicast and having customers complain about bad video quality and trying to chase down that last 1/100000 packet loss that makes peoples video pixelate every 20-30 minutes, and the video stream doesn't even originate in your network?

For multicast video to be easier to implement we need more robust video codecs that can handle jitter and packet loss that are currently present in networks and handled acceptably by TCP for unicast.

-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Sounds a little like low buffering and sparse I-frames, but I'm no MPEG expert. :-) Gian Anthony Constantine Senior Network Design Engineer Earthlink, Inc. On Jan 10, 2007, at 5:42 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

On Tue, 9 Jan 2007, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

...

between handling 30K unicast streams, and 30K multicast streams that each have only one or at most 2-3 viewers?

My opinion on the downside of video multicast is that if you want it realtime your SLA figures on acceptable packet loss goes down from fractions of a percent into the thousands of a percent, at least with current implementations of video.

Imagine internet multicast and having customers complain about bad video quality and trying to chase down that last 1/100000 packet loss that makes peoples video pixelate every 20-30 minutes, and the video stream doesn't even originate in your network?

For multicast video to be easier to implement we need more robust video codecs that can handle jitter and packet loss that are currently present in networks and handled acceptably by TCP for unicast.

-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

On Mon Jan 08, 2007 at 10:26:30PM -0500, Gian Constantine wrote:

My contention is simple. The content providers will not allow P2P video as a legal commercial service anytime in the near future.

Furthermore, most ISPs are going to side with the content providers on this one. Therefore, discussing it at this point in time is purely academic, or more so, diversionary.

In my experience, content providers want to use P2P because it "reduces" their distribution costs (in quotes, because I'm not convinced it does, in the real world). Content providers don't care whether access providers like P2P or not, just whether it works or not. On one hand, access providers are putting in place rate limiting or blocking of P2P (subject to discussions of how effective those are), but on the other hand, content providers are saying that P2P is the future... Simon

Gian Constantine wrote:

I agree with you. From a consumer standpoint, a trickle or off-peak download model is the ideal low-impact solution to content delivery. And absolutely, a 500GB drive would almost be overkill on space for disposable content encoded in H.264. Excellent SD (480i) content can be achieved at ~1200 to 1500kbps, resulting in about a 1GB file for a 90 minute title. HD is almost out of the question for internet download, given good 720p at ~5500kbps, resulting in a 30GB file for a 90 minute title.

Kilobits, not bytes. So it's 3.7GB for 720p 90minutes at 5.5Mbps. Regularly transferred over the internet. Popular content in the size category 2-4GB has tens of thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of downloads from a single tracker. Saying it's "out of question" does not make it go away. But denial is usually the first phase anyway. Pete

On Jan 9, 2007, at 1:51 AM, Bora Akyol wrote: [...]

I would argue that other than sports (and some news) events, there is pretty much no content that needs to be real time.

I'm not sure I agree. I've noticed that almost any form of live TV, with the exception of news and sports programming, uses the benefit of real time transmission to allow audience interaction. For instance: - Phone in discussion and quiz shows - Any show with voting - Video request shows Not only does this type of programming require real-time distribution, as these shows are quite often cheaper to produce than pre-recorded entertainment or documentaries they tend to fill a large portion of the schedule. In some cases the show producers share revenue from the phone calls, too. That makes them more attractive to commissioning editors, I suspect. Leo

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Gian Constantine wrote:

I would also argue storage and distribution costs are not asymptotically zero with scale. Well designed SANs are not cheap. Well designed distribution systems are not cheap. While price does decrease when scaled upwards, the cost of such an operation remains hefty, and increases with additions to the offered content library and a swelling of demand for this content. I believe the graph becomes neither asymptotic, nor anywhere near zero.

Lets see what I can do using today's technology: According to the itunes website they have over 3.5 million songs. Lets call it 4 million. Assume a decent bit rate and make them average 10 MB each. That's 40 TB which would cost me $6k per month to store on Amazon S3. Lets assume we use Amazon EC3 to only allow torrents of the files to be downloaded and we transfer each file twice per month. Total cost around $20k per month or $250k per year. Add $10k to pay somebody to create the interface and put up a few banner ads and it'll be self supporting. That sort of setup could come out of petty cash for larger ISPs marketing Departments. Of course there are a few problems with the above business model (mostly legal) but infrastructure costs are not one of them. Plug in your own numbers for movies and tv shows but 40 TB for each will probably be enough. -- Simon J. Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/ "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.

Gian Constantine wrote:

Well, yes. My view on this subject is U.S.-centric. In fairness to me, this is NANOG, not AFNOG or EuroNOG or SANOG.

I thought Québec and Mexico did belong to the North American Network too. ...

I agree there is a market for ethnic and niche content, but it is not the broad market many companies look for. The investment becomes much more of a gamble than marketing the latest and greatest (again debatable :-) ) to the larger market of...well...everyone.

