Technology360

Device storage = irrelevant

I got the following post from my son Andrew (a designer in Providence, RI) on Twitter this morning:

ahaar Just got app for streaming music from home computer to iPhone. Device storage = irrelevant, future = now

That home computer, though, still needs space for music, photos and video.  I just bought an iMac yesterday, mostly for photo editing, and it has a half terabyte drive.  I see that the drive in the latest TiVo is a full TB.  In March 2006 I wrote here that the then 100-GB TiVo hard drive would be 1.6 TB in five ticks of Moore's Law (1 tick = 18 months).  Wrong -- it took only 32 months to get to 1 TB.  Big home storage seems to be a settled thing, but increasingly it looks to me like Andrew is right about the diminished need for mobile storage as long as 3G mobile networks are available.  --Dennis

The delusions of net neutrality

Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota makes a withering analysis of the arguments of network service providers concerning why (real-time streaming capabilities) they oppose net neutrality.  Odlyzko's analyses frequently challenge flabby assumptions with hard data and this one is particularly valuable.

Two of Om Malik's blogs today provide an overview of this important paper.  In Streams Won't Pay for Themselves, Chris Albrecht writes:

... Video can be delivered more efficiently and less expensively using downloads over streaming, says Oldzyko, and these downloads can be more accommodating to the viewing habits of online audiences and just as secure as streams. ¶  Oldzyko thinks the belief that we need real-time streaming is a holdover from broadcast and phone networks. ...

Link:  NewTeeVee.

Then, in Hulu Bad For the Net, Video Still Not Clogging It, Stacey Higginbotham writes:

... the largest part of the paper is devoted to data that supports his conclusions that content, such as Internet radio and video, is worth less than connectivity such as voice or Twitter. People don’t pay for content, they pay for connectivity, says Odlyzko. ...

Link: Gigaom.

Here's the abstract of and link to Odlyzko's paper:

Abstract. Service providers argue that if net neutrality is not enforced, they will have sufficient incentives to build special high-quality channels that will take the Internet to the next level of its evolution. But what if they do get their wish, net neutrality is consigned to the dustbin, and they do build their new services, but nobody uses them? If the networks that are built are the ones that are publicly discussed, that is a likely prospect.

What service providers publicly promise to do, if they are given complete control of their networks, is to build special facilities for streaming movies. But there are two fatal defects to that promise. One is that movies are unlikely to oer all that much revenue. The other is that delivering movies in real-time streaming mode is the wrong solution, expensive and unnecessary.

If service providers are to derive significant revenues and profits by exploiting  freedom from net neutrality limitations, they will need to engage in much more intrusive control of traffic than just provision of special channels for streaming movies.

Link:  University of Minnesota [pdf].  --Dennis

BBC iPlayer usage prompts concern from service providers

It wasn't too long ago when web commentators were criticizing the BBC iPlayer, which uses the same distribution engine as Open Media Network, developed by former Kontiki chairman Mike Homer and recently gifted to U.S. public broadcasting.  Now it seems that iPlayer is so successful that it's causing ISPs some traffic problems.  According to informitv.com:

... In January, more than 2.2 million people used the BBC iPlayer, streaming or downloading around 11 million programmes, reaching up to half a million shows in a single day. In addition, there were nearly 16 million radio downloads in the same month.  ¶  That represents a significant increase in the 5.6 million hours of audio and video that was streamed by the BBC in the whole of 2006-2007. ...

Kudos to the Beeb.  With a different production structure and internecine rivalries, it's hard to see how American public media will ever collaborate enough to duplicate the UK's success for national programming, but I'm optimistic about its success at the local station level if we're willing to develop content partnerships with community non-profits, schools and universities, government agencies, etc.  --Dennis

IP multicast

For us broadcasters, multicast means transmitting multiple program streams over one RF channel, but in the Internet world, multicast -- or, more precisely, IP multicast -- means something different.  Robert X. Cringely has a very good overview of IP multicast technology in his PBS column and argues that it's the next big thing.  He writes:

... IP Multicast is the not-so-simple carriage of the same digital signal to thousands or millions of people at the same time. This is as opposed to unicast, which can also serve millions of people but requires millions of parallel video streams to do so. ...

