[140905] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Netflix Is Eating Up More Of North America's Bandwidth Than Any
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Bellovin)
Tue May 24 22:49:13 2011
From: Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTinEC9DGT8Fv75mWs6uah=OS29H0Og@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 22:48:57 -0400
To: Max <perldork@webwizarddesign.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
It was TBS, in the 1980s: =
http://web.archive.org/web/19981203103811/www.stargate.com/history.html
It used TBS because that was one of the first "superstations", =
distributed=20
to cable systems nationwide via satellite.
On May 24, 2011, at 8:12 31PM, Max wrote:
> Was PBS one of the companies you are referring to? A colleague of
> mine worked as a developer on a project at PBS in the 90s that used
> the blanking interval for Internet transmissio - very cool stuff.
>=20
> On 5/19/11, Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com> wrote:
>>> =46rom nanog-bounces+bonomi=3Dmail.r-bonomi.com@nanog.org Wed May =
18 16:12:17
>>> 2011
>>> Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:53:10 -0600
>>> From: Brielle Bruns <bruns@2mbit.com>
>>> To: nanog@nanog.org
>>> Subject: Re: Netflix Is Eating Up More Of North America's Bandwidth =
Than
>>> Any
>>> Other Company
>>>=20
>>> On 5/18/11 2:33 PM, Dorn Hetzel wrote:
>>>> If we're really talking efficiency, the "popular" stuff should =
probably
>>>> stream out over the bird of your choice (directv, etc) because it's
>>>> hard to beat millions of dishes and dvr's and no cable plant.
>>>>=20
>>>> Then what won't fit on the bird goes unicast IP from the nearest =
CDN.
>>>> Kind of like the "on demand over broadband" on my satellite box. =
Their
>>>> selection sucks, but the model is valid.
>>>=20
>>>=20
>>>=20
>>> If someone hadn't mentioned already, there used to be a usenet =
provider
>>> that delivered a full feed via Satellite.
>>=20
>> There were, at different times, two companies that did that. Both =
went
>> under because expenses exceeded income.
>>=20
>> The one that was _much_ more interesting was the one that Lauren =
Weinstein
>> had a hand in. It piggy-backed a Usenet feed in the vertical =
blanking
>> interval of several big "independant" TV stations -- ones that were
>> carried by practically every cable company in the country. =
Distribution
>> to the cable companies was via satellite, but the USENET feed, being
>> _part_ of the video signal, consumed _zero_ additional bandwidth, and
>> rode the satellite links for free.
>>=20
>> To get the feed, all you needed was a TV tuner with 'video out', and =
the
>> purpose-huilt decoder box that extracted the vertical interval data.
>>=20
>> This service died as the independants moved to encrypted =
transmission,
>> because the encryption did _not_ perserve anything in the 'blanking'
>> timeslot. only the 'viewable' field-image was trasmitted, _as_ a =
full-field
>> image. Sync, blanking, etc. was _locally_ generated on the receiving =
end.
>>=20
>> An "elegant" idea, done in by changing technology. *sigh*
>>=20
>>=20
>>=20
>>=20
>=20
>=20
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