There is only a minority in north america who happens to be white and only some of them do speak english. I remember the times when I could watch mexican tv transmitted from a studio in florida. Today everything is crypted on the sats. We have to use the internet when we want someting special here in germany. I guess Karin and me are not the only ones who do net even own a tv set. The internet is the richer choice. Even if it is mostly audio, video is nasty overseas, I am shure it does make an impact in north america. Listening to my VoIP fone is mostly impossible now at least overseas. I used to be able to fone overseas. but even the landline has deteriorated because the fonecompanies have switched to VoIP themselves. Cheers Peter and Karin -- Peter and Karin Dambier Cesidian Root - Radice Cesidiana Rimbacher-Strasse 16 D-69509 Moerlenbach-Bonsweiher +49(6209)795-816 (Telekom) +49(6252)750-308 (VoIP: sipgate.de) mail: peter@peter-dambier.de mail: peter@echnaton.serveftp.com http://iason.site.voila.fr/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/iason/ http://www.cesidianroot.com/

On Sun, 7 Jan 2007, Joe Abley wrote:

Setting aside the issue of what particular ISPs today have to pay, the real cost of sending data, best-effort over an existing network which has spare capacity and which is already supported and managed is surely zero.

As long as the additional traffic doesn't exceed the existing capacity. But what happens when 5% of the paying subscribers use 95% of the existing capacity, and then the other 95% of the subscribers complain about poor performance? What is the real cost to the ISP needing to upgrade the network to handle the additional traffic being generated by 5% of the subscribers when there isn't "spare" capacity?

If I acquire content while I'm sleeping, during a low dip in my ISP's usage profile, the chances good that are nobody incurs more costs that month than if I had decided not to acquire it. (For example, you might imagine an RSS feed with BitTorrent enclosures, which requires no human presence to trigger the downloads.)

The reason why many universities buy rate-shaping devices is dorm users don't restrain their application usage to only off-peak hours, which may or may not be related to sleeping hours. If peer-to-peer applications restrained their network usage during periods of peak network usage so it didn't result in complaints from other users, it would probably have a better reputation.

If I acquire content the same time as many other people, since what I'm watching is some coordinated, streaming event, then it seems far more likely that the popularity of the content will lead to network congestion, or push up a peak on an interface somewhere which will lead to a requirement for a circuit upgrade, or affect a 95%ile transit cost, or something.

Depends on when and where the replication of the content is taking place. Broadcasting is a very efficient way to distribute the same content to large numbers of people, even when some people may watch it later. You can broadcast either streaming or file downloads. You can also unicast either streaming or file downloads. Unicast tends to be less efficient to distribute the same content to large numbers of people. Then there is lots of events in the middle. Some content is only of interest to a some people. Streaming vs download and broadcast vs unicast. There are lots of combinations. One way is not necessarily the best way for every situation. Sometimes store-and-forward e-mail is useful, other times instant messenger communications is useful. Things may change over time. For example, USENET has mostly stopped being a widely flooded through every ISP and large institution, and is now accessed on demand by users from a few large aggregators. Distribution methods aren't mutually exclusive.

If asynchronous delivery of content is as free as I think it is, and synchronous delivery of content is as expensive as I suspect it might be, it follows that there ought to be more of the former than the latter going on.

If it turned out that there was several orders of magnitude more content being shifted around the Internet in a "download when you are able; watch later" fashion than there is content being streamed to viewers in real-time I would be thoroughly unsurprised.

If you limit yourself to the Internet, you exclude a lot of content being shifted around and consumed in the world. The World Cup or Superbowl are still much bigger events than Internet-only events. Broadcast television shows with even bottom ratings are still more popular than most Internet content. The Internet is good for narrowcasting, but its still working on mass audience events. "Asynchronous receivers" are more expensive and usually more complicated than "synchronous receivers." Not everyone owns a computer or spends a several hundred dollars for a DVR. If you already own a computer, you might consider it "free." But how many people want to buy a computer for each television set? In the USA, Congress debated whether it should spend $40 per digital receiver so people wouldn't lose their over the air broadcasting. Gadgets that interest 5% of the population versus reaching 95% of the population may have different trade-offs.

But what happens when 5% of the paying subscribers use 95% of the existing capacity, and then the other 95% of the subscribers complain about poor performance?

"Capacity" is too vague of a word here. If we assume that the P2P software can be made to recognize the ISP's architecture and prefer peers that are topologically nearby, then the issue focuses on the ISP's own internal capacity. It should not have a major impact on the ISP's upstream capacity which involves stuff that is rented from others (transit, peering). Also, because P2P traffic has its sources evenly distributed, it makes a case for cheap local BGP peering connections, again, to offload traffic from more expensive upstream transit/peering.

