Will Netflix Destroy the Internet? 577
nicholasjay writes "Netflix is swallowing America's bandwidth and it probably won't be long before it comes for the rest of the world. That's one of the headlines from Sandvine's Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomena Report, an exhaustive look at what people around the world are doing with their Internet lines. According to Sandvine, Netflix accounts for 20 percent of downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America. That's an amazing share — it beats that of YouTube, iTunes, Hulu, and, perhaps most tellingly, the peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol BitTorrent."
So, how long before... (Score:5, Interesting)
How does never work for you (Score:3, Informative)
Most ISP's in the US already have a (high) data cap. Whatever you do under that, they will not care. If there were (or are) any ISP's with "unlimited" bandwidth then they will have to change policy also to have some kind of data cap, because they do not get "unlimited" bandwidth from the people they purchase internet connectivity from.
Re:How does never work for you (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How does never work for you (Score:5, Informative)
A classic study would be Canada. When Netflix came to Canada or announced plans to do so, Rogers (cable) immediately LOWERED their measly caps from 60GB to 30GB-ish. Bell (DSL) heavily lobbied the CRTC so DSL connections can be billed by the byte, so that ISPs using Bell's lines are at a huge disadvantage. Shaw (cable) already announced plans to charge overage charges at $2/GB (for "lite" and "high speed" users) or $1/GB (for the faster plans - warp/nitro). You can pay extra for more - $5 for 10GB and the like. Right now it's a trial, but they're planning on rolling it out.
SO yeah, Netflix's potential for clogging the Internet won't happen. Ditto the "bandwidth crunch".
Heck, the FCC may make stupid rules, but in Canada without those rules, things are a lot worse. I can't have digital cable without buying and paying monthly fees on the cable provider's box (which only works with that provider - they won't (and don't have to) allow activation of 3rd party boxes). No Firewire video at all. No cablecard (crap, but at least I could use my TiVo). No unencrypted digital cable (if I want high-def for free, I have to stick an antenna up - no rules saying all those channels must be unencrypted QAM), etc.
Re:How does never work for you (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, Sandvine's claims for Canada call into question their American data. Sandvine claims that Netflix accounts for 95% of data in Canada during peak hours, and this only a month after launch with a currently very small customer base. If they're going to claim such ridiculous and provably false figures (several independent ISPs have spoken up saying that, while they have noticed an increase, 95% is a load of crock), how can you trust their US data?
Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does your electrical company increase your rates or move to a higher tier if you run appliances all day long? What about your water company? I know in my area both of these apply. Which is why it's cheaper to have water trucked in than it is to use the old garden hose. If I was closer to a fire hydrant I could ask the water company to run a line and hook up a meter as well.
Or are you just a bit sore that your 500GB limit, which probably equates to 100 netflix movies a month will be used up? If you're watching 100 netflix movies a month I suggest you try using that other service called..
FRESH AIR.
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"500GB Limit."
I love how retards like you fail to understand how bandwidth works.
You're not paying for a certain amount of downloads per month as if you were buying gas. You're paying for a pipe with a certain momentary capacity measurable in a very small time frame, say 100mbit/second.
When they start advertising "high max data speeds" but then implement a cap that works out to a piddly-crap connection worse than dialup (the standard crapass USA ISP like Comcrap, or Coxsuckers at 150GB limit equals 0.45 Mbi
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Don't have Netflix so I'm not sure what their bandwidth "cost" per hour is, but on Hulu an average 1 hour show is ~ 150-200MB.
That 36GB per month (and I'm assuming its GBytes and not Gbits that the limit is measured in), would translate to ~180 hours of Programming barring other uses, which I understand is unrealistic.
Assuming you only watch 90 hours of programming a month (a ~4.5 weeks a month that translates to 20 hours a week), that still leaves 18GB of "other" traffic (music, web, chat, VoIP (which shou
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>>>$1.50 per Gb!
So if you're paying $40 for 36 GB, that's $1.11. Yep they are ripping your off by raising their rates.
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2-3 movies of 90 minutes each a week ok let's see.
For a household of 4 people (not at all uncommon outside of /. readers), around one hour of video entertainment (movie, TV, etc.) per week per person seems like almost nothing to me.
And, if you are using Hulu, Netflix, etc., as a replacement for cable TV, then 5 hours per week per person isn't outrageous, either.
