Enjoyed the article a lot.

This concept has appeal on paper, especially to people who don't know how BT's broadband network works internally.

In practice, the way BT currently implement IPstream make the idea impractical (or impossible) to implement. Whether it will be any different once BT's much over-hyped 21CN arrives remains to be seen.

It's probably practical for the LLU guys to interconnect their exchange kit to an exchange-based content delivery network, but why would they want to? This is about money not technology, it's about BT charging a fortune to interconnect from their network to the non-LLU ISP's networks, and the LLU guys don't have to pay BT that cost, they have their own non-BT networks.

Go back to the original Plusnet article re the impact of streaming. Then read the associated article on the costs of broadband (and the one on the impact 21CN pricing will have in non-LLU areas), links below. You might conclude that the content delivery "problem" in the UK is down to (non-existent) regulation of BTwholesale monopoly pricing.

http://community.plus.net/blog/2008/02/28/how-uk-isps-are-charged-for-broadband-the-cost-of-ipstream/

http://community.plus.net/blog/2007/10/01/21cn-and-regional-pricing/

The argument involving the possible FTTH or even FTTC deployment is rediciulous unless it's going to take the BBC 5+ years to deploy this CDN locally to users.

I seriously can not see any fiber deployment in the near future unless it's government funded and I highly doubt that will happen.

Also the idea of putting servers in every local exchange would surely end up costing way more than the BBC would ever think of putting into the iPlayer project.

the only real way this is going to end up will be servers at the ISP level to keep the cost for them down so they do not try and create a backlash against the BBC

Once the virgin version of iplayer comes on stream early april (apparently) not only will VM TV customers be able to have access to the full iplayer library in better quality than via the bbc website but this would mean, one assumes, a lower usage of the virgin media broadband for the internet iplayer than other ISPs?

...after all, if the BBC is willing to install a CDN, either in ISP network centres, or telephone exchanges, at the BBCs expense, how can the ISPs loose?

If fiber to the home (ever) goes ahead, the ISPs loose nothing. If it doesn't, then they are saving on bandwidth costs. An ideal solution for them.

The only possible looser here is the BBC - they stand to waste the investment in a CDN if the local loop goes fiber.

The real question we should be considering is: does the BBC know something the rest of us don't?

After all, installing a nation-wide CDN is not something to be considered lightly - unless of course you already KNOW that there is little or no realistic chance of the local loop being fibered up...

The only other explanation I can see for the BBC giving the idea any serious consideration is their propensity for squandering license payer's money.

So, inside information about the probability of a fiber local loop in the near future?

Or, lack of fiscal caution?

Go on - you choose.

Wait, what is the ISPs' point here ?

That the BBC's player eats bandwidth ?

They're blaming users for using the bandwidth they've subscribed to ?

Or are they saying the 20mbs you're paying for was never even close to 3mbs in the first place, because ISPs sell bandwidth they don't have ?

They sell bandwidth at overly inflated rates:

"Hey pal we've installed you a 10gbs line, but you can only use 2kbs at a time because we sold it to 6bill other users and our network can't cope; however let's agree you pay for a 10gbs subscription".

ISPs

Got

Bitten

Back

\o/

Exactly. I don't see why this is a BBC problem.

They're providing the content. The people are paying the ISPs for delivery. If the ISPs can't perform this service, they need to spend more money on their own infrastructure, or be squashed by OFCOM for not delivering what they're contractually obliged to.

Oh dear oh dear..

Another crazy example of the BBC trying to diversify from its core objectives. Let the ISP's figure out how to get content to the consumer. The last thing I want is the BBC wasting more of my cash on things they know very little about. I quite happily get BBC streams on BT Vision. BT/Virgin and all other the other ISP's have the experience in doing this stuff.

But out BBC, and watch my words when I say that it will only be a matter of time before the BBC petition the government that we all should pay an internet license!

I wonder how much long term appeal iPlayer has or if people will get bored with it after a few months like with the social networking sites - an initial explosion of interest then lots of people getting bored? There must be a lot of "oooh lets have a go on that!" especially with the BBC advertising it so much at the moment. How many of these people are going to keep using it after the initial... "humm... I can watch old TV programs again... what else does it do?" wears off?

