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t.alex
I tried sopcast sometime ago but halfway through the channel is dropped and I ...
chanj
There is no doubt Internet will become the next generation video delivery. Like ...
The conundrum of peer-to-peer video distribution
Jonah Probell, consultant
7/21/2010 6:06 AM EDT
Deprioritization controversy
Because P2P sharing of video files uses a lot of bandwidth, some ISPs have tried blocking or throttling bandwidth for P2P traffic, such as Australia’s Exetel in 2006 and America’s Comcast in 2008. Each faced revolts from customers demanding net neutrality. Both providers have since backed off their restrictions as direct video streaming has surpassed P2P as the majority user of Internet bandwidth. A possible future resolution would be for P2P software to schedule background downloads for the middle of the night and early morning when ISP traffic is low.
Caching
For TCP/IP traffic, including Internet video streamed directly from servers, most ISPs implement HTTP caching. This benefits streaming video services such as Hulu, Netflix, Vudu, and YouTube. That is large capacity storage that holds recently accessed data in anticipation of it being requested by other subscribers. This reduces the amount of bandwidth that ISPs need from the Internet backbone, in turn keeping their costs down. P2P traffic uses UDP or TCP/IP ports other than HTTP and therefore is not included in HTTP caches.
Shortly after their experiment with deprioritizing P2P traffic, Exetel implemented P2P caching. Thailand’s largest ISP, True Internet, was an early adopter of P2P caching in 2006 and reported an immediate 60% decrease in total network traffic. True Internet’s P2P cache vendor is Israel-based Oversi. With an investment from Cisco, Oversi have built solutions for ISPs worldwide. Newton, Massachusetts based competitor, PeerApp, serves another large share of the ISP market.
Cambridge, UK based P2P cache vendor, Velocix/CacheLogic (acquired in 2009 by Alcatel-Lucent), has focused its business more on the content providers. They have provided content delivery network (CDN) solutions to BBC, Verizon, and Bollywood.TV among others. PeerApp claims that return on investment in their products is realized within months.
Fig. 2: Server-streamed video traffic, with TCP/IP caching.
Statistics
The Pirate Bay—the world’s foremost torrent search engine until it was charged with assisting copyright infringement and shut down by a Swedish court in 2009—grew from 10 million to 25 million users over the course of 2008. uTorrent, the most widely used BitTorrent client software, estimated 52 million users in 2009.
The Fiber to the Home council reports that the year 2000 was when P2P file sharing first grew to be the single largest type of Internet traffic. In 2004 CacheLogic estimated that 62% of consumer ISP traffic is P2P related. A 2007 study by German traffic management equipment vendor, Ipoque, estimated that 49-89% of internet traffic is P2P transfers during the day and about 95% at night.
Traffic management equipment vendor Ellacoya (acquired by Arbor Networks), estimated in 2007 that 37% of network traffic is P2P file sharing and 41% is direct HTTP streaming video. YouTube, in particular, accounted for 10% of network traffic. Traffic management equipment vendor, Sandvine, estimated that P2P traffic grew from 41% to 44% of network traffic from 2007 to 2008. Also, in 2008 Arbor networks estimated that 20% of ISP subscribers used P2P file sharing.
According to the 2009 Cisco Visual Networking Index, in 2008 P2P file sharing represented approximately 50% of all Internet traffic. The report predicts a continued rise in P2P file sharing traffic. However, it estimates that the percentage of Internet traffic for P2P file sharing will drop to 20% as direct video streaming grows. Direct video streaming from YouTube, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, and the like is estimated to have represented 14% of all Internet traffic in 2008. This grew rapidly to 27% in 2009. The Cisco report predicts that video traffic overall will represent 91% of all Internet traffic by 2013.
Fig. 3: Historical and projected consumer Internet bandwidth usage.
Next: Internet video streaming
Because P2P sharing of video files uses a lot of bandwidth, some ISPs have tried blocking or throttling bandwidth for P2P traffic, such as Australia’s Exetel in 2006 and America’s Comcast in 2008. Each faced revolts from customers demanding net neutrality. Both providers have since backed off their restrictions as direct video streaming has surpassed P2P as the majority user of Internet bandwidth. A possible future resolution would be for P2P software to schedule background downloads for the middle of the night and early morning when ISP traffic is low.
