Netflix Dominates North American Internet 301
nairnr writes "Accounting for 29.7% of all information downloaded during peak usage hours by North American broadband-connected households in March, Netflix Inc. received the title in the latest Global Internet Phenomena Report released by Sandvine Corp. on Tuesday.
In its ninth such report, Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine found the amount of data consumed by users streaming television shows and movies from Netflix's online service exceeded even that of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology BitTorrent."
Netflix (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
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And, instead of charging each individual household make the feed free and ask the government to charge a flat-rate fee for each household.
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I am going to run out and patent this great idea.
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I'd bought a PS3 for Xmas to have a 3D bluray player that also streamed Netflix (I may learn to game soon too).
I've found, however that my initial high consumption of Netflix streaming content has really dropped, and much of that was...the lack of shows I really want to watch available for streaming!!
I mean, the choice of movies seems to largely be...crap I'd never have wanted to watch if the DVD was g
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Where I've found streaming really shines is with kids that consume the same 8 shows hundreds of times. I think I've pulled up Shawn the Sheep about that when my niece and nephew are over (or when my other niece and nephew are over)...
So how much of available bandwidth are they using? (Score:2)
Being 30% of the traffic merely tells me there is a market there waiting for more competitors. What I am curious about is whose lines are they saturating if any? Is there usage becoming a burden on some and if so who are those weaker players?
What your asking for has already been done, they are cable companies. Next thing down the road we would see people screaming that NetFlix should share all those lines they put down and such and such.
While I agree they probably need to work on making content delivery mor
Re:So how much of available bandwidth are they usi (Score:5, Insightful)
Making content delivery 'more efficient'? WTF?
Do you know anything about VIDEO and AUDIO? ITS BIG DATA. And in 2012 it will be bigger, and in 2013 it will be bigger... Because people will be wanting 720 and 1080p. Better compression algorithms will only go so far so as to slow down the expansion of demand for that data.
Everyone on slashdot actually knows the truth, which is that our network providers need to be upgrading infrastructure AHEAD OF TIME. They are already behind current times with so much oversaturation, throttling, and capping to attempt to compensate.
WHY NOT JUST DO THE HONEST THING. UPGRADE INFRASTRUCTURE, PASS THE BUCK TO CONSUMER. THAT'S HOW HONEST BUSINESS IS DONE, AND LAST YEAR AT&T STATED THEY COULD DOUBLE INFRASTRUCTURE BANDWIDTH AT A COST OF $6/line. ( I'd urge less profits to upper exectives to afford it, but everyone knows that CEOs run America and its doey-eyed sheep that can't even spell anymore, let alone stop buying from walmart.)
Oh wait.... maybe they can get google to co-opt the upgrade by putting out an ad-sponsored version of internet connectivity! YAY! We can do it the new-american way!
*BARF*.
Am I the only person left that would gladly pay MORE for something BETTER? Must it all be chinese crap of poor design and quality assurance? How many appliances must we throw in the dump, and how many evenings must we sit through lag, for people to realize that cheap-ass business gets you cheap ass product!
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Am I the only person left that would gladly pay MORE for something BETTER?
You're absolutely right. The problem is that we do pay more for something that isn't better. The classic example is to look at Southeast Asian bandwidth/$ rates and compare them to ours. And while I'm aware of the inconsistencies in terrain, culture and government I guess I'm just still a sucker for the bs Nationalist crap that says, "if they can do it so can we - and better."
It's that kind of ego that could really push innovation in this field but alas, I don't think that guys like you and I are all th
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What your asking for has already been done, they are cable companies.
WHOOSH!
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Google [searchengineland.com] (via YouTube) and Facebook [google.com] are way ahead of you on figuring that one out.
Incidentally, the last I heard before this, Netflix had something like 26.9% of prime time traffic (and were #1) with YouTube and Facebook distant #2 and #3 (at 19% and 17% I believe), so the only news here is their % went up ~3% (I made a post on that about a month ago).
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I think they should make it less susceptible to electrical interference and cut the programs into rolls of paper that can be replayed on a device that has some means of reading the holes and making the data come out of a replica of an analogue system for manual real-time input. This has the added benefit of using technology that we already understand well.
And the bartenders should wear frilly garters on their arms, to be ironic.
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And then, in phase two, Netflix could sell you a box that allows you to record a show to watch later!
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they called it 'TV' and then they tried pay-per-view then the cable companies built video on demand. so that each viewing grid could have netflix like response before netflix internet streaming existed.
