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Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

  • From: Marshall Eubanks
  • Date: Thu Jan 11 02:31:10 2007


On Jan 10, 2007, at 11:19 PM, Thomas Leavitt wrote:

It seems to me that multi-cast is a technical solution for the bandwidth consumption problems precipitated by real-time Internet video broadcast, but it doesn't seem to me that the bulk of current (or even future) Internet video traffic is going to be amenable to distribution via multi-cast - or, at least, separate and apart from whatever happens with multi-cast, a huge and growing volume of video traffic will be flowing over the 'net...

I would fully agree with this.


I don't think consumers are going to accept having to wait for a "scheduled broadcast" of whatever piece of video content they want to view - at least if the alternative is being able to download and watch it nearly

That's the pull model. The push model will also exist. Both will make money.

immediately. That said, for the most popular content with the widest audience, scheduled multi-cast makes sense... especially when the alternative is waiting for a large download to finish - contrawise, it doesn't seem reasonable to be constantly multi- casting *every* piece of video content anyone might ever want to watch (that in itself would consume an insane amount of bandwidth). How many pieces of video content are there on YouTube? How many more can we expect to emerge over the next decade, given the ever decreasing cost of entry for reasonably decent video production?

Lots. Remember, of course, Sturgeon's law. But, lots. If you want numbers, 10^4 channels, billions of pieces of uncommercial content, and millions of pieces of commercial content.


All of which, to me, leaves the fundamental issue of how the upsurge in traffic is going to be handled left unresolved.


I think that technically, we have a pretty good idea how. I think that the real fundamental question is whose business models will allow them to make a profit from this upsurge.

Thomas 


Regards
Marshall


Simon Lockhart wrote:
On Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:52:02AM +0000, [email protected] wrote:

Given that the broadcast model for streaming content
is so successful, why would you want to use the
Internet for it? What is the benefit?


How many channels can you get on your (terrestrial) broadcast receiver?

If you want more, your choices are satellite or cable. To get cable, you need to be in a cable area. To get satellite, you need to stick a dish on the side of your house, which you may not want to do, or may not be allowed
to do.

With IPTV, you just need a phoneline (and be close enough to the exchange/CO
to get decent xDSL rate). In the UK, I'm already delivering 40+ channels over
IPTV (over inter-provider multicast, to any UK ISP that wants it).

Simon



--
Thomas Leavitt - [email protected] - 831-295-3917 (cell)

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

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