Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?

Sun Jan 7 00:33:24 UTC 2007

On Sat, 6 Jan 2007, Andrew Odlyzko wrote:
> P.S.  I have been puzzled by the fixation on streaming for over a decade.

Is there really a much of a difference between streaming and buffering?

Is XM radio streaming or buffering?
Is TiVo streaming or buffering? 
Is AMC Theatres streaming or buffering?
Is RSS feeds streaming or buffering?

Geeks like to debate it, but the difference is mostly one of degrees not a 
bright line.  Usually the data is processed multiple ways.  A security 
camera may be both a linear stream and a random access buffer.  A movie
theatre may download a digital movie via satellite file broadcast but play
it as a linear event at pre-determined times.

True believers may like to think there is only one true answer.  But it is 
probably more realistic that the network will need to support multiple 
different ways of accomplishing the same thing because different people 
will want to do the same thing different ways.