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

[email protected]

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

Please see my comments inline:

-----Original Message-----

From: Gian Constantine [mailto:[email protected]] 

Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 4:27 PM

To: Bora Akyol

Cc: [email protected]

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.