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

Tue May 14 20:17:42 UTC 2013

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 3:53 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei
<jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> 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.

can't the routing data on the network tell them some of this? or even
routing data collected from like 'routeviews'? they don't even really
need 'live' data as much as daily snapshots to say: "Yea, that network
is 3 as-hops away -- it's across the "backbone"".

sounds like lazy research...

> 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.

and that fact ought to be visible in the local routing system and/or
global system.

> 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.

one hopes. (providing cache-hit is above a few percent)

-chris