The scale of streaming video on the Internet.

Jeff Wheeler jsw at inconcepts.biz
Thu Dec 2 21:05:32 UTC 2010


On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Seth Mattinen <sethm at rollernet.us> wrote:
> On 12/2/10 12:28 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>> You are assuming the absence of any of the following optimizations:
>>
>> 1.    Multicast
>
> Multicast is great for simulating old school broadcasting, but I don't
> see how it can apply to Netflix/Amazon style demand streaming where
I do.  Let's assume that there is a multicast future where it's being
legitimately used for live television, and whatever else.

The same mcast infrastructure will be utilized by Amazon.com to stream
popular titles (can you say New Releases) onto users' devices.  You
may be unicast for the first few minutes of the movie (if you really
want to start watching immediately) and change over to a
multicast-distributed stream once you have "caught up" to an
in-progress stream.

If Netflix had licensing agreements which made it possible for their
users to store movies on their local device, this would work even
better for Netflix, because of the "queue and watch later" nature of
their site and users.  I have a couple dozen movies in my instant
queue.  It may be weeks before I watch them all.  The most popular
movies can be multicast, and my DVR can listen to the stream when it
comes on, store it, and wait for me to watch it.

I am sure Amazon and Netflix have both thought of this already (if
not, they need to hire new people who still remember how pay-per-view
worked on C-band satellite) and are hoping multicast will one-day come
along and massively reduce their bandwidth consumption on the most
popular titles.  I am also certain the cable companies have thought of
it, and added it to the long list of reasons they will never offer
Internet multicast, or at least, not until a competitor pops up and
does it in such a way that customers understand it's a feature they
aren't getting.

-- 
Jeff S Wheeler <jsw at inconcepts.biz>
Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts




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