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I thought networking technology also evolved. I mean 15 years ago I had a 166 pentium MMX and now I have a 3GHz Core i7. 15 years ago my LAN was 10mbit on Coax but now I have Gigabit.
But for some reason, ISP gear doesn't seem to grow as fast as consumer stuff? Cause I keep hearing about T3s and OC-3s and 622mbps. How much fibre capacity unused out there,d ont you think? I mean, a 12-core fibre carries 144 strands, or 72 full-duplex connections. Almost 10 years ago, a Cisco 12000 series router could push 40g
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Yes. Here in Ontario usage during peak periods is charged at a higher rate than off-peak periods. Not exactly the same method ISPs are using, but the idea is the same: To reduce consumption of an infrastructure that cannot support the demand.
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No. 1080p with AC3 surround compressed at a mpeg4 is only 12GB per movie. Split out the AC3 into separate tracks and compress the crap out of it to 160kbps and you can lower it by another .5GB. and this low bitrate is acceptable to 99% of all netflix users.
But, here is the fun.... you get 720p max from netflix... so it's actually 5-6Gb from them.
Have you actually tried to do any bluray compression to mpeg4? 25GB is for uncompressed or mildly compressed only 2 Blurays I have ripped have had any main featur
The answer is - Never (Score:5, Interesting)
Never.
Netflix is not Bittorent and has a well defined source which is a commercial entity. So the ISP knows after who it needs to go. Further to this, as it is not P2P traffic Netflix itself has no choice but to grow its infrastructure if it is to retain its service level. Otherwise it will congest its links to ISPs and kill its own service offering.
So Netflix will have to start building its network infrastructure and peer with ISPs close to the user across the US and the globe.
We have already been through this. Before it was Google/Youtube destroying the Internet. Well it did not. Simply Google now has a backbone which can put most tier 1s to shame and peers with anyone anywhere.
Most importantly, the number of links and peerings will increase so the end result will be GOOD for the Internet as it will become more resilient (Assuming ISPs use local/distributed peering not just for Netflix but for the other peering).
Re:The answer is - Never (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix is not Bittorent and has a well defined source which is a commercial entity. So the ISP knows after who it needs to go.
Netflix already pays its ISPs. There's no one for anyone to "go after".
I think he means things like cache engines (Score:5, Interesting)
You go to the big (and maybe even small) ISPs and say "We'll provide you with hardware to store Netflix movies. When customers request movies that are on there, it'll come from those, rather than our servers. We pay all the hardware costs, you save on bandwidth."
Akamai does just this. They peer with all sorts of people to get their cache engines in ISPs. At the university I work at, they came to us. The deal was they'd provide the computers (3 servers last I checked) and a switch. We set up our networking to go to those first. Net effect is when you ask for something that has been cached on there, you get it locally, rather than from one of their server farms. Keeps their bandwidth costs down, our bandwidth costs down, and increases speed. Now not everything is stored there, they host a lot of shit. I don't know how their computers decide what to keep where. Some popular things (like Microsoft updates) I think get auto cached, others I think it is based on demand. However even with just a fraction of their content cached, it makes a big difference in bandwidth.
Netflix may need to start doing the same. I mean video is the ultimate in things that could be multi-cast, except that we want it on demand. Well cache engines work well for that. Since the video never changes or gets updated you push it out when you get it, and then those serve it up to people as often as they want it.
Re:I think he means things like cache engines (Score:4, Interesting)
But one of the biggest ISPs is Time Warner Cable. They are certainly **not** going to help
Netflix deliver unlimited movies for $13/mo, when TW charges a lot more for the same thing.
Re:I think he means things like cache engines (Score:5, Informative)
Netflix uses Akamai.
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Re:No, it's just static content. (Score:5, Informative)
Not supposed to use products the right way (Score:2)
...my ISP starts punishing me for using the Internet to do legal things that the Internet was designed for?
Don't you know that you're not supposed to use products for what they're supposed to be used for?
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Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know. This could be a GOOD thing. Previously, there seemed to be some stigma attached to high bandwidth users. Anyone who was using a lot of bandwidth was "obviously" doing SOMETHING shady. With the birth of services like this, it's starting to become quite common for regular old users to suck-up lots of bandwidth. I think the ISP's may finally have to pony up some dough and upgrade their infrastructure.