I for one am not interested, I've got a Sky+ PVR which watches 2 channels at once for me already so I don't have to!

Chris

P.S. I'll get my coat and go outside into the _real world_, with the fresh air and the sunshine.

"The BBC are on top here. If I was them, I would be offering to licence the content on to CDNs provisioned by the ISP. "Install and pay for this kit, or your users will trample your core network...."

To which the ISPs simply respond, "OK we'll start charging our customers by the gigabyte and remove all caps on transfer limits." At which point, film and music piracy on the internet falls to a tiny fraction of its current level, dozy users wake up to the fact that they've been pumping spam to the world for the past few years, and the iPlayer is shown up to be the totally unviable product that it always was.

Sounds like a win-win-don'tgiveatoss situation to me.

The premise was "iplayer is streaming traffic. This graph shows streaming traffic. Look the graph sort of went up in the same quarter that iplayer was released....without considering other causes that don't fit my agenda, it therefore "proves" my gripe that Plusnet are really hard done by."

Which is silly in itself...if I wanted to know how much of my customer traffic had gone to the iplayer site I wouldn't measure the temperature of the routers and say "they're hotter, ergo they must be sending more data somewhere. The BBC have just launched a site. Ergo that must be it! Whilst thinking 'Thank god they put Orlowski on this story he's actually buying this crap...I hope the drool on his chin doesn't drip and smudge the story..."

Did it cost less for me to download the 6gb of ut2k4 from Steam last night?

It seems laughable moronic given sites like youtube exist, and, I hear, the internet has porn on it...and afaict we still have the same amount of waking hours to sit and watch things. Let's face it, there are a 100+ channels of TV, along with all the production companies and so on, that are basically working on the premise that they have something people prefer to sit and watch than the BBC [and often the figures show they are correct] before you've even considered the vast wealth of places which are alternative sources of data on the internet.

Users get data...whatever that data is, it's asinine to start applying moral / political arguments to that data. It's as daft as trying to do it with whether journeys in a car or other energy usage was "necessary" or not.

In plusnet's case, for example, I note they have a 40gb/ 20gb / 1gb and so on products...and lots of waffle about why they don't offer unlimited and how other isps aren't honest. If they start saying "40gb, but you can't watch iplayer as part of that" then they have been lying too.

If they can't figure out a min / average / max data figure [including accounting for the fact that those figures increase irrespective of iplayer, just as it did when we switched from 56k modems to 512kbps and 2mbps and so on] and build a business around a bunch of products using those figures, then they deserve to go out of business....or there is no business there. So what? Plenty of ISPs [some with "free" in their name] had business models that a moron could see were unworkable - the worse that can happen is a few customers email addresses will change.

Tomorrow this idea that you can't download a few TV shows over the internet will be laughable...but we all know these BT resellers aren't in the game of providing broadband tech, they just rebadge.

So yeah, no doubt they sit there watching the router lights flash thinking "what is this data we're sending? Could we have had a viable business too, perhaps something to do with this data stuff?"

It is no different to the checkout girl in Tesco watching the money pass through her hands and thinking "I'm only getting £5 an hour of this....look at the increase in Reggae, Reggae sauce sales! It's the BBC's fault that I'm carrying all these bottles..."

If she wants a bigger piece of the pie, she isn't going to get it as a whinging checkout girl.

Same applies to Plusnet, Let's not pass the onion for failing businesses, self-pity is bad enough in people.

So the ISPs sold us bandwidth they didn't have. And now we want to use it. That's a problem the ISPs have to fix for themselves; possibly by being honest with their customers. Guess that's asking a lot.

Its about time that the ISPs suffered from their selling of unlimited broadband. They have made vast amounts of money from it over the last few years.

Hopefully the number of people using the iPlayer will steadily increece and it will force their hand to upgrade the network. The ISPs got themselves in the situation so they can get themselves out or fail trying. Maybe they will pay or maybe they can actually use their lobbying power to persuade the government to Subsidise the Network.

