Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3) (was: RIP

Fri May 16 17:06:17 UTC 2014

Blake,

I might agree with your premise if weren't for a couple of items.

1)  Very few consumers are walking around with a HD or 4K camera today.

2)  Most consumers who want to share video wouldn't know how to host it
themselves, which isn't an insurmountable issue but is a big barrier to
entry especially given the number of NAT'ed connections.  I think this is
much more of a problem than available bandwidth.

3)  Most consumers who want to share videos seem to be satisfied with
sharing via one of the cloud services whether that be YouTube (which was
created originally for that use), Vimeo, or one of the other legions of
services like DropBox.

4)  Finally, upstream bandwidth has increased on many/most operators.  I
just ran the FCC's speedtest (mLab not Ookla) and got 22 mbps on my
residential cable internet service.  I subscribe to one of the major MSOs
for a normal residential package.

Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
--------------------------------
http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
--------------------------------

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Blake Hudson <blake at ispn.net> wrote:

> Certainly video is one of the most bandwidth intensive applications. I
> don't deny that a < 1 Mbps video call is both less common and consumes less
> bandwidth than an 8Mbps HD stream. However, if Americans had access to
> symmetric connections capable of reliably making HD video calls (they
> don't, in my experience), we might be seeing video calls as a common
> occurrence and not a novelty. I think the state of usage is a reflection on
> the technology available.
>
> If the capability was available at an affordable price to residential
> consumers, we might see those consumers stream movies or send videos from
> their home or mobile devices via their internet connection directly to the
> recipient rather than through a centralized source like Disney, NetFlix,
> Youtube, etc. Video sharing sites (like youtube, vimeo, etc) primary reason
> for existence is due to the inability of the site's users to distribute
> content themselves. One of the hurdles to overcome in video sharing is the
> lack of availability in affordable internet connectivity that is capable of
> sending video at reasonable (greater than real time) speeds.
>
> --Blake
>
> Scott Helms wrote the following on 5/16/2014 11:02 AM:
>
>> Blake,
>>
>> None of those applications come close to causing symmetrical traffic
>> patterns and for many/most networks the upstream connectivity has greatly
>> improved.  Anything related to voice is no more than 80 kbps per line, even
>> if the SIP traffic isn't trunked (less if it is because the signaling data
>> is shared).  Document sharing is not being impinged, on my residential
>> account right now I've uploaded about 30 documents this morning including
>> large PDFs and Power Point presentations.
>>
>> Off site back up is one use that could drive traffic, but I don't believe
>> that the limiting factor is bandwidth.  We looked at getting into that
>> business and from what we saw the limiting factor was that most residential
>> and SOHO accounts didn't want to pay enough to cover your storage &
>> management costs.  In our analysis the impact of bandwidth on the consumer
>> side adoption was basically zero.  There is no expectation that back ups
>> run instantly.  Having said all of that, even if hosted back up became
>> wildly popular would not change the balance of power because OTT video is
>> both larger, especially for HD streams, and used much more frequently.
>>
>>
>> Scott Helms
>> Vice President of Technology
>> ZCorum
>> (678) 507-5000
>> --------------------------------
>> http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
>> --------------------------------
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 11:53 AM, Blake Hudson <blake at ispn.net <mailto:
>> blake at ispn.net>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Jay Ashworth wrote the following on 5/16/2014 10:35 AM:
>>
>>         ----- Original Message -----
>>
>>             From: "Mark Tinka" <mark.tinka at seacom.mu
>>             <mailto:mark.tinka at seacom.mu>>
>>             While that is true a lot of the time (especially for eyeball
>>             networks), it is less so now due to social media. Social
>>             media forces the use of symmetric bandwidth (like FTTH),
>>             putting even more demand on the network,
>>
>>         Oh yes; clearly, Twitter will be the end of L3.
>>
>>         :-)
>>
>>         Could you expand a bit, Mark on "Social media forces the use
>>         of symmetric
>>         bandwidth"?  Which social media platform is it that you think
>>         has a)
>>         symmetrical flows that b) are big enough to figure into
>>         transit symmetry?
>>
>>         Cheers,
>>         -- jra
>>
>>     Applications like Skype and Facetime (especially conference calls)
>>     would be one example where an application benefits from symmetric
>>     (or asymmetric in favor of higher upload speed) connectivity.
>>     Cloud office applications like storage of documents, email, and
>>     IVR telephony also benefit from symmetrical connectivity. Off-site
>>     backup software is another great example. Most residential
>>     connections are ill suited for this. I believe these applications
>>     (and derivatives) would be more popular today if the connectivity
>>     was available.
>>
>>     --Blake
>>
>>
>>
>