nanog mailing list archives
Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet.
From: Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 15:48:29 -0500 (EST)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell () ufp org> [...] That's an interesting number, but let's run back the other way. Consider what happens if folks cut the cord, and watch Internet only TV. I went and found some TV ratings: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/11/30/tv-ratings-broadcast-top-25-sunday-night-football-dancing-with-the-stars-finale-two-and-a-half-men-ncis-top-week-10-viewing/73784 Sunday Night Football at the top last week, with 7.1% of US homes watching. That's over 23 times as many folks watching as the 0.3% in our previous math! Ok, 23 times 150Gbps. 3.45Tb/s. Yowzer. That's a lot of data. 345 10GE ports for a SINGLE TV show. But that's 7.1% of homes, so scale up to 100% of homes and you get 48Tb/sec, that's right 4830 simultaneous 10GE's if all of Comcast's existing high speed subs dropped cable and watched the same shows over the Internet. I think we all know that streaming video is large. Putting the real numbers to it shows the real engineering challenges on both sides, generating and sinking the content, and why companies are fighting so much over it.
It also proves, though I doubt anyone important is listening, *why the network broadcast architecture is shaped the way it is*, and it implies, *to* anyone important who is listening, just how bad a fit that is for a point- or even multi-point server to viewers environment. Oh: and all the extra servers and switches necessary to set that up? *Way* more power than the equivalent transmitters and TV sets. Even if you add in the cable headends, I suspect. In other news: viewers will tolerate Buffering... to watch last night's daily show. They will *not* tolerate it while they're waiting to see if the winning hit in Game 7 is fair or foul -- which means that it will not be possible to replace that architecture until you can do it at technical parity... and that's not to mention the emergency communications uses of "real" broadcasting, which will become untenable if enough critical mass is drained off of said "real broadcasting" by other services which are only Good Enough. The Law of Unexpected Consequences is a *bitch*. Just ask the NCS people; I'm sure they have some interesting 40,000ft stories to tell about the changes in the telco networks since 1983. Cheers, -- jra
Current thread:
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet., (continued)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Christopher Morrow (Dec 03)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Leo Bicknell (Dec 03)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Bill Stewart (Dec 04)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Jay Ashworth (Dec 04)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Scott Morris (Dec 04)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. bmanning (Dec 04)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX) (Dec 05)
- Ratios & peering [was: The scale of streaming video on the Internet.] Patrick W. Gilmore (Dec 05)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. William Herrin (Dec 03)
- RE: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Alex Rubenstein (Dec 02)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Ken Chase (Dec 02)
- RE: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Ryan Finnesey (Dec 02)
- OT: how smart cable TV works Jay Ashworth (Dec 02)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Matthew Petach (Dec 02)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Joel Jaeggli (Dec 02)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Paul Ferguson (Dec 02)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. Antonio Querubin (Dec 02)
- Re: The scale of streaming video on the Internet. mikea (Dec 03)