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Re:Netflix (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair, there's no reason you couldn't use a staggered broadcast approach for Netflix and get the same user experience if you did it right.
Such an approach would dramatically reduce the traffic overhead, at the expense of a little additional code running on the user's machine.
Multicast? What's that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Simultaneously add the user to the most recent multicast group for that movie.
That'll become possible once it becomes possible to set up and tear down multicast groups over the public Internet.
Such an approach would dramatically reduce the traffic overhead
Exactly how dramatic would it be? Are most people watching the same film, or are people watching different films in the long tail?
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Or substitute a P2P stream from someone already downloading it. Either way, you shed the backbone impact.
As I understand it, Netflix offers only about 12,000 movies for streaming. There are around 17 million Netflix users. So if everybody streams only one two-hour
Re:Multicast? What's that? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, the kids use the Wii, so there isn't a lot of space to put the video. However, they could easily use the extra hard drive space on any one of my 3 computers.
I think the GP has a point, if Netflix is not already using a torrent-like technology, they really should look into developing that tech. (As the video streams data, it could pull from other users watching the same program. Once it catches up or becomes the lead viewer, it switches back to pulling data from a Netflix supernode.)
Granted this could be bad for capped Internet subscribers and I'm not sure how it would reduce network traffic - unless they allow the creation of user nodes, but it will probably improve the end-user experience.
Flash Player Does This (Score:2)
Flash Player Video does this already, as of flash 10.1
Oh wait, everyone hates flash here. I forgot.
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This is why we need a "-1: Woosh" mod...
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Why not? I get my internet from my local cable TV monopolizer.
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Field of Screams (Score:3)
If you build it, they will pay.
(Screaming is for the media conglomerates)
Re:Field of Screams (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 to this.
Give people what they want at a price they're willing to pay. Everything is worth exactly what it's purchaser is willing to pay - and no more.
The media companies seem to forget that they've raised the prices to the point that purchasers are not willing to pay. Their customers are going to get the media in any case; it's just a question of whether it's paid for.
Re:Field of Screams (Score:5, Insightful)
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They're probably right, but Netflix is proving they're doing it wrong.
Ya I know, what a fucking surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
So wait, you give consumers what they want for a reasonable price, and they'll pay for it? Who would have thought! One can hope they'll learn from this, but somehow I suspect not :P.
It only makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Gee, they actually made it MORE convenient and people are willing to pay for it. Compare this to what the movie/tv studios do on a regular basis. They make it harder to get the content and people tend to find alternative sources.
The lights aren't all on upstairs, (Score:4, Interesting)
Gee, they actually made it MORE convenient and people are willing to pay for it. Compare this to what the movie/tv studios do on a regular basis. They make it harder to get the content and people tend to find alternative sources.
Hello!
The studios are the providers - Netflix is one of their licensed distributors.
Better still, the Netflix "app" is on the HDTV, video game console and set top box. The PC is sidelined and with it the BT client.
What I Don't Understand... (Score:3)
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But Netflix streaming over BT would certainly make it hard for the ISP's to justify continued throttling.
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Re:What I Don't Understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are probably more people whose ISPs throttle or otherwise disrupt BitTorrent traffic than there are people whose ISPs throttle Netflix traffic.
Add to that: It would result in more total data going across the ISP's network. It would make it more complicated to alter the stream quality based on your network performance. BitTorrent isn't really very-well suited to streaming, particularly when people are accessing the movies at different times. Since people are accessing movies at different times, it would more or less require that large parts of the movie be stored, at least for a while, on the end user's computer. That means their Web client, game console client, and other embedded-device clients (smartphone, TV) wouldn't participate in the BitTorrent streaming. It also means that they'd need stronger DRM and probably still would run afoul with the movie industry. The only real benefit, besides potentially saving Netflix some bandwidth, is that it would be slightly harder to attribute the traffic to "Netflix streaming movie" and would instead attribute it as "BitTorrent". (Bothering to do DPI would make it relatively easy to determine that the traffic was, in fact, Netflix.)
BitTyrant (Score:3)
Add to that: It would result in more total data going across the ISP's network.
Unless the peer selection prefers nodes that are faster to you and/or share a longer IP address prefix. BitTyrant incorporates techniques like these, which end up choosing more efficient routes to spread pieces within an ISP as opposed to between ISPs. So the edge gets more data going across it, but the upstream doesn't.