Of course, if they'd had a bit of sense, they'd have realized a simple truth that applies to almost any computer usage, be it processing power, bandwidth, or anything else: today's power users use what tommorow's regular users are. Rather than trying to persecute your heavy users, use them as a metric to gauge what you need to roll out.
Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know. This could be a GOOD thing. Previously, there seemed to be some stigma attached to high bandwidth users. Anyone who was using a lot of bandwidth was "obviously" doing SOMETHING shady. With the birth of services like this, it's starting to become quite common for regular old users to suck-up lots of bandwidth. I think the ISP's may finally have to pony up some dough and upgrade their infrastructure.
Of course, if they'd had a bit of sense,
Thing is, the ISPs are still pissed off that you are buying a legitimate service from someone other than themselves. So they aren't going to do anything that would make it easier for you to give your money to anyone who isn't them.
You are still "obviously" doing something very wrong in their eyes.
There is no way the ISPs (especially cablecos and telcos) will change their position on this and be customer friendly unless they are forced with a pretty big stick
And after the recent US election, I can't see that happening in the near future. Consumer protection laws seem to be pretty much the opposite of the Tea Party philosophy. Or GOP, for that matter (speaking as a non-american looking in)
Re:So, how long before... (Score:4, Insightful)
ha ha ha ha ha.... wait, were you serious?
Most ISPs are also content providers. Especially the cable companies. They don't like services like Netflix because it reduces demand for cable TV offerings. What they will really do is impose caps with overages or speed slowdowns. In the latter case, you can watch Netflix online, but after one or two movies, suddenly the video keeps buffering for a long time making it useless. In the former case, you watch a dozen movies during the month and then get a huge bill from your ISP because you're a "bandwidth hog." And if you don't like it? Tough, since you probably don't have many (if any) ISP choices where you live.
On one hand, ISPs have the option to pay to upgrade their networks which might bring them more revenue in the future or may help erode another of their money makers. On the other hand, ISPs could restrict your use of that "eroding service" and/or turn it into a money maker for them. Which choice do *you* think the ISP will make?
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Your ISP (among others) will punish you for doing things the Internet was originally designed for.
Unless you work for, or are an ally of, the US Military, that is...
Darn, I was planning to invade Iraq
Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
@parent post, I know you are joking about ISPs but this story is really a covert PR story by the anti net neutrality people. This same kind of story was tried in the UK using the example of the BBC iPlayer bandwidth, trying to say it was a major drain on UK Internet bandwidth
Scare stories like this are used as a marketing chess move by the anti net neutrality lot of lobbyists. They want to charge for specific kinds of data and in the UK the next move they are playing is also aiming to earn even more from then also spying on the data (via deep-packet inspection) which is also needed to kill net neutrality. (The growing Police State in the UK is also seeking to use deep-packet inspection for its 24/7 spying on everyone). Deep-packet inspection has to be made illegal globally or they will continue to push to exploit it.
So to the idea "Netflix is swallowing America's bandwidth", I say, bullshit!, America needs and in time will have more bandwidth, so these reports are bullshit, no one needs to worry about these scare stories. Its like the old saying, follow the money, and the money people are behind stories like this.
Plus oh what a surprise, Sandvine, the creators of this so called report, (Two faced PR marketing move more like), already use deep-packet inspection, so they would gain from killing net neutrality and selling their services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandvine [wikipedia.org]
Sandvine you two faced bastards, we can see through your chess moves.
Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think all ISPs realize that bandwidth needs to increase. Looking at a bandwidth graph over the last three decades would make that plainly obvious.
However, how will this be paid for? They say it should be the Googles and the Netflixes, I say it should come out of their CEO's new yacht fund. That, I think, is where the point of contention lies.
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Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of people really don't understand that. They probably have cheap hosting accounts, and have never needed to deal with actual circuits.
I've worked at places with multiple GigE circuits. Besides the base cost in the datacenter (floor space, power, port charges, etc), we had negotiated contracts on bandwidth. 95th percentile is that bastard of a number that we deal with all the time. For those that don't know, it goes something like this. The uplink provider monitors our ports once every 5 minutes. At the end of the month, they take all the samples, sort them by utilization, and knock off the top 5%. Whatever that next number is, is what we pay. There are dedicated rates too. If you don't use the line, that doesn't matter, you're paying at lest a minimum fixed amount, which could be something like 20% of the line capacity. So an idle datacenter with nothing in it, but it has a GigE circuit could cost as if we were using 200Mb/s at 95th percentile.