Either way I hope the BBC doesn't have to put servers in every exchange. They are a content provider and not a network/pipe provider and as such should not have to pay because people are actually using what they pay for!!!

"they need to spend more money on their own infrastructure, or be squashed by OFCOM for not delivering what they're contractually obliged to."

What is it you think they are obliged to provide, they certainly aren't obliged to provide access to iPlayer if they don't want, they are perfectly free to throttle that traffic just as they do with p2p traffic. Hell, if they want they can block it entirely.

See how much the BBC has them over a barrel if every ISP just blocked it...

Saying that, I looked at the figures in the last scare story and they simply didn't add up, I didn't get a reply to my email to the author though.

Serious rant coming up. No apologies for accuracy or lack thereof.

Am I sick to death of telecoms/internet services in this country.

Ten years ago it was the telcos complaining that they couldn't do flat-rate unmetered dialup (because those rich seams of interconnect fees were too tasty to ignore), then the farces that was FRIACO and SurfTime. Then ADSLv1 was finally deployed at a rate which defied credibility, with speeds that defied credibility. Then BT Wholesale realised that charging the ISPs per bit was much more profitable, maintaining their monopoly on the telecoms infrastructure of the nation.

I am so bored of hearing these piss poor excuses leaking out of every internet provider, "it's too expensive, people use too much bandwidth, streaming can't be done, blah blah blah" - if the margins are so tight, fuck off out of the market and let people who can provide a service move in. None of you are content providers, and there is not a path between "infrastructure provision" and "content licensor". Your "customer portals" (if I ever met the person who coined *that* concept I'd stab them in the face) are aggregations of other people's uninteresting feeds, and will - ultimately - go the way of AOL (here's a tasty mug of clue).

Maybe it's the dolts in the street who fuck it all up requiring costly call centres full of script droids bleating "reboot"? The great unwashed who can't distinguish between equipment and service ("Dear Freeserve, Word won't work..."). Actually, no, the great unwashed were invited to join the "information superwankway" by these self-same companies who now struggle to provide a service they begged the techno-illiterate to take up ("Get music! Look at webs! Webcam with grandparents!").

So, they go the way of the PC manufacturers and install multiple "value added" softwares on each subscriber PC (a genuine complaint from my mate's Mum - "why does it take 10 minutes to load the internet?" Because a certain incumbent state telco has given you so much additional software - 4 XP system services, 3 dialers, plus 3 - count 'em - THREE firewalls, and I'm not even talking about the hacked up IE "custom" browser). Because just like malware, they get thruppence per installation.

I've never come across such a whiny industry. Always pissing and complaining that they may actually have to serve up what they misleadingly claim to offer.

Is there not a market for an internet provider, that provides a fast, unmetered internet access, for a reasonable cost. No value adds, no support beyond "our network is cool, the problem's your end, JFGI", no "free web space", no "portal", just a cool, clear connection that works? Or is such a thing an impossibility?

Is the problem with the long-fabled multicast technology that it was designed for the broadcast era, not streaming on demand. Still, couldn't multicast be utilised for those who use Kontiki to download iPlayer content?

As ever, the problem doesn't lie with the BBC, or with ISP's... the problem lies with BT - the people that own and deliver the core infrastructure. Trouble is, the copper cable are a decade behind their time, and the cost of bandwidth too high. If there were a proper fibre infrastructure in place, there's be no need for heavily stratified/tiered broadband provision, as bandwidth wouldn't be so much of an issue

One possible way to quickly reduce cost would be to have a client on the PC/setop box using prefetch of content the user wants to see.

These would be scheduled to download at night using the spare capacity that seems to currently be available on the ISPs backhaul circuits.

Obviously getting the mix right would be tricky - you wouldn't want to download content the user does not want to watch - wasting bandwidth.

However I imagine if the BBC delayed the most popular content by 12-24 hours so it falls into the quiet midnight to 6am period and then used a combination of

1. Allowing the user to subscribe to a channel (a specific series for instance).

2. Tracked what content the user likes.

Have not done the figures but I imagine it would be possible to remove a good chunk of data from the peak periods (6pm to midnight I believe).

Just my 1p worth.