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What I don't understand is why Netflix doesn't go to a BitTorrent style P2P swarm type streaming. This would so much get them around how the cable companies are trying to screw them over for doing nothing more than providing programming that I want over a pipe THAT I PAID FOR.
Why? It would completely break the current functionality of "pick program, buffer for 10 seconds, start watching program".
What would be brilliant is an option for devices with a capable cache (4GB or more) where you would command it to fetch the highest quality stream via P2P, and you simply had to wait for it to finish to start watching it. The system would then keep the file around for the next day or so (or maybe just keep 10GB worth of the last media you watched) and it would seed it for the rest of th
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> The custom port was 119.
I am ashamed that I had to look that up, but I'm not sure I like the analogy, assuming it's essentially NNTP with DVD-sized "articles". If users have to peer the whole feed (rather than just their subscriptions), then you'd need a lot more cache than 4GB, so maybe ISPs would run the peering servers? And in the video distribution model, individual users don't add new DVDs the way we used to add new articles to newsfeeds, the original data still comes from a central source, so may
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What I don't understand is why Netflix doesn't go to a BitTorrent style P2P swarm type streaming.
An ISP can use your traditional tv-cable easily to send you stuff, however uploading is rather difficult in many implementations. P2P/Bit-torrent-style distribution relies on uploading from the end-user. Instead, using a content delivery network through Level 3 communications, Netflix is able to almost have the "common" content "pre-delivered" to a more nearby location. This is good for the cable companies and users like me that still want a functioning internet when the nation logs onto Netflix in the e
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You don't know what's between your local box and their server box. I would bet that somewhere along the way at least part of the network is doing some sort of multiplexing among multiple pipes.
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doing nothing more than providing programming that I want over a pipe THAT I PAID FOR
What you paid for is residential broadband service at the mass market price.
The last mile and the first.
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What about Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
I kid, sort of.
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Linux has a bigger marketshare and mindshare when it comes to HTPCs.
So Linux support would probably be a bit more noticable.
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29.8 %
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Think what that percentage would be if they supported Linux, too.
You mean how many zeroes past the decimal point we'd have to use?
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29.71%
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There are already a large number of Linux devices that already support Netflix.
They just aren't desktops.
An OS that can "just chug" along is a very handy thing when it comes to the living room. People were never conditioned to their TVs being as unreliable as a Windows desktop machine.
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This is one reason I got a PS3, a roku could do the same though. Then you can do what you want with the machines.
Netflix...not for long (Score:4, Insightful)
With net throttling and pressure by cable and other internet providers for NO net neutrality (and the beginnings already of quotas), Netflix is doomed. And that's (part) of the point. The providers (Comcast, AT&T, etc) want to provide their own movie streaming services but with the big gorilla in the room, that would be Netflix, they see a problem. Thus they are already setting up tiers, throttling, pricing schedules, quotas, all to murder outside competitors for the services they want to (over) charge captive customers for.
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Honestly, I think it's high time the government cracked down on the fraudulent advertising. I get that the ISPs have limited capacity, but it's fraudulent of them to claim that they can provide it when they're so badly overbooked. Strikes me as a case of unfair competition.
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As long as they clearly spell out the limitations of their connection then I see no problem. But for them to give you a 5 Mbps connection and then put a 5 GB per month limit on it just seems, well, stupid. It is VERY easy these days to use up 5 GB in one month. And then you have offerings of 10/15/25 Mbps speeds with the same 5 GB usage cap... you just get to the cap a whole lot faster! /sigh
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Where I live, my only option besides a personal T1 and satellite is wireless. The company I use (of the two available) has two tiers: 3 Mbps with a 5 GB per month cap at $45 per month or pay $70 per month for a 200 GB cap at the same speed. They're still better than the other company that only has two speeds at 512 Kbps or 1 Mbps.
Re:Netflix...not for long (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wireless w
The Real Netflix Fix (Score:4, Interesting)
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The real Netflix fix, instead of streaming the movie within the tight constraints and impaired quality necessary to prevent buffering, would be for me to order up the movie I wanted that morning like I order up DVD's from them, have them remove a previous movie to make room for the new one, and then d/l it over the day. By the time I'm home in the evening, even a slow DSL line could have a true DVD-level copy available for watching without interruption. The next morning I order another movie or two and the old ones are deleted as part of the new ones arriving. Seriously, this would be such an improvement over the existing system and the expense of mailing much better quality DVDs could go away entirely.