So, in unicast, every viewer of your video or listener to your audio requires a separate stream from the source.  Think of it as a multi-stemmed bush or shrub.  In IP multicast, you send one out and it branches remotely.  Think of it as a tree.  Cringely continues:

... Here's a very simple explanation for the way that IP Multicast is supposed to work. Seinfeld episode #60, The Junior Mint (which happens to be the third most popular Seinfeld episode of all time according to some Internet poll) is assigned the Class D multicast address of 224.1.2.3. If you want to watch that episode you click on it in some client application that "subscribes" to that address. When the show is made available on a server anywhere on a part of the net that supports multicast, you will start to receive it. All the routers between here and there look for multicast subscriptions and enable them. If no other customer at your ISP wants to see The Junior Mint, then the video isn't carried on your subnet nor is any of it cached locally. No bandwidth is used. But if one person does want to see The Junior Mint, then it is held to some extent in a local cache and available for all local subscribers. ...

Link:  PBS.  Thanks to Stephen Hill for the tip.  --Dennis

National LambdaRail + Internet2 merger off

News that the long-awaited merger between National LambdaRail (NLR) and Internet2 is off doesn't cheer most people in the academic/research advanced networking community.  For the story, see John Timmer, Internet2, LambdaRail can't even agree to disagree; merger called off (Ars Technica); John Fischman, Breaking Up, Internet2-LambdaRail Style (Chronicle of Higher Education); and Anick Jesdanun, Ultra-Fast Internet Networks Won't Merge (AP).  For analysis see Gordon Cook, A Sad Day as Emotion Drives R&E Networking in the USA (Cook's Collaborative Edge); Internet2 Responds (Cook's Collaborative Edge); and Some Unsolicited Advice: NLR Should Blow Its Own Horn (Cook's Collaborative Edge).  --Dennis

Joost to offer live TV

FierceIPTV is reporting:

Internet TV operator Joost has promised live programming beginning in early 2008, with a senior executive telling the Mipcom program market in Cannes that Joost hoped to secure more European sports rights. Joost, which released its beta software earlier this month, has secured online rights to Major League Baseball's World Series and playoffs and U.K. premier league soccer highlights. ...

Link:  FierceIPTV. 

Also see, Joost goes live as well as offering video on demand.  Link:  informitv.  --Dennis

Radiohead and why P2P can be a hard habit to break

"Free as in free beer" is such a powerful impulse among us that even when something is offered free for voluntary payment, most people opt for not paying.  Gee, where have I learned that in my public broadcasting career?  The band, Radiohead, is the latest business to discover this as Nate Anderson writes:

Radiohead's innovative digital distribution arrangement for their new album, In Rainbows, lets people pay whatever they want for the music, including nothing at all. Despite that, BitTorrent swapping of the album has been on the level of other major releases. Are people really so cheap that they won't even register with the band in order to snag a free download? The answer appears to be yes. ...

... Once the album became available for download, though, it spilled immediately onto P2P networks, primarily BitTorrent. ...

Link:  Ars Technica. 

Of course, as Radiohead is discovering, that's not to say that the collective economic impact of those who choose to pay isn't a sufficiently compelling business model.  Umair Haque calls this open pricing and points to this post in Valleywag (Radiohead estimates doom record labels):

... What nobody knew was whether fans would pay for a Radiohead album if they didn't have to. Certainly, the record labels had to be hoping they wouldn't. Too bad for the fat cats, because reports are that the average price paid for "In Rainbows" fell between $5 and $8. A low estimate of Radiohead's take in two days is $6 million. Sounds like bands with a following now have permission to skip labels.

