Variety, On The Media, don't understand the Internet

Tue May 14 19:53:10 UTC 2013

On 13-05-14 13:06, Jay Ashworth wrote:

>   http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/netflix-puts-even-more-strain-on-the-internet-1200480561/
> 
> they suggest that Akamai and other ISP-side caching is either not
> affecting these numbers and their pertinence to the "backbone" at all,
> or not much.

This is from a Sandvine press release. Sandvine measures traffic at the
last mile, so it doesn't really know whether a Netflix stream is coming
from a local caching server within the carrier's LAN, from a caching
server that is peering with the carrier, or via the real internet.

In the case of a large ISP with a Netflix cache server accessible
locally, (either in-house, or via peering at a local carrier hotel), the
traffic doesn't really travel on the internet.

But for smaller ISPs, the traffic will travel on the internet between
the nearest cache server and their facilities.

Because of caching, the load on the actual internet won't increase as
much as the amoount streamed onto last mile infrastructure.