Maybe for DVDs, but they also do blu-ray discs. For slower connections those would still be easier to just get the discs. There are also probably a decent number of people that only have internet on very slow connections or through the phone and so still will want discs. Also, a big reason that not everything is streaming is because of the content owner's not wanting it to be. So there will always be certain things that are only available via disc form. I have my doubts the discs will ever go away because o
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This would require me to plan ahead what I'm going to watch that night. In which case, I could just plan ahead a couple of days, and get the DVD itself. The beauty of Netflix streaming is that I can watch whatever the hell I feel like whenever I want. Hung over Saturday morning? Watch a bunch of episodes of an old show you missed. Want something on while you're doing homework? Watch a dumb zombie action flick.
The real Netflix fix is for broadband companies to get off their collective asses and invest in t
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The beauty of Netflix is also that it keeps track of what you watch and can make reasonable guesses about what you will want next.
It's pretty simply really once you have the tracking data. I made a similar hack for MythTV. Although there's nothing to download/stream.
Re:The Real Netflix Fix (Score:5, Interesting)
Studios have put up with streaming because it's generally NOT able to be saved in the embedded and proprietary systems it's used in. Anything that saved locally wouldn't adhere to current copyright agreements, so it's not gonna happen.
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It could still work. Currently, when you stream a Netflix video, a temporary copy does end up on your harddrive, and you could make a permanent copy of it if you were so inclined. However, the copy has built-in DRM which requires it to connect to the Netflix servers and request a key every time you try to play it. I see no reason why the GP's suggestion couldn't work the same way.
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Not necessarily. Compare to the experience from DirecTV. ([rant] Netflix has NEVER, EVER had a movie streamable I wanted to watch. Ever. Anything made in the last 10 years and not mediocre or worse is never available for streaming. The only reason I subscribe is for Barbie movies for my kids. [/rant]), I order it and it slowly downloads, using available, low-priority bandwidth to "fill up the corners" as it were. When I want to watch it, I then actually agree to pay money, and DirecTV sends down a signal to
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While there are very good tv shows and movies from 10, 15, 20 years ago (or more), there are ALSO movies from last year or two years ago or five years ago that I'd love to watch via the streaming service. I'd love to watch Action Thriller 1 and 2, but they only stream Action Thriller 3 (and the others are DVD only).
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I'm sure their content license preclude any of the above.
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By the time I'm home in the evening, even a slow DSL line could have a true DVD-level copy available for watching without interruption.
But some people demand BD-level picture quality, and that's why a lot of people still swear by DVDs by mail [pineight.com]. And among those happy with DVD quality, a lot of them use Wii consoles, which don't have a lot of built-in storage space.
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I ahve often wondered why this is not an option. I would certainly not want to lose the ability to immediatly stream something. For a PC/Xbox/PS3 obviously there is the HD and since most ROKU boxes and Blu-Ray players have a USB port it should be simple enough for the user to add enough storage via thumbdrive to make this happen.
The concern for the studios will be piracy which of course is 1) already a problem that this will not excaserbate and 2) fixable using encryption on the saved stream. Yes I know
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Except that in your scenario all of the downloading happens during peak times. If you ordered it during the day and had it download it at night, it would be a different story.
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If it is off peak time, it might not matter so much.
The caching code might even take that into account and try to optimize for "cost" where different bandwidth costs exist for different times of the day or week.
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OTOH (Score:4, Funny)
As a snail mail Netflix user, I'll point this out: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a fleet of federally owned Grumman LLVs driving down residential streets and laden with DVDs.
Re:OTOH (Score:5, Funny)
Also makes it easier to trace your couriers back to where they've bin laden.
Sandvine? (Score:2)
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ISPs need to... (Score:2)
... start noticing and thus upgrading INFRASTRUCTURE, and not so it can handle today's usage (which they already can't handle) but TOMORROW'S use.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I will pay more for what I actually want. Its when there is no choice and it is never what I want that I have an issue. Dropped from 8MB cable that is over-saturated to 3MB DSL that is only a little over-saturated. $20 savings, but I would gladly pay the cable price for the DSL if it was always ideal.
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Yeah, about paying more:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/video-high-fiber/9263/ [pbs.org]
We already pay more than what others do around the world (at least in the developed countries).
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Right.. I understand how american oligopoly is how Oil and Telco businesses gouge/rape us for money. We're all actually well adapted to being gouged. What we *want* is a little more product for such gouging.
