Here's my opening remarks from Media Access Project's Innovation '08 in Santa Clara this morning. A DVD will be available shortly. This was a lively discussion, with Google and Vuze on the case. Good morning and welcome. My name is Richard Bennett and I'm a network engineer. I've built networking products for 30 years and contributed to a dozen networking standards, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi... I'm opposed to net neutrality regulations because they foreclose some engineering options that we're going to need for the Internet to become the one true general-purpose network that links all of us to each other, connects all our devices to all our information, and makes the world a better place. Let me explain. more
In January of this year, a frontpage article on WSJ quoted Verizon Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg "We have to make sure they (Google) don't sit on our network and chew up our capacity". Both AT&T and Bellsouth also made similar statements in the same article. A few days ago, Verizon repeat their call to "End Google's Free Lunch": "A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build." ...it is no surprise that Network Neutrality, a concept where broadband providers are not to discriminate rivals when they charge tolls or prioritize traffic, is now on the agenda of the US Congress. more
Today the FCC announced the winners of the 700 MHz auction -- and you can see from pp. 62-63 of this document that Verizon won Block C. (Block C was set up in two nationwide paired blocks of 11 MHz each, which were auctioned off in very large geographic areas -- 12 licenses, each covering a "Regional Economic Area Grouping". Verizon won seven of the twelve licenses, covering all of the US except Alaska, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.) Why does this matter? more
Annual global IP traffic will pass two-thirds of a zettabyte in four years according the Cisco's Visual Networking Index report. The economic downturn has only slightly tempered traffic growth and the global IP traffic is expected to quintuple from 2008 to 2013. Cisco predicts IP traffic to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40%. more
Web traffic delivery surged to record levels during President Barack Obama's inauguration yesterday, according to content delivery network provider, Akamai. As the largest day ever for the delivery of concurrent live streaming over Akamai's global servers, the company reported it delivered a peak of over 7 million active simultaneous streams (the majority being live streams) at approximately 12:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. Typical simultaneous streams on an average day are less than 1 million. more
ipoque, a European deep packet inspection hardware provider has published an Internet study for 2008/2009 providing an overview of the Internet's current state based on analyzing 1.3 petabytes of Internet traffic -- "the amount of data equal to 300,000 DVDs" -- in eight regions of the world (Northern Africa, Southern Africa, South America, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Southwestern Europe, Germany). The study includes the use of about 100 of the most popular Internet protocols including P2P, VoIP, media streaming, instant messaging. more
According to a study by Pew Internet, nine in ten (89%) of young adults aged 18-29 are now watching videos online in a regular basis. Additionally, the study indicates that the share of online adults who watch videos on sites such as YouTube and other video-sharing sites has nearly doubled since 2006. "Fully 62% of adult internet users have watched a video on these sites, up from just 33% who reported this in December 2006," according to the report. more
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was interviewed at Gartner Symposium on the future of the Web and enterprise computing. Eric said to about 5000 CIOs attending the event, that Chinese will soon be a dominant language on the net and broadband connections will be so fast that various forms of media -- such as radio and TV -- will be blurred. more
Google has officially rolled out its long-touted Google Fiber Project showcasing what broadband should look and feel like to all users. Yes, it sets the new standard for broadband connections with a 1Gig speedster, over 100 times faster than current broadband offerings in the U.S. Not-withstanding, just speed will not be the determining success factor; the availability of competitive programming will become the deciding judgment in Google's move to tout reasonable costs to bundled broadband. more
The further we move into discussions about the implementation of national broadband networks the more issues crop up that need to be discussed in this context. One topic that is currently getting a great deal of attention is the need (or not) for an RF video layer to be deployed over the fibre network. Both business and technical elements are involved in this, but let's start with some of the business elements... more
In a report released today by the research group, TeleGeography, Executive Director, John Dinsdale says, "traditional telcos have been losing substantial market share while leading cablecos have succeeded in transforming their businesses to the point where almost 40% of their revenues now come from telecoms. Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Liberty Global all now feature in the top 15 ranking of broadband internet service providers, and telecoms remains an engine for growth for many cablecos around the world." more
According to the latest report released by comScore for the month of July, 58 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month, the largest audience ever recorded. Online video reached another all-time high in July with a total of 21.4 billion videos viewed during the month, according to the report. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed while Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8 percent) followed by Microsoft Sites with 631 million videos viewed (3.0 percent). more
Netflix has become the largest source of Internet traffic in North America, according Sandvine's Spring 2011 Global Internet Phenomena Report. Company further reports that currently, Real-Time Entertainment applications consume 49.2% of peak aggregate traffic, up from 29.5% in 2009 -- a 60% increase [see figture]. Sandvine forecasts that the Real-Time Entertainment category will represent 55-60% of peak aggregate traffic by the end of 2011. more
Leading Internet content distribution service provider, Akamai, has announced that its global network is now serving as much as 3.45 Terabits per second (Tbps) of content per day. "The traffic peak of 3.45 Tbps is roughly equivalent to the capacity needed to download the entire printed contents of the U.S. Library of Congress in less than a minute," says the company. Paul Sagan, Akamai's President and CEO, says increasing demand for high definition video streaming is a key factor in these recent delivery milestones. more
The numbers are big. Official figures quoted at the recent 21st annual China Content and Broadcasting Network (CCBN) conference indicate that China has 400 million TV households, of which 210 million subscribe to cable TV (CATV). Of these cable subscribers, 140 million receive digital service while the rest are still on analog systems. This means that the country's CATV network is still largely a one-way network, limiting the growth of on-demand and interactive services. more
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