Caching
For TCP/IP traffic, including Internet video streamed directly from servers, most ISPs implement HTTP caching. This benefits streaming video services such as Hulu, Netflix, Vudu, and YouTube. That is large capacity storage that holds recently accessed data in anticipation of it being requested by other subscribers. This reduces the amount of bandwidth that ISPs need from the Internet backbone, in turn keeping their costs down. P2P traffic uses UDP or TCP/IP ports other than HTTP and therefore is not included in HTTP caches.
Shortly after their experiment with deprioritizing P2P traffic, Exetel implemented P2P caching. Thailand’s largest ISP, True Internet, was an early adopter of P2P caching in 2006 and reported an immediate 60% decrease in total network traffic. True Internet’s P2P cache vendor is Israel-based Oversi. With an investment from Cisco, Oversi have built solutions for ISPs worldwide. Newton, Massachusetts based competitor, PeerApp, serves another large share of the ISP market.
Cambridge, UK based P2P cache vendor, Velocix/CacheLogic (acquired in 2009 by Alcatel-Lucent), has focused its business more on the content providers. They have provided content delivery network (CDN) solutions to BBC, Verizon, and Bollywood.TV among others. PeerApp claims that return on investment in their products is realized within months.
Fig. 2: Server-streamed video traffic, with TCP/IP caching.
Statistics
The Pirate Bay—the world’s foremost torrent search engine until it was charged with assisting copyright infringement and shut down by a Swedish court in 2009—grew from 10 million to 25 million users over the course of 2008. uTorrent, the most widely used BitTorrent client software, estimated 52 million users in 2009.
The Fiber to the Home council reports that the year 2000 was when P2P file sharing first grew to be the single largest type of Internet traffic. In 2004 CacheLogic estimated that 62% of consumer ISP traffic is P2P related. A 2007 study by German traffic management equipment vendor, Ipoque, estimated that 49-89% of internet traffic is P2P transfers during the day and about 95% at night.
Traffic management equipment vendor Ellacoya (acquired by Arbor Networks), estimated in 2007 that 37% of network traffic is P2P file sharing and 41% is direct HTTP streaming video. YouTube, in particular, accounted for 10% of network traffic. Traffic management equipment vendor, Sandvine, estimated that P2P traffic grew from 41% to 44% of network traffic from 2007 to 2008. Also, in 2008 Arbor networks estimated that 20% of ISP subscribers used P2P file sharing.
According to the 2009 Cisco Visual Networking Index, in 2008 P2P file sharing represented approximately 50% of all Internet traffic. The report predicts a continued rise in P2P file sharing traffic. However, it estimates that the percentage of Internet traffic for P2P file sharing will drop to 20% as direct video streaming grows. Direct video streaming from YouTube, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, and the like is estimated to have represented 14% of all Internet traffic in 2008. This grew rapidly to 27% in 2009. The Cisco report predicts that video traffic overall will represent 91% of all Internet traffic by 2013.
Fig. 3: Historical and projected consumer Internet bandwidth usage.
Next: Internet video streaming
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Luis Sanchez
7/21/2010 4:58 PM EDT
Its a very good article about P2P video. I haven't thought about it before. Specially the numbers that the author presents. Though the trend seems to be that the internet isn't prepared for P2P streaming yet. The fact that most of the content providers that move from P2P to direct broadcast state that the P2P disadvantages are stronger that it's benefits.
Thus, perhaps this is the area for good R&D to be worked on. The idea seems logical. Being able to go into a buffet bar of video and pick a little from many ports instead of a single provider in theory allows for a safer use of bandwidth, but availability becomes a factor and also... Internet latency is important to account... let's wait to see what the future holds for us.
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chanj
7/21/2010 11:10 PM EDT
There is no doubt Internet will become the next generation video delivery. Like the articles said, there is a number of challenges. Technically, if the current Internet is used, the more contents; the slow the network. Content aware Peer-to-Peer technology might be the solution. Multicast is definitely a great help. Comparatively, business has a lot more challenges.
1) How does the content providers compensate for the investment of the content?
2) What is the best way to do advertisement? I found youtube's way a little bit annoying. However, compared to the traditional way - 5 mins ads out of 10-15 minutes content delivery, youtube's way is still better.
3) How are the viewers charged if content provider is sitting across the world?
4) How does content provider earn visibility?
There are so many questions. I would love to learn the current business model of Internet radio. Maybe, marketing folks who are working for iPhone apps company will have some insightful idea how to earn visibility from the overwhelming large number of iPhone apps companies.
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t.alex
8/2/2010 1:13 AM EDT
I tried sopcast sometime ago but halfway through the channel is dropped and I could not continue. I think maintaining the availability of the channel is very critical for P2P video.
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