Networking
Steven J. Vaughan-NicholsNetflix: Bigger than cable. Too big for the Internet?
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | April 26, 2011, 2:13pm PDT
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Netflix is now bigger than any single cable company. What does that mean for the Internet and your ISP bill?
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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Biography
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge, PC operating system; 300bps was a fast Internet connection; WordStar was the state of the art word processor; and we liked it!His work has been published in everything from highly technical publications (IEEE Computer, ACM NetWorker, Byte) to business publications (eWEEK, InformationWeek, ZDNet) to popular technology (Computer Shopper, PC Magazine, PC World) to the mainstream press (Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek).
According to the DVD and online video rental king Netflix’s last quarterly report, Netflix now has more subscribers than Comcast, the largest cable U.S. TV operator. 7% of all U.S. citizens now subscribe to Netflix. That’s great for Netflix but what about the Internet, on which it increasingly relies for its video transport?
Back in October, Netflix, and other video content were already taking up more bandwidth than any other single Internet service Gaming, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing, and Web surfing were all falling behind. It’s only gotten worse since then. When I recently looked at how much traffic IPv6 was transporting on the Internet, I found that Netflix, all by itself, was taking up 20%–the largest single share-of all Internet traffic.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but is there enough bandwidth on the Internet to support this if this video trend continues? I doubt it.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are capping their monthly services, ISPs, like Comcast, are also trying to charge Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), the high-speed Internet traffic backbones used by video services, such as Level 3 extra charges for their traffic.
The cable companies are in the odd place of having their comparatively low-revenue ISP services starting to eat their far more profitable cable TV services. On top of that, to supply the need for more and faster bandwidth, they need to upgrade their backbones to IEEE 802.3ba, the standard for 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) and 100GigE Ethernet.
100GiigE may sound fast–and it is–but it’s not fast enough. Some people are already demanding, not mere Terabit networking, but 1.4Terabit networks. In the meantime, ISPs are still struggling to get 802.3ba up and running. And, let’s not even talk about how much trouble it is to get decent broadband in the last mile from the ISP to your home or office.
So what does all that mean for you? Well, it means you can expect to pay more for broadband and get less of it thanks to bandwidth caps. Someone is going to need to make up the revenue cable companies are starting to lose to Internet video and that someone will be you and me. On top of that, someone is going to need to pay for the network infrastructure and that means, again, we’re going to get stuck with the bill. Adding insult to injury, I expect we’re also going to need less reliable service as the existing Internet bends under the ever heavier demands of video watchers and mobile users.
If we’re lucky the Internet won’t break. But, I can certainly see Internet “brownouts” as a real possibility in 2012.
Lucky us.
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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge, PC operating system
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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a freelance writer. He does not own stocks or other investments in any technology company.Biography
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge, PC operating system; 300bps was a fast Internet connection; WordStar was the state of the art word processor; and we liked it!His work has been published in everything from highly technical publications (IEEE Computer, ACM NetWorker, Byte) to business publications (eWEEK, InformationWeek, ZDNet) to popular technology (Computer Shopper, PC Magazine, PC World) to the mainstream press (Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek).
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RE: Netflix: Bigger than cable. Too big for the Internet?
Cable ISPs will use this complication to "squeeze" services like Netflix because the cable monopolies aren't competitive with their own offerings.The only thing too big is the pants those cable ISPs wear. Drop the cable monopolies and the network will expand and flourish...bandwidth and speed will increase...and prices will drop as the newbies court your business!
Is netflix bigger then all provider combined?
Yes they have more subscribers then Comcast, yet Netflix is provider independent, meaning that they can work on FiOS, Warner, Cox, ect.What is Netflix's subscriber rate compared to all delivery avenues combind? 2%? 10%.
That would be an interseting comparison, as a metric to gauge overall user interest in the Netflix service (which I am a customer of).
<img border="0" src="http://www.cnet.com/i/mb/emoticons/plain.gif" alt="plain">
RE: Netflix: Bigger than cable. Too big for the Internet?
Now that NetFlix is relying more and more on internet bandwidth, IMO, they are doomed. It's inevitable that eventually there will be low bandwidth caps that will hurt NetFlix. And consider that they are using 20% for low quality video. I personally don't get these customers watching this low quality stuff. 1080P TVs but they just want to watch something they've most likely already seen before in lower quality. No wonder this country is getting so fat.I have to say I'm up in arms over whether or not ISPs should be allowed to throttle. It IS their infrastructure after all. Nobody is stopping the wireless providers from doing stuff like this with their wireless networks. I personally can't believe it hasn't come to home internet access already. I think it eventually will.
No issues for ATTWireless offering unlimited calls to other ATT phones. So why would ComCast have a problem offering unlimited access to ComCast movies? The goverment doesn't force ATTWireless to offer unlimited calls to/from outside phones for free.
Time will tell....
RE: Netflix: Bigger than cable. Too big for the Internet?
@happyfirst low quality video?? compared to what - bluray?
if so, I can understand your point of view, but honestly dvd quality videos that I get through netflix is very very adequate considering I am only paying 8 bucks for.
As far as saying it is for stuff you already seen... says who? Don't buy the service then if you happened to already seen the thousands and thousands of movies offered for streaming. I know I haven't seen them all so it is worth it to me.RE: Netflix: Bigger than cable. Too big for the Internet?
Low quality video doesn't begin to cover it. Not only do they use about the worst compression I've seen (the Starz section is especially bad) but I've yet to see one of their movie streams make it more than 20 minutes in without developing a terrible case of hanging/buffering.Frankly, I can't understand all the Netflix hoopla. They'e got to have the crappiest overall streaming quality of anything on the Internet. And they want to introduce multi-family streaming? Give me a break!
If you want to see streaming done right (and looks spectacular even on a 1080P set) check out the 2nd Gen Apple TV/itunes. This is apparently a secret the masses have yet to discover, and it's what Netflix should really be worried about. Yes, you're locked into Apple's box/infrastructure, but don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
BetaMark04/26/2011 08:47 PMWhich is why I don't buy bandwidth from a cable company...
"Someone is going to need to make up the revenue cable companies are starting to lose to Internet video and that someone will be you and me. "
Maybe someone should consider moving to a service that does not use network technology that's only found on cable networks and history books aka bus networks. I may have just missed it but I don't see VZ talking about the same restrictions and additional fees that Comcast has been pushing for years starting well before Netflix was an online service. Or to be blunt Comcast is a crooked company anyway this is just an excuse.
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Wednesday, 27 April 2011
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