For our bills, it was easily over $100,000/mo. That's a conservative number, but I haven't been there in a while, and don't remember how high it really went. Do you want fancier services, like multiple circuits into your space, BGP routing, etc? Oh, the price goes way up. When you get big enough, and want to get your data to the customers faster, you start doing private peerings, and putting out edge nodes (servers closer to the clients, like Akamai provides), or even putting dedicated servers in on the end user networks. They don't like paying huge bandwidth and peering bills, when they can deploy $100k worth of equipment two hops from the customer.
If NetFlix is sucking up so much bandwidth, someone's making a fortune on it already. So it accounts for 20%, big deal, that doesn't indicate the total utilization of the available, or even where it was measured. I played this game once. I took the total bandwidth my company used during peak hours, and compared it to the Mae East bandwidth graphs (when they were public). Our bandwidth used 15% of what Mae East passed. And guess what. It didn't destroy the world. We weren't even responsible for 15% of what passed through Mae East, because various peerings meant our traffic went in all kinds of different directions.
By that standard, NetFlix could use 200% of what passes through Mae East (plural now), and even that wouldn't mean anything other than bragging rights. Sure, it's a lot of bandwidth, but it doesn't indicate saturation of available resources, nor the end of anything at all.
Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the problem. They want to MAXIMIZE profit from the bandwidth. Not get a good profit or healthy profit, but MAXIMIZE it in any way possible. Comcast does it by intentionally not upgrading their downstream paths. Even 10 years ago Comcast was capable of 10BaseT speeds Up and Down over cable modems to the headends for ALL the people in the area that headend serves. The problem is that headend is connected via fiber to a larger headend. That larger headend has another 5-10 connect to it, and a Single OC3 feeds 5+ cities if you are lucky for it to have an OC3. The area I worked in was selling 5Mbit service and I knew that the backend was nothing more than 2 bonded t3's that way too little bandwidth for the number of subs on that POP.
ISP's are screwing the pooch in increasing their backbone connection speeds. Until they get a LOT of complaints, they will continue to major oversell the available bandwidth. it's now well past the 100 to 1 ratio at most.
Re:So, how long before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is the problem. They want to MAXIMIZE profit from the bandwidth. Not get a good profit or healthy profit, but MAXIMIZE it in any way possible. Comcast does it by intentionally not upgrading their downstream paths. Even 10 years ago Comcast was capable of 10BaseT speeds Up and Down over cable modems to the headends for ALL the people in the area that headend serves. The problem is that headend is connected via fiber to a larger headend. That larger headend has another 5-10 connect to it, and a Single OC3 feeds 5+ cities if you are lucky for it to have an OC3. The area I worked in was selling 5Mbit service and I knew that the backend was nothing more than 2 bonded t3's that way too little bandwidth for the number of subs on that POP.
This is all true.
ISP's are screwing the pooch in increasing their backbone connection speeds. Until they get a LOT of complaints, they will continue to major oversell the available bandwidth. it's now well past the 100 to 1 ratio at most.
Thankfully, I can think of nothing else that will get the average American more in a tiff than their chosen source of entertainment suddenly not working.
Re:So, how long before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Innovation legislation (Score:4, Insightful)
Deep packet inspection should be made legal everywhere, so everybody is pushed into encrypting everything all the time. Global adoption of encryption is a far better protection from privacy invasions like deep packet inspection than a piece of paper. Innovation before legislation, please.
We've heard this before (Score:5, Insightful)
1990's: "Spam email is using up all the available bandwidth."
2000's: "P2P file-sharing is using up all the available bandwidth."
2010's: "Netflix is using up all the available bandwidth."
Somehow the internet survived and will continue to do so.
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Where other countries are not just dropping fiber and lighting it up, the US's bandwidth is actually shrinking. You might get fiber drops in a few cities, but in most of the country, either one ends up with the same or less bandwidth. You also get tiered pricing, metered bandwidth, and additional fees, so it is more expensive now than it was five years ago for the same amount of MB/second.
