[94068] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day,
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bora Akyol)
Mon Jan 8 19:52:36 2007
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 16:51:18 -0800
In-Reply-To: <B1BA85A7-BDD8-4559-A612-DC4B7E4B0D09@corp.earthlink.net>
From: "Bora Akyol" <bora@broadcom.com>
To: "Gian Constantine" <constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Please see my comments inline:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gian Constantine [mailto:constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net]=20
> Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 4:27 PM
> To: Bora Akyol
> Cc: nanog@merit.edu
> Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a=20
> day, continuously?
>=20
<snip>
>=20
> I would also argue storage and distribution costs are not=20
> asymptotically zero with scale. Well designed SANs are not=20
> cheap. Well designed distribution systems are not cheap.=20
> While price does decrease when scaled upwards, the cost of=20
> such an operation remains hefty, and increases with additions=20
> to the offered content library and a swelling of demand for=20
> this content. I believe the graph becomes neither asymptotic,=20
> nor anywhere near zero.
To the end user, there is no cost to downloading videos when they are
sleeping.
I would argue that other than sports (and some news) events, there is
pretty much no content that
needs to be real time. What the downloading (possibly 24x7) does is to=20
stress the ISP network to its max since the assumptions of statistical
multiplexing
goes out the window. Think of a Tivo that downloads content off the
Internet
24x7.=20
The user is still paying for only what they pay each month, and this is
"network neutrality 2.0" all over again.
> You are correct on the long tail nature of music. But music=20
> is not consumed in a similar manner as TV and movies.=20
> Television and movies involve a little more commitment and=20
> attention. Music is more for the moment and the mood. There=20
> is an immediacy with music consumption. Movies and television=20
> require a slight degree more patience from the consumer. The=20
> freshness (debatable :-) ) of new release movies and TV can=20
> often command the required patience from the consumer. Older=20
> content rarely has the same pull.
I would argue against your distinction between visual and auditory
content.
There is a lot of content out there that a lot of people watch and the
content
is 20-40+ years old. Think Brady Bunch, Bonanza, or archived games from
NFL,
MLB etc. What about Smurfs (for those of us with kids)?
This is only the beginning.
If I can get a 500GB box and download MP4 content, that's a lot of
essentially free storage.
Coming back to NANOG content, I think video (not streamed but multi-path
distributed video) is going to bring the networks down not by sheer
bandwidth alone but by challenging the assumptions behind the
engineering of the network. I don't think you need huge SANs per se to
store the content either, since it is multi-source/multi-sink, the
reliability is built-in.
The SPs like Verizon & ATT moving fiber to the home hoping to get in on
the "value add" action are in for an awakening IMHO.
Regards
Bora
ps. I apologize for the tone of my previous email. That sounded grumpier
than I usually am.
