Demand for video reshaping Internet

In 1995, the first warning was raised: The throngs of people swarming to the Internet would overwhelm the system in 1996. For more than a decade, that fear has proven untrue. USA Today reports.

"Until right about now. The growing popularity of video on the Net has driven a traffic increase that's putting strains on service providers, particularly cable companies. To deal with it, they have had to change the way they convey Internet data.

And they've done this in secret, raising concerns — by Web companies, consumer groups and the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission — that the nature of the Internet is being altered in ways that are difficult to divine.

But as traffic grows, there are signs that these subtle and secret controls are insufficient, and will give way to more overt measures. For instance, we could find ourselves paying not just for the speed of our connection, but for how much we download. Already, some ISPs are hindering file-sharing traffic, and AT&T Inc. is talking about blocking pirated content.

The issue is coming to a head this year, as the FCC is investigating complaints from consumer groups and legal scholars that Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable ISP, secretly hampered file sharing by its subscribers. "

Related articles on bandwith concerns and the exaflood.

The obstacles to next-gen networks

Without proper investment in next-generation broadband, users in the UK could miss out on the internet's next major innovation, said Ian Fogg, an analyst at Jupiter Research. The BBC reports.

"The next big thing on the internet - 2010's YouTube - may not work in the UK," he warned.

One of the biggest issues is that no-one is really sure what "the next big thing" will be. Even if the UK did have a next-generation network ready to be switched on, how would it be used?

The Exaflood

Technology experts are calling it the exaflood, a massive wave of new video and other bandwith intensive traffic headed for the web.

Forecasts say Internet users will generate 161 exabytes of new electronic data this year alone.

A single exabyte includes so much data that if it where converted to DVD quality video, it would take more than 50.000 years to watch. And Internet users are now generating nearly half an exabyte of new data every day.

At the current rate of growth, in the year 2010, 20 typical US households will use as much Internet capacity as the entire world did in 1995.

It is predicted that 80% of that traffic will be generated by online video. Some experts believe this could overwhelm existing network capacity and bring the flow of world Internet traffic to a crawl.

[Excerpts from a video on the Internet Innovation Alliance website on the Exaflood]

Related article in USA Today.

Interesting: 'Poor man's broadband (PMB). Students to download big files faster by avoiding the internet.

Web users could slash cost of putting video online

Internet users may have to help distribute online video clips to combat the growing costs delivering such content, reports New Scientist.

"That’s the conclusion of researchers at Microsoft who have studied how peer-to-peer networks could reduce costs for sites like YouTube that spend millions every month to make videos available over the web.

... Video sharing sites currently pay for bandwidth on a "per bit" basis. So the more popular they are, they more they pay for bandwidth.

Canadian researchers estimate that YouTube pays out around 2 million US dollars a month distributing clips, in addition to other costs such as servers and staffing costs.

... Switching to a peer-to-peer technology could cut the costs of distributing video by more than 95 per cent, say the researchers. MSN's servers would only need to provide new clips for the first time, or when making up any shortfalls."

Faster Wi-Fi in works to transfer movies, other large data files

With a wave of his hand over a homemade receiver,Georgia Tech professor Joy Laskar shows how easily — and quickly — large data files could someday be transferred from a portable media player to a TV. USA Today reports.

"While Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have emerged as efficient ways to zap small amounts of data between gadgets, neither is well suited for quickly transferring high-definition video, large audio libraries and other massive files.

Laskar and other scientists at the Georgia Electronic Design Center have turned to extremely high radio frequencies to transfer huge data files over short distances.

The high frequencies — which use the unlicensed 60 gigahertz band — have been a mostly untapped resource. Researchers say it could one day become the conventional wireless way to zap data over short distances."

Internet Pipes Can't Keep up in YouTube Age

A study warns that investment in network capacity may not keep up with increasing demands for bandwidth. PC World reports.