If Netflix is "burdening" ISPs, then the ISPs better suck it up, call their Cisco rep and get some new hardware. This
Re:So, how long before... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can copy and paste your post as a reply to many subjects. It reads like an astrology prediction.
What exactly is your opinion on the matter of Netflix using a lot of bandwidth?
Re:So, how long before... (Score:4, Insightful)
If an ISP increases the amount of bandwidth to accomodate Netflix, there is no additional revenue in it for them. Therefore, as the previous poster asked, who pays for the additional bandwidth? I agree that there is no easy answer, but net neutrality and the fact that a handful of bandwidth-hogging services are consuming the bandwidth for everyone are directly linked.
The ISP should NOT be increasing bandwidth to accomodate Netflix, they should be increasing bandwidth because they (the ISP) have been telling consumers to get the fastest plan so they (subscribers) can stream video. Whether the video comes from Netflix isn't or at least shouldn't be relevant. It's time that ISP started backing up their advertising claims.
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with 2^32 addresses?
Re:So, how long before... (Score:4, Informative)
that was supposed to be only for the testing group
problem is it never ended
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/why-ipv6-vint-cerf-keeps-blaming-himself [networkworld.com]
some wanted a 128bit others a 32bit..
4294967296 addresses should b enough for everybody (Score:4, Funny)
You don't honestly believe we would have more computers than people, do you?!!!
Plus, this whole electronic data processing thing is just a fad...
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I have 3 people in my home and 37 computers. I have a total of 37 IP addresses inside my lan, every one of those things are a computer. the 4 BLuray players are all computers. the Two big TV's are computers, the Apple TV's are computers, the 6 NAS boxes, the 2 Crestron processors, the 4 chumbys, etc......
I only need 1 to the world because I can use NAT. Some wackjobs think NAT is evil... I think they are wackjobs. I do not WANT most of my computers to EVER be directly on the internet. Even if I was
Re:4294967296 addresses should b enough for everyb (Score:5, Insightful)
I note you have no video game consoles, and so I assume further that you rarely play games on the internet, and moreover your 4 BluRay players suggets you rarely torrent either.
In short, it's no surprise you don't see the downsides of NAT. Meanwhile the rest of us who do required user level end-to-end net connectivity know that NAT is the devil [slashdot.org] and needs to die for the sake of the web. When you find yourself unable to use the latest applications and/or protocols, you will come to realize this too.
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Will posting inflammatory headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
destroy Slashdot?
It's well on the way - /. just isn't as relevant as it was years back.
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And yet it gets tons of page views. The bottom line is that the parent company has chosen to go more after dollars than making a niche group happy. Take from that what you will.
The answer is... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Clearly Netflix will 'destroy the internet'.
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FYI, Netflix works just fine from Firefox running under Windows (at least it does on my home XP box). And no, aside from inside of a virtual host there is no way to watch Netflix instant streaming movies with Linux.
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Seriously, is there a way to stream Netflix under Linux yet (aside from in a VM?)
Why bother? It's only 1% of the market, if that.
Watch it in a VM, or watch it on your Wii, or your Xbox, or your PS3, or your bluray player, or any of the scores of other devices that stream Netflix.
Yes, Netflix works in all browsers, it just doesn't work on Linux. And frankly, most people don't care.
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Oh I hope so (Score:2)
"won't be long before it comes for the rest of the world"
I'm moving outside the US next year and I really would love not to have to jump through hoops to keep using Netflix.
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Bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you wouldn't expect that if there was any competition and the ISPs actually cared what the consumers wanted. Worse, I live in a major city, it's doubtless much worse outside of major cities.
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Yeah. If the regulators had had their way we'd all have ISDN by now.
Wait... I thought bit torrent had that title (Score:2)
The internet exists to be used.
If people use more bandwidth, then providers will adjust prices, install new capacity, and then it will be fine.
I'm more concerned about IP addresses (which is not much) than I am about capacity issues.
If bandwidth cost to netflix increases, then they will slow down bandwidth (so maybe it takes 60 seconds to start a movie instead of 10 seconds). Or maybe they offer a lower bandwidth option.