What is the real cost to the ISP needing to upgrade the network to handle the additional traffic being generated by 5% of the subscribers when there isn't "spare" capacity?

In the case of DSL/Cable providers, I suspect it is mostly in the Ethernet switches that tie the subscriber lines into the network.

The reason why many universities buy rate-shaping devices is dorm users don't restrain their application usage to only off-peak hours, which may

or may not be related to sleeping hours. If peer-to-peer applications restrained their network usage during periods of peak network usage so it didn't result in complaints from other users, it would probably have a better reputation.

I am suggesting that ISP folks should be cooperating with P2P software developers. Typically, the developers have a very vague understanding of how the network is structured and are essentially trying to reverse engineer network capabilities. It should not be too difficult to develop P2P clients that receive topology hints from their local ISPs. If this results in faster or more reliable/predictable downloads, then users will choose to use such a client.

The Internet is good for narrowcasting, but its still working on mass audience events.

Then, perhaps we should not even try to use the Internet for mass audience events. Is there something wrong with the current broadcast model? Did TV replace radio? Did radio replace newspapers? --Michael Dillon

Dear Sean; On Jan 8, 2007, at 2:34 AM, Sean Donelan wrote:

On Sun, 7 Jan 2007, Joe Abley wrote:

...

Setting aside the issue of what particular ISPs today have to pay, the real cost of sending data, best-effort over an existing network which has spare capacity and which is already supported and managed is surely zero.

As long as the additional traffic doesn't exceed the existing capacity.

But what happens when 5% of the paying subscribers use 95% of the existing capacity, and then the other 95% of the subscribers complain about poor performance? What is the real cost to the ISP needing to upgrade the network to handle the additional traffic being generated by 5% of the subscribers when there isn't "spare" capacity?

...

If I acquire content while I'm sleeping, during a low dip in my ISP's usage profile, the chances good that are nobody incurs more costs that month than if I had decided not to acquire it. (For example, you might imagine an RSS feed with BitTorrent enclosures, which requires no human presence to trigger the downloads.)

The reason why many universities buy rate-shaping devices is dorm users don't restrain their application usage to only off-peak hours, which may or may not be related to sleeping hours. If peer- to-peer applications restrained their network usage during periods of peak network usage so it didn't result in complaints from other users, it would probably have a better reputation.

Do not count on demand being geographically localized or limited to certain times of day. The audience for streaming is world-wide (for an example, see http://www.americafree.tv/Ads/geographical.html for a few hour slice in the early evening EST on a Sunday - note, BTW, that this is for English language content). The roughly equal distribution to the US and the EU is entirely normal; typically the peak-to-trough bandwidth usage variation during a day is less than a factor of 2, and frequently it disappears all together. Regards Marshall

...

If I acquire content the same time as many other people, since what I'm watching is some coordinated, streaming event, then it seems far more likely that the popularity of the content will lead to network congestion, or push up a peak on an interface somewhere which will lead to a requirement for a circuit upgrade, or affect a 95%ile transit cost, or something.

Depends on when and where the replication of the content is taking place.

Broadcasting is a very efficient way to distribute the same content to large numbers of people, even when some people may watch it later. You can broadcast either streaming or file downloads. You can also unicast either streaming or file downloads. Unicast tends to be less efficient to distribute the same content to large numbers of people. Then there is lots of events in the middle. Some content is only of interest to a some people.

Streaming vs download and broadcast vs unicast. There are lots of combinations. One way is not necessarily the best way for every situation. Sometimes store-and-forward e-mail is useful, other times instant messenger communications is useful. Things may change over time. For example, USENET has mostly stopped being a widely flooded through every ISP and large institution, and is now accessed on demand by users from a few large aggregators.

Distribution methods aren't mutually exclusive.

...

If asynchronous delivery of content is as free as I think it is, and synchronous delivery of content is as expensive as I suspect it might be, it follows that there ought to be more of the former than the latter going on.

If it turned out that there was several orders of magnitude more content being shifted around the Internet in a "download when you are able; watch later" fashion than there is content being streamed to viewers in real-time I would be thoroughly unsurprised.

If you limit yourself to the Internet, you exclude a lot of content being shifted around and consumed in the world. The World Cup or Superbowl are still much bigger events than Internet-only events. Broadcast television shows with even bottom ratings are still more popular than most Internet content. The Internet is good for narrowcasting, but its still working on mass audience events.

"Asynchronous receivers" are more expensive and usually more complicated than "synchronous receivers." Not everyone owns a computer or spends a several hundred dollars for a DVR. If you already own a computer, you might consider it "free." But how many people want to buy a computer for each television set? In the USA, Congress debated whether it should spend $40 per digital receiver so people wouldn't lose their over the air broadcasting.

Gadgets that interest 5% of the population versus reaching 95% of the population may have different trade-offs.