Netflix is Swallowing all of America's Bandwidth

It's not just Canada. Netflix is swallowing America's bandwidth, too, and it probably won't be long before it comes for the rest of the world. That's one of the headlines from Sandvine's Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomena Report, an exhaustive look at what people around the world are doing with their Internet lines. According to Sandvine, Netflix accounts for 20 percent of downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America. That's an amazing share—it beats that of YouTube, iTunes, Hulu, and, perhaps most tellingly, the peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol BitTorrent, which accounts for a mere 8 percent of bandwidth during peak hours. It wasn't long ago that pundits wondered if the movie industry would be sunk by the same problems that submarined the music industry a decade ago—would we all turn away from legal content in favor of downloading pirated movies and TV shows? Three or four years ago, as BitTorrent traffic surged, that seemed likely. Today, though, Netflix is far bigger than BitTorrent, and it seems sure to keep growing.
Will Netflix Destroy the Internet?

Every so often a new subsection of the market "takes over" and dominates the market. ISPs complain as it puts "too much" demand on their infrastructure, the inevitable clamoring for tiered markets arise and there are new fears regarding net neutrality.

Currently video "hogs" bandwidth in today's market but it won't in tomorrows. This discussion will continue for the rest of this decade and on. Until we have enough bandwidth for both business and personal uses; until we have enough for live HD sport broadcasts, gaming and Netflix to run concurrently with business applications such as HD conference calls; where remote location engineers and architects are able to look at problems at a construction site; and doctors at a remote location are able to assist in a surgery - until we have the bandwith for that (and more) this debate will continue.

The EFF and Net Neutrality

The following quotes come from the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION's
January 14, 2010 submission to the FCC regarding net neutrality legislation.

In order to protect the free speech interests of Internet users, the Commission should reject copyright enforcement as “reasonable network management.” Copyright enforcement has nothing to do with the technical business of network management.

Congress has not deputized the FCC to be a free roving regulator of the Internet. On the contrary, Congress has consistently preferred to protect the Internet from excessive regulation. So while EFF strongly endorses the goals of this Commission as stated in the NPRM, a limitless notion of ancillary jurisdiction would stand as an open invitation to future Commissions to promulgate “policy statements,” issue regulations, and conduct adjudications detrimental to the Internet.

We need to be able to allow ISPs to provide greater access to the services that need it, such as real-time applications, while ensuring that they do not pay attention to content. ISPs cannot both be doing the government's bidding regarding law enforcement of copyright and illegal material AND at the same time be expected to be "net neutral." That is asking the impossible.

Net Neutrality - Still Wondering How It All Works Out

Last month the FCC announced the rules for "enforcing" net neutrality. As broad statements of intent they're fine - but the devil is in the details. The question is "how will these intentions be codified and enforced."

Chapter 5 of the FCC ruling displays both the intent and the problem.

This Commission has a statutory responsibility to preserve and promote advanced communications networks that are accessible to all Americans and that serve national purposes. Fouryears ago, the Commission sought to safeguard and promote the open Internet by announcing four general
Internet policy principles that would guide its interpretation of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the Act):

· To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

· To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

· To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

· To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The Commission noted that all the principles “are subject to reasonable network management.”

fcc-09-93a1.pdf

So what does "reasonable network management" mean? We know it means that company A's content does not get placed before company B. But does real-time communication get put in front of email? We're still not hearing any details from the media. And what about point one in which "consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice." That's straight forward in one sense but how does this apply to ISPs? The role of an ISP is to transmit data from one computer to another, not to determine whether that data is legal, or copyrighted or anything else along this line.

The End of P2P

Ok, that was a little bit of an exaggeration but two years ago P2P was dominating internet traffic and now, while still dominating the upstream networks, P2P is starting to drop in relation to real-time traffic. I see the time, in the relatively near future, where P2P is a niche market in comparison to real-time traffic. This is not to say that P2P usage will drop in absolute terms, only that gaming, VoIP, online file storage, movie, real time news and sports is going to increase tremendously over the next few years.

What will this do to theNet Neutrality arguments? Real-time communications can be buffered for only so long; a web page can be delayed for 500ms without too much complaint and an email can be delayed for 1000s of milliseconds without notice.