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Yes, they can institute caps and raise rates, but all that does is stifle innovation. We wouldn't have youtube at all, if the ISPs had been handling things like this during the Clinton administration. The last time that speeds around here increased by anything significant was in the late 90s. I'm still stuck with
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install new capacity
Did you just say that ISP's will upgrade?
How long have you been using the internet?
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If bandwidth cost to netflix increases, then they will slow down bandwidth (so maybe it takes 60 seconds to start a movie instead of 10 seconds). Or maybe they offer a lower bandwidth option.
Don't even suggest it, or they'll be all over that in an instant. I recently jumped ship from Blockbuster (stayed with them for a long time because we lived just down the street from a store, and our plan allowed unlimited free trade-ins) largely because of the streaming service, but have found that the picture quality is barely adequate as it is. They need to offer higher quality in general, not lower quality options. Cut it down any more and I'll be going... well, I'm not sure what alternative there is,
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OK, and? (Score:5, Informative)
First, they've known this was coming for ages. P2P have been around well over a decade and everybody knew people were downloading movies and TV shows and watching them on their computer. It's just hitting bigtime mainstream now and Netflix was the first commercial entity which did it right.
Second, the 'Will Porn/Youtube/Torrents/P2P/Netflix/etc Destroy The Internet?" articles have been around for ages. The providers adapt, the technology adapts.
Netflix rocks! (Score:5, Funny)
... and that is 20% of the internet's bandwidth no longer available to email spammers, too.
win-win
Eh ? (Score:2)
if they are not INVESTING that money to provide MORE products, therefore supplying the demand, that means they are going totally contrary to the logic of 'free market'.
and excuse me, but that is not us consumers' problem. its their stupidity.
Ah! (Score:2)
As a collective "we", yes we're paying for it.
But you're not "unity100 of Borg".
At some point, some of us are going to realize "we" as individuals are paying for the bandwidth usage of others. You look at your ISP bill and realize half of what you're paying (say, $360/year - whatever it is, it's a lot of money out of your pocket) is going to fund someone else's movie marathons. Or maybe it's you enjoying the subsidized streaming video, and I'm deciding to have a chat with my ISP about why I'm shelling out $
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destroy ? arent we fucking PAYING for the bandwidth we are using ? so, in short, arent we using MORE of the product the isps are delivering, and they are making more money ?
unless you live in bizarro world your ISP doesn't make more $ if you download more. you pay a flat fee. of course they'd rather you download less because that means they need less infrastructure to support you, it's cheaper for them, and their profits are higher.
ISPs depend on the fact that most people consume much, much less than they could. if everyone streamed netflix (or whatever) 12 hours a day, your rates would go up as they'd need to add capacity to handle that.
I'm no expert, but as I see it (Score:2)
..the problem is that ISPs have been selling us the "bandwidth" to do this kind of activity for years. Bandwidth is in quotes because "back in the day" if you actually used the bandwidth you were paying for, they suspended your account as the likely reason for a residential user to draw any serious transfer was piracy.
Now there are lots of legitimate "every day" uses that draw the massive bandwidth that ISPs have been using as a big magic number when selling service, and the ISPs can't (or can't for long) h
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..the problem is that ISPs have been selling us the "bandwidth" to do this kind of activity for years. Bandwidth is in quotes because "back in the day" if you actually used the bandwidth you were paying for, they suspended your account as the likely reason for a residential user to draw any serious transfer was piracy.
Just so we're clear, what you're doing is blatantly generalizing. I've been on the Internet in some form or the other since about 1990. I've used probably dozens of ISPs and in multiple states, and I have never once had my account shut down or limited due to bandwidth usage. In fact I don't even remember ever hearing about this as a problem!
Sure if you've got comcast I understand they're doing it. I would not use comcast for this reason. But to claim that the problem is more widespread than it is (or at le
What happened to the Dark Fiber? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What happened to the Dark Fiber? (Score:4, Interesting)
it was all bought up long ago and there was an article here a few weeks ago how most of it has been lit up and the bandwidth has almost been used up.
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Re:What happened to the Dark Fiber? (Score:5, Insightful)
All the dark fiber in the world won't help solve the Last Mile problem.
Re:What happened to the Dark Fiber? (Score:4, Funny)
All the dark fiber in the world won't help solve the Last Mile problem.
Both of which would make great Stephen King novel titles.
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His point is that need is increasing.
