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

Wed Jan 10 09:41:48 UTC 2007

At 08:40 p.m. 9/01/2007 -0500, Gian Constantine wrote:
>It would not be any easier. The negotiations are very complex. The issue 
>is not one of infrastructure capex. It is one of jockeying between content 
>providers (big media conglomerates) and the video service providers (cable 
>companies).

We're seeing a degree of co-operation in this area. Its being driven by the 
market. - see below.

<snip>
On Jan 9, 2007, at 7:57 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:
An additional point to consider is that it takes a lot of effort and
>>$$$$ to get a channel allocated to your content in a cable network.
>>
>>This is much easier when TV is being distributed over the Internet.

The other bigger driver, is that for most broadcasters (both TV and Radio), 
advertising revenues are flat, *except* in the on-line area. So they are 
chasing on-line growth like crazy. Typically on-line revenues now make up 
around 25% of income.

So broadcasters are reacting and developing quite large systems for 
delivering content both new and old. We're seeing these as a mixture of 
live streams, on-demand streams, on-demand downloads and torrents. 
Basically, anything that works and is reliable and can be scaled. (we 
already do geographic distribution and anycast routing).

And the broadcasters won't pay flash transit charges. They are doing this 
stuff from within existing budgets. They will put servers in different 
countries if it makes financial sense. We have servers in the USA, and 
their biggest load is non-peering NZ  based ISPs.

And broadcasters aren't the only source of large content. My estimate is 
that they are only 25% of the source. Somewhere last year I heard John 
Chambers say that many corporates are seeing 500% growth in LAN traffic - 
fueled by video.

We do outside webcasting - to give you an idea of traffic, when we get a 
fiber connex, we allow for 6GBytes per day between an encoder and the 
server network - per programme. We often produce several different 
programmes from a site in different languages etc. Each one is 6GB. If we 
don't have fiber, it scales down to about 2GB per programme. (on fiber we 
crank out a full 2Mbps Standard Def stream, on satellite we only get 2Mbps 
per link). I have a chart by my phone that gives the minute/hour/day/month 
traffic impact of a whole range of streams and refer to it every day. Oh - 
we can do 1080i on demand and can and do produce content in that format. 
They're 8Mbps streams. Not many viewers tho :-)   We're close to being able 
to webcast it live.

We currently handle 50+ radio stations and 12 TV stations, handling around 
1.5 to 2million players a month, in a country with a population of 
4million. But then my stats could be lying......

Rich
(long time lurker)