"If the network that carries Internet traffic were a highway, it would be as if every car owner, "rushed out and traded in their cars for massive 20-wheel trucks," stated the report from University of California-San Diego Professor Michael Kleeman, a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication.

In the report, titled "Point of Disconnect," Kleeman writes that there needs to be a massive expansion of network capacity in the United States, and even though network operators are making those investments, it still may not be enough to keep up with demand.

The report also calls for greater use of compression technology, especially for large video files, to reduce demands on the network. Kleeman noted that the number of new videos uploaded daily to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube jumped to 65,000 at the beginning of this year from 20,000 at the beginning of 2006, and that one minute of video requires 10 times as much bandwidth as a voice phone call.

The USC study is one of a number of academic endeavors to rethink the Internet.

"The Internet needs a massive investment to keep up with the demands of YouTube fans, billions of e-mails and wireless access, a university study states.

Click here for related links to article raising bandwidth concerns

Bandwidth could be a new global 'currency'

This is wild. Bandwidth could become a form of "currency" with users paying for downloaded files by uploading more data themselves, researchers say. New Scientist reports.

"he goal is to ensure that future content, particularly video, is distributed as fairly and efficiently as possible.

Computer scientists have have used the idea to develop peer-to-peer file-sharing software, which they are asking computer users to try out. They hope eventually to create a "global marketplace in bandwidth", where people can trade it as a commodity.

The researchers' free software, called Tribler, uses a modified version of the popular BitTorrent file-trading algorithm."

Read more.

US Broadband Speeds Can't Support Joost

If Joost is having a tough time gaining a foothold in the US it's because broadband imply isn't fast enough for their advanced video compression codecs, according to NewTeeVee via Marketing Vox.

"Even when American ISPs switch to faster connections, such as AT&T and Verizon's plans, Joost may have to pay to eat up bandwidth simply because it would also be competing with those very service providers' own content.

Bandwidth-hungry video sites are also seeing roadblocks in the Bandwidth-hungry video sites are also seeing roadblocks in the UK where ISPs are considering charging people more despite the higher broadband speeds across the pond. despite the higher broadband speeds across the pond."

YouTube spawns 10% of all net traffic

YouTube has been credited with changing the complexion of data on the internet. The popularity of the video sharing site means that HTTP eats up more bandwidth than any other data transfer protocol. PCPro reports.

For more than four years, peer-to-peer (p2p) applications swapping music and latterly movie files have overwhelmingly consumed the largest percentage of bandwidth, according to broadband technology firm Ellacoya Network.

As a result of streaming audio and video, however, HTTP accounts for approximately 46% of all traffic on the network while just 37% is p2p. Newsgroups (9%), non-HTTP video streaming (3%), gaming (2%) and VoIP (1%) are the next most widely used applications.

Just one website - YouTube - generates a fifth of all HTTP traffic, nearly 10% of all traffic on the Internet.

Related: - Warnings of 'internet overload'

Warnings of 'internet overload'

BBC Click investigates claims of the internet collapsing under pressure from the YouTube generation.

"As the flood of data across the internet continues to increase, there are those that say sometime soon it is going to collapse under its own weight. But that is what they said last year.

... Since 2003, the YouTube generation has been streaming video, and downloading gigabytes of data in one go.

"In one day, YouTube sends data equivalent to 75 billion e-mail", said Phil Smith, head of technology and corporate marketing at Cisco Systems.

"The network is growing up, is starting to get more capacity than it ever had, but it is a challenge.

"The real issue that people are going to face, and are already noticing at home, is that ISPs are starting to cut back on the bandwidth that is available to people in their homes," said Mr Thompson. "They call it bandwidth shaping.

"They do this because they have a limited capacity to deliver to 100 or 200 homes, and if everybody's using the internet at the same time then the whole thing starts to get congested. Before that happens they cut back on the heavy users."

... For decades the internet has kept pace with our demands on it. And demand continues to grow.

And the service providers will continue to insist that the net will survive, and the doomsayers will continue to insist that it is just about to collapse."