Dark fiber is dark because in areas that needed 1 fiber, the additional cost to run a bundle of fibers was miniscule. (Labor costs to lay the fiber dominated the material costs.)
Probably on the line of 1 fiber might cost 100 million, and 100 fibers might cost 101 million.
So if we go past the capacity of one fiber, we can in theory light up another. In practice, there might be space constraints at the endpoints that weren't thought of when the big bundles were laid down
Quickly! (Score:2)
We must encourage our ISPs to go out and buy Sandvine's DPI hardware and encourage them to immediately throttle and slow data streaming from Netflix!
Oh hey, my ISP is offering their own video streaming service...
Already a non-starter in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
The average person has a 60gb cap in Canada. People have quickly found out that they can blow through 1/2 to 3/4's of their monthly cap in a weekend. I'm sure it'll be more interesting as winter rolls around, we like snow, hockey, and all that. But curling up to watch a movie or 4 when it's -40C and snowing out is much better fun. Especially if there's a 30% chance you're going to spend 3hrs shoveling.
But sandvine is a blight on the internet. You can happily hear about all the horror stories(look on dslreports.com) that they've inflicted on Canadians, as ISP's use their equipment to throttle just about everything. Bell enjoys using them after the last mile, before switching to outside networks, even when you're on another ISP. So regardless of what happens, you're still being throttled by bell. Rogers like using it to throttle everywhere, that they think the consumption might be too high, or where growth is outpacing their delayed upgrades.
Re: Everything in canada sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
fuck back when I lived in Ontario they had a "sewer tax".. that's right you pay for the frigging sewer underneath your house in addition to your normal yearly federal and provisional tax
What, you think that pipeline is maintained for free? You think they treat your shit and dispose of it for free?
Where I live the sewers are included as a line-item in the water bill, but that’s just semantics. You’re paying for it one way or another.
netflix will price itself out before it happens (Score:3, Interesting)
i have netflix and the streaming selection is pretty bad compared to the DVD selection. the reason is that they haven't struck deals with most content creators yet.
my cable bill is $130 a month for TV/DVR/Internet/phone and from what i've read approximately $30 of that goes to the content creators. for netflix to offer all the content there is they will probably have to raise their prices as they strike new deals for more content, especially if it will include movies and new TV shows that just played the night before.
if i wanted to dump cable i'd have to pay more for a la carte internet and more to AT&T to increase my cell phone plan to unlimited minutes. it would kill the entire deal since it makes more sense to just pay $10 a month for a DVR
and this theory is based on just he financials of striking content deals. netflix will have to pay a lot more in bandwidth costs as the amount of content increases.
i don't understand the entire streaming fad. it's only around because the cable companies are always a few years behind. with digital/HD cable what you watch on your cable box is essentially streaming except it's a lot more efficient than netflix's TCP/IP over the internet version. the cable companies just need to update their software and service selection
Heads in the Cloud (Score:2)
Everybody is being paid just fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh noes! They're taking the bandwidth! Except everyone's being paid, and its still cheaper all around per movie than using the mail. The cable companies are being paid for internet access, the entertainment owners are paid for the right to distribute the content, all the equipment is more than being paid for - and everyone is making a profit.
The fact that it's using 20% of the bandwidth isn't alarming either - a movie is a lot of web pages/email/etc., but everyone involved can afford to keep the equipment running, and do a little infrastructure expansion to get more customers needs met, all to make more profit.
This isn't the end either - the moment some form of mass entertainment can be created that legitimately requires more bandwidth, and a service provider can successfully provide that bandwidth to unseat the other service providers, then they will do that, and will likely use several times more bits per second - and by then it will be even cheaper relative to the gasoline used for mail service.
The real alarm is that this process is making other forms of entertainment less relatively appealing to the masses. The cable companies don't like playing the role of bulk service providers in a realm they prefer to be premium content providers in - and thanks to monopoly powers, they're considering providing a non-neutral-net internet service in the name of "saving bandwidth" to fight Netflix's little game.
Ryan Fenton
Comment on the statistics (Score:5, Informative)
Farhad, Allow me to make one clarification on the Sandvine report cited. While the growth of Netflix has certainly been dramatic, it does not (yet) account for 90% of Internet traffic on any of the networks included in our study. Rather, As you noted correctly, we did see Netflix accounting for approximately 20% of downstream traffic in North America.
