Vint Cerf Says Fix the Net With More Pipe 341
CWmike writes "While ISPs may fret about Netflix, Hulu and other streaming media services saturating their bandwidth, Internet forefather Vint Cerf has a simple answer for this potential problem: Increase bandwidth exponentially. With sufficient bandwidth, streaming video services of prerecorded content wouldn't be necessary, said the now-technology evangelist at Google. With sufficient throughput, the entire file of a movie or television show could be downloaded in a fraction of the time that it would take to stream the content. Cerf, speaking at Juniper Network's Nextwork conference, spoke about the company's decision to outfit Kansas City with fiber-optic connections that Google claims will be 100 times faster than today's services. The purpose of the project was 'to demonstrate what happens when you have gigabit speeds available,' Cerf said. 'Some pretty dramatic applications are possible.' One obvious application is greater access to high-definition video, he explained. 'When you are watching video today, streaming is a very common practice. At gigabit speeds, a video file [can be transferred] faster than you can watch it,' he said. 'So rather than [receiving] the bits out in a synchronous way, instead you could download the hour's worth of video in 15 seconds and watch it at your leisure.' He adds: 'It actually puts less stress on the network to have the higher speed of operation.'"
Happy Birthday Vint! (Score:4, Informative)
(It's today.)
Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think you've caught the point. It isn't merely that 100% of the network won't be required if we are faster. If the connection is fast enough, the video doesn't have to be streamed through difficult to throttle udp but instead can be transferred as a network friendly tcp transfer. UDP video transfer is a dirty hack implemented because it was the only way to get video of watchable quality through. We are no longer in the days of choppy unwatchable video on the internet and if we move away from dirty hacks like udp streaming I doubt anyone would go back to it.
Once 4K cameras become affordable (Score:4, Informative)
But people will just want to stream 1080p and then 2K
There isn't much difference here: 2K is 2048x1080, which is less than 7% bigger than standard 1080p.
and then 4K video
We can solve that once 4K video cameras become affordable for home use.
And can somebody explain to me why downloading a video in 1 gigantic burst is better than streaming it at a more steady rate?
If the entire work is cached locally, fast forward and rewind don't require a round trip to a server, and they don't require transcoding to create a new keyframe at the seek point. Nor will re-watching a video require sending it again.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:2, Informative)
through difficult to throttle udp
I haven't had any difficulty throttling any sort of IP stream in almost 15 years. UDP, TCP, ICMP, IGMP, RAW (otherwise unknown payloads), you name it. Just because your little OS or linksys router doesn't do it doesn't mean real network equipment doesn't. Literally 15 years ago, throttling UDP to specific rates with no problem at all.
UDP video transfer is a dirty hack implemented because it was the only way to get video of watchable quality through.
UDP is used because a lost packet doesn't stop the stream, missed packet is just a missed packet. If its a miss on a small portion of a moving image, you probably won't notice. A lost packet in a TCP stream could result in no data flowing at the logical level for several seconds. This hasn't gone away or changed and never will, packets WILL get lost and need to be retransmitted. When your video stops playing for a few seconds while it waits for the missing packet, then finally requests a retransmit, then you're going to notice.
I'm not sure what you think it has to do with picture quality, since its all digital data, the quality doesn't change just because you put it over a different protocol. Do you also believe that the file format changes when you move it from your PC to PC using a USB stick rather than a CD?
You probably want to get a clue before you start telling everyone to dump UDP ... especially since you clearly have no fucking clue why its used.