Thanks for the backup.
interesting... (Score:3)
What MPAA has to learn is that consumers like a business model where actually 'owning' DVD's is not a choice that most want. I've been also saying that Blu-ray is dead (long live blu-ray) ever since it came out. I really don't care to own a plastic disc with a movie burned on it when I can fire up my laptop or PC or Playstation or Wii and watch any move I want, anywhere I have an internet connection. Heck, my P2P downloading of movies and shows has fallen drastically since I subscribed to Netflix. Would I pay to have access to even more content - YOU BETCHA! Would I stop downloading if I could pay monthly fees to have access to quality Disney, Paramount, Sony, et al studio movies and TV shows? YES!!!!
If I, a lone consumer, can figure this out, why can't they? I just want access - irregardless how I get it. If I can pay for it, brilliant! If I have to pirate it to get access, so bit it. But it's their loss, not mine if I'm forced to be a criminal because the studios can get their heads out of there legal asses and figure out their market and customers are screaming to have access to their content.
Re:interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
The mere $9 a month I pay (and that's ALL I pay for TV since I cancelled my cable)
Let me guess: You don't live with people who like to watch live news or live sports.
What MPAA has to learn is that consumers like a business model where actually 'owning' DVD's is not a choice that most want.
Unless they have single-digit-year-old kids who "wanna watch Sin-duh-weh-wuh again, Daddy."
I really don't care to own a plastic disc with a movie burned on it when I can fire up my laptop or PC or Playstation or Wii and watch any move I want, anywhere I have an internet connection.
Except when traveling internationally. Your portable DVD player still works with the DVDs that you brought, but your Netflix device is IP banned. See other advantages of discs [pineight.com] that I gleaned from a previous Slashdot discussion.
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The mere $9 a month I pay (and that's ALL I pay for TV since I cancelled my cable)
Let me guess: You don't live with people who like to watch live news or live sports.
Let me guess. You're unaware that news and sports are frequently broadcast over the air, or you're unaware that over-the-air broadcasts are free of charge, or you're unaware that some people live in large cities with a wide variety of free over-the-air channels to choose from.
Love Netflix, but... (Score:2, Redundant)
I am still disappointed by the lack of HD films. At least give us 720p with 5.1 ... :/
Time for the movie studios to just STFU and accept reality. But they still want to go down tooth & nail while clinging to their concepts of copyrights, licensing, and royalties...
Bravo for pulling this off (Score:3)
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I could never get the business model right to figure out how to legally stream movies without the movie makers going,"You can't stream out copies of our work at all."
That's the easiest part. You cut them in. Of course, that leaves you with shekels and them with ingots, but they're the ones who made the stuff the people want. The people are just tolerating the need to buy your stuff so they can get the studios' stuff.
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I think the important thing here is the fact that Netflix has a snailmail service that they can fall back to. They aren't a streaming-only operation. Infact, I think if they ever did go streaming-only then they would put themselves in a very vulnerable position. A physical copy of a movie is personal property and as such the owner has certain rights that don't exist with "bits from the ether". That's an important point that bears repeating.
Creative works as property are really a very new thing. That manifes
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Until Netflix changes its model to a low monthly fee for ad-supported content and PPV for ad-free content. That will also probably be the point that they suddenly have the catalogs of all the Majors available in 1080p and 7.1.
Triumph of DRM? (Score:2)
So 30% of all Internet traffic is DRMd video, and is beating non-DRMd, free-as-in-beer video.
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If you want to fixate on one fact that pretty close to no one actually cares about, then yes. That's a triumph of DRM.
Doing my part (Score:2)
I work at home and have stopped using my home office in favor of the couch -- while streaming from Netflix all day long. Reruns of X-Files, Dr. Who and Twilight Zone are dominating this week. I don't watch many movies during working hours, but TV shows don't require any real attention, so I can watch while working and not be distracted.
Surprise surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
people don't actually have an issue with paying to access content and will do so even though they can download the same stuff for free on bittorrent.
How the content industry let netflix take that market that was open for them to grab and how the music industry managed to let a niche computer company take over a similar music market that was open for them to grab I will never know.
Well actually of course I will know, too busy clinging to the distribution model they already had.
DOMINATING!... (Score:2)
Read it out-loud in your UT announcer voice and it's even more awesome...
See, people won't ALWAYS pirate (Score:3)
Netflix lets me watch something once that I don't want to pay to own permanently, and I can watch up to 720 hours of movies/TV (i.e. leave it on constantly) a month for 10 bucks. Beats the hell out of pay-per-view as well, of course.
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...that's about it too.