Read Haque's analysis in Bubblegeneration, Research Note: Open Pricing and Revolutionizing Value Creation:

... open pricing is the most revolutionary innovation to hit the economy for a long time; how it will absolutely eviscerate massconomy business models; etc.

Also see his Research Note: Death of an Industry and Research Note: Why Radiohead Will Revolutionize Music, also in Bubblegeneration.

  --Dennis (the Dennis who frequently fast-forwards his DVR through commercials to avoid "paying" for what he's watching, but who does contribute to public broadcasting).

Vint Cerf: Expect the Internet to radically change television

Few people have more Internet credibility than Vint Cerf, one of its inventors.  Daniel Langendorf writes:

... Cerf...spoke to television executives at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival this past weekend and told them how the Internet’s influence was radically altering their businesses and how it was imperative for them to view this golden opportunity to be exploited instead of a threat to their survival (The Guardian report). ...

And quotes him as saying:

“In Japan you can already download an hour’s worthy of video in 16 seconds. And we’re starting to see ways of mixing information together … imagine if you could pause a television program and use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find out more about them.”

Link:  last100.  --Dennis

P2P-2-ISP Peace Pipe Could Ease Bandwidth Crunch

Michael Calore writes:

... Faced with a surge in network usage, internet service providers are grumbling about rising traffic levels. The increase is driven so far mostly by internet video from YouTube and similar services, which don't actually employ P2P technologies.  ¶  But ISPs say the looming growth of true peer-to-peer applications threatens to overwhelm them. Some ISPs have even started sniffing out P2P traffic on their networks and curbing it, either slowing file sharing to a trickle or bringing it to a halt.  ¶  Responding to this adversarial relationship, some P2P companies are adopting a posture of engagement with ISPs, and have formed a new industry working group to help broker relationships that, they say, will enable ISPs to better manage and distribute traffic loads on their networks.  ¶  The P4P working group consists of content-distribution-technology providers like BitTorrent, Pando Networks, LimeWire and VeriSign's Kontiki, as well as broadband companies like Verizon and AT&T, and hardware makers like Cisco Systems. There are close to a dozen members so far. The P4P operates under the guidance of the Distributed Computing Industry Association, a group that wants to foster legal peer-to-peer content distribution. ...

Link:  Wired.  It appears to me that Clearwire, which is my WISP, is throttling P2P traffic.  I've not noticed it with Open Media Network, which is powered by Kontiki, but the other day I installed a Torrent client to get a (legitimate) file that was only available that way and it downloaded exceedingly slow.  One sip of water does not a well make, but I think there's a good chance that's what's going on.  Also, while it used to let me connect to the university's VPN so I could sync my Outlook, that's no longer the case.  So it's sniffing out what I'm doing.  Maybe Dick Cheney is a shareholder.  --Dennis

Mark Cuban: The Internet is Dead and Boring

Mark Cuban has been taking on the Internet of late and this week weighed in again.  He writes:

... Every new technological, mechanical or intellectual breakthrough has its day, days, months and years. But they don't rule forever. That's the reality.  ¶  Every generation has its defining breakthrough. Cars, TV, Radio, Planes,highways, the wheel, the printing press, the list goes on forever. I'm sure in each generation to whom the invention was a breakthrough it may have been heretical to consider those inventions "dead and boring". The reality is that at some point they stop changing. They stop evolving. They become utilities or utilitarian and are taken for granted.   ¶  Some of you may not want to admit it, but that's exactly what the net has become. A utility. It has stopped evolving. Your Internet experience today is not much different than it was 5 years ago. ...

Link:  Blog Maverick. 

Update 27 August 2007:
In a follow-up post today, Cuban says The Internet Is Still Dead and Boring.  Link:  Blog Maverick.

Update 29 August 2007:
Be sure also to read broadband expert Om Malik's surprisingly supportive response, Cuban's Theory & The Internet Infrastructure Questions.  Link:  GigaOm.  --Dennis