[Nanog] ATT VP: Internet to hit capacity by 2010

Tue Apr 22 11:25:30 UTC 2008

It's certainly not reasonable to assume the same video goes to all
consumers, but on the other hand, there *is* plenty of video that goes to a
*lot* of consumers.  I don't really need my own personal unicast copy of the
bits that make up an episode of BSG or whatever.  I would hope that the
future has even more tivo-like devices at the consumer edge that can take
advantage of the right (desired) bits whenever they are available.  A single
"box" that can take bits off the bird or cable tv when what it wants is
found there or request over IP when it needs to doesn't seem like rocket
science...

-dorn

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 6:33 AM, <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:

>
> > > I think you're too high there! MPEG2 SD is around 4-6Mbps,
> > MPEG4 SD is
> > > around 2-4Mbps, MPEG4 HD is anywhere from 8 to 20Mbps, depending on
> > > how much wow factor the broadcaster is trying to give.
> >
> > Nope, ATSC is 19 (more accurately 19.28) megabits per second.
>
> So why would anyone plug an ATSC feed directly into the Internet?
> Are there any devices that can play it other than a TV set?
> Why wouldn't a video services company transcode it to MPEG4 and
> transmit that?
>
> I can see that some cable/DSL companies might transmit ATSC to
> subscribers
> but they would also operate local receivers so that the traffic never
> touches their core. Rather like what a cable company does today with TV
> receivers in their head ends.
>
> All this talk of exafloods seems to ignore the basic economics of
> IP networks. No ISP is going to allow subscribers to pull in 8gigs
> per day of video stream. And no broadcaster is going to pay for the
> bandwidth needed to pump out all those ATSC streams. And nobody is
> going to stick IP multicast (and multicast peering) in the core just
> to deal with video streams to people who leave their TV on all day
> whether
> they are at home or not.
>
> At best you will see IP multicast on a city-wide basis in a single
> ISP's network. Also note that IP multicast only works for live broadcast
> TV. In today's world there isn't much of that except for news.
> Everything
> else is prerecorded and thus it COULD be transmitted at any time. IP
> multicast
> does not help you when you have 1000 subscribers all pulling in 1000
> unique
> streams. In the 1960's it was reasonable to think that you could deliver
> the
> same video to all consumers because everybody was the same in one big
> melting
> pot. But that day is long gone.
>
> On the other hand, P2P software could be leveraged to download video
> files
> during off-peak hours on the network. All it takes is some cooperation
> between
> P2P software developers and ISPs so that you have P2P clients which can
> be told
> to lay off during peak hours, or when they want something from the other
> side
> of a congested peering circuit. Better yet, the ISP's P2P manager could
> arrange
> for one full copy of that file to get across the congested peering
> circuit during
> the time period most favorable for that single circuit, then distribute
> elsewhere.
>
> --Michael Dillon
>
> As far as I am concerned the killer application for IP multicast is
> *NOT* video,
> it's market data feeds from NYSE, NASDAQ, CBOT, etc.
>
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