Broadcast television in an IP world

Tue Nov 21 15:12:18 UTC 2017

Doesn’t matter how the broadcaster is transmitting, we take in which ever form that is done and convert it to match our delivery.

Question on the pausing comment, I can see that being the case on nDVR setups where the local STB isn’t doing any of the storage. On a setup where there’s no nDVR the box would still be using the same multicast wouldn’t it?

I think I saw a multicast vs unicast comparison on a wisp Facebook group talking about what you mention below, was there really an added benefit. Was interesting to see the numbers he had come up with in his use case.

From: kscott.helms at gmail.com [mailto:kscott.helms at gmail.com] On Behalf Of K. Scott Helms
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 8:59 AM
To: Luke Guillory
Cc: Baldur Norddahl; nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Broadcast television in an IP world

Luke,

I think I understand your example but the local broadcaster won't usually (ever?) have the rights to retransmit the Super Bowl over IP.

Having said that, what you're describing is exactly what happens already (without multicast) via multiple CDNs.  Multicast across the internet isn't feasible (economically) today.  Multicast inside of an organization certainly is and is very common.  Having said that, even popular content is surprisingly sparse (when we look at flows) and even inside of edge networks (DOCSIS, FTTH, xDSL, etc) it can be surprisingly challenging to make the math work.  As soon as someone wants to pause the "big game" or flips to another channel you now have to move their flow to unicast.  Even when lots of people are watching the same event the economics aren't as compelling as they might appear initially.

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 9:29 AM, Luke Guillory <lguillory at reservetele.com<mailto:lguillory at reservetele.com>> wrote:

The comment I was originally replying to was the following. I’ve said edge resources, nothing about WAN.

The content provider (lets say local TV station that broadcasts the
Superbowl) can just unicast to the ISP a single stream, and give the

ISPs some pizza sized box (lets call it an "Appliance") and that box

then provides unicast delivery to each customer watching the Superbowl.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 21, 2017, at 8:22 AM, K. Scott Helms <kscotthelms at gmail.com<mailto:kscotthelms at gmail.com>> wrote:
It's not helpful for saving resources in DOCSIS (nor any other) edge networks.  The economics mean that, as bits get sold in the US and many other places, it won't be in the foreseeable future.  Customers care about popular video sources.  Popular content sources have CDNs with local nodes and/or direct (low cost) connections to their CDN.  That's far more efficient than allowing multicast across WAN links.

K. Scott Helms

Luke Guillory

Vice President – Technology and Innovation

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On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 8:58 AM, Luke Guillory <lguillory at reservetele.com<mailto:lguillory at reservetele.com>> wrote:
I’m not paying anything for local resources with regards to local edge delivery, that’s capital expenditures not MRCs.

Our edge networks aren’t unlimited or free, so while it’s not costing me on the transit side there still are cost in terms of upgrades and so on.

My point is that In some networks such as docsis conserving edge resources can be helped with multicast.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 21, 2017, at 4:12 AM, Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl at gmail.com<mailto:baldur.norddahl at gmail.com><mailto:baldur.norddahl at gmail.com<mailto:baldur.norddahl at gmail.com>>> wrote:

Den 21. nov. 2017 00.42 skrev "Luke Guillory" <lguillory at reservetele.com<mailto:lguillory at reservetele.com><mailto:lguillory at reservetele.com<mailto:lguillory at reservetele.com>>>:

Why would an ISP not want to conserve edge resources? If I’m doing iptv I’m
better off doing multicast which would conserve loads of BW for something
popular like the Super Bowl. Especially if I’m doing this over docsis.

You pay for 95th percentile. If that is decided by everyone watching Game
of Thrones one day, then using the same resources for Super Bowl the next
day will be for free.

Luke Guillory
Vice President – Technology and Innovation

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