The confusion on the 90% stat probably resulted from a misreading of one of the graphs featured in our “Spotlight On: Netflix” on page 15 of our Fall Global Internet Phenomena report. The graph was accompanied with the caption “An average day for Netflix on this network, peaking at 9:30pm” This particular graph (taken from a single network in Canada) shows Netflix traffic throughout the day as a relative percentage of the peak amount of Netflix traffic. In this case, the peak was reached at 9:30pm, so the curve at that point has a value of 100%. The rest of the curve shows how Netflix traffic varies: so we see that at midnight the level of Netflix is approximately 42% of what it was at 9:30pm. In hindsight, I think we probably could have explained this better in our report.
Our Network Analytics product produces these “Time of Day” graphs so that network operators can understand how subscriber usage of various applications, services, or categories of application vary throughout a typical day. Thanks again for the interesting article.
Sincerely, Tom Donnelly, EVP Marketing, Sandvine
Kipper the Dog (Score:2)
Using the internet will destroy it, story at 11 (Score:4, Funny)
This is what they SOLD us (Score:5, Insightful)
My ISP makes a point of saying it - "Streaming movies and TV shows". Right there in it's spiel. All the networks are rigged to favour it - our Last Mile is asynchronous, giving us more downstream than upstream, because they want us to be good little consumers and download content, not upload it.
And now people are making scared noises because it finally worked and people started doing it? And not just scared noises, deploying technical measures to counteract it? My ISP will throttle your connection if you download more than 750MB during "peak" hours ; exactly the time you'd want to be watching a movie. Good luck with that if the stream bandwidth exceeds your new bandwidth limit, which is very likely if it's an HD stream.
While I'm glad they are taking measures to prevent my connection grinding to a halt, I'm rather disappointed that they aren't upgrading their Last Mile enough to support it - especially as they make such a fuss about being "fibre optic" (to the cabinet, not the home, shame).
Will Ford Destroy the highway system? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your intrepid reported, reporting from 1910...
Many people are reporting the growing difficulty of navigating their horses and buggies through the town streets due to the growing presence of noisy and fast moving motor cars made by Henry Ford. Predictions are that because of this obnoxious growth in motor cards that our highways will become completely unusable within 10 years!
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I don't find Netflix's selection too bad, personally - then again, I watch a lot of documentaries (seriously, it's got Cosmos AND Ken Burn's Civil War, what more do you need?). As far as the selection being bad, that's not really Netflix's fault so much as it's the content owners.
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As TFA implies, selection has improved greatly over the past year or two.
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No, streaming netflix often does NOT have the huge classic movies. It does have some really good stuff on it though, and stuff that changes, so you sometimes do find the big movies. It's got a lot of TV shows (HD quality often) very frequently, a lot of children's material, and also a lot of (for lack of a better word) eclectic stuff on it. I've watched a ton of Werner Herzog films (may not be your thing, but I enjoyed seeing them).
But no, if you're looking to rewatch only blockbusters on streaming, it's pr
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Streaming Netflix has NOTHING last time I used it on my Roku box. I only found some of the worst b-rated movies and documentaries and a tiny amount of semi-new releases. No Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark...nothing.
I have over 200 items in my instant queue - admittedly there are a lot of kids' shows in there, but there are also a lot of good movies. Foreign movies, documentaries, tv series, etc. Sure, the latest movies and blockbusters aren't there, but there's always something decent (IMHO) available, and the new ones I just get them to send a disc. I really like the streaming service and watch more on there than discs these days. I've already seen Star Wars & Raiders, so I'm not too pressed about having them ins
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Unfortunately that something is going to target the consumer because the government lacks the balls to tell a corporation to go fuck itself and compete for business.
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Don't worry, movie executives are working to close this hole as soon as possible:
Studios May Delay Netflix/Redbox Movie Rentals Even Longer; Offer Fewer Watch Instantly Choices on Netflix
http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/11/03/movie-studios-delay-rentals-fewer-choices-watch-instantly-time-warner-premium-vod-2/ [slashfilm.com]
That was a close call -- for a while, people have been able to get the content they want how they want it, but the industry is taking appropriate steps to end that and make sure that consumers can only view content when the industry wants them to and how the industry wants them to.