I must have broadband, I must have broadband, I must have more broadband .... ok little boy here's a nice shiny 45 Meg line, much better than that little 2 Meg one.

Of course what the dealer (woops sorry ISP) didn't tell you was it was exactly the same as what you had before, a 50:1 contended connection going into the same back haul from the the exchange all they did was magically increase the speed between your house and the exchange. Its all smoke and mirrors.

Ultimately if you want a decent connection you are going to have to pay for it. Tomorrow I could have installed in my a house a 45MB internet connection with a contention ratio of better than 5:1 that would actually give me 45MB in both directions. Its called a T3 connection, and several ISP's in the UK could/would quite happily sell me one including BT, the downside is the cost (approx 1500-2000 GBP a month).

Wake up consumers there is no such thing as free lunch, if you want something you have to pay for it, and until you get off your crack head approach to broadband the ISP's(dealers) will continue to sell you junk and then whine about doing so.

PS. here's a tip sign: up to BT's business broadband service, it costs more, but the contention ratio is much lower (only 20:1 last time I checked) so you're more likely to get what they are selling you

Multicast was invented so that people could 'tune' into a 'channel' and receive the same content as everyone else at the same time. The network effect is dramatic.

Only one stream of packets is sent by the the originator. The clients select the 'channel' they want to watch. The network infrastructure (See CISCO) is intelligent enough to route the packets (and copies) to every consumer. What this means is that the network carries the burden of duplicating and distributing a video stream, not the source.

This network content/load management goes all the way to the DSLAM. Effectively every exchange DSLAM only gets one copy of the video and then redistributes it to all clients wanting to watch.

All that is required is to treat the video stream as a broadcast rather than an on-demand video.

When the providers go to individual on-demand scenario the network will immediately fail. There is no duplication of data so the demand will immediately outstrip the capacity of the network to deliver.

if the BBC was serious it would schedule multiple 'channels' and work with IPSs to provide multicast enabled networks.

If the download system weren't such a DRM'd piece of crap and used a wasn't p2p based and just used regular files (a la podcasting) then the demand for the streaming version would plummet and the ISPs could cache the files to their hearts content.

I can't believe the BBC are considering wasting money on a CDN when all they need do is remove the DRM so that the download service can take off and the ISPs can simply cache it like they would anything else.

"Re: ISPs point ?

By Anonymous CowardPosted Wednesday 19th March 2008 09:32 GMT Exactly. I don't see why this is a BBC problem.

They're providing the content. The people are paying the ISPs for delivery. If the ISPs can't perform this service, they need to spend more money on their own infrastructure, or be squashed by OFCOM for not delivering what they're contractually obliged to."

Great idea, and the moment this implemented you cost of your connection rockets! ISP provide a cheap service because this is what consumers want!!! if the cost is low, then the profet is low.. if the profet is low then their is no room for major improvment when needed.. A few points.. ISP's cant win this battle.. they provide a cheap service you complain their is no bandwidth.. they switch and provide an expensive one with the bandwidth you complain its to expensive..

I think what the BBC are doing with this is looking at the problem and providing a solution for its userbase.. More than can be said for the other TV providers that are offering services of this nature..

""they need to spend more money on their own infrastructure, or be squashed by OFCOM for not delivering what they're contractually obliged to."

What is it you think they are obliged to provide, they certainly aren't obliged to provide access to iPlayer if they don't want, they are perfectly free to throttle that traffic just as they do with p2p traffic. Hell, if they want they can block it entirely."

When my ISP put in my Terms and Conditions that I cannot visit the BBC iPlayer, then I'll stop using it. (and them, I'll switch to an ISP that gives me what I pay for - access to the *internet*, not filtered access to the bits of the internet that they permit me to see)

Until then, I'm paying for a pipe, and what I pull down through that pipe is my business, not theirs.

I'm paying for a service, they're obliged to provide that service for as long as I keep paying them.

At what point in this rush to IP delivery though does someone (the government?) ask the bottom-line question: Why should people pay a licence fee? If I can download all BBC (and Channel 4OD etc) programmes online and play them on my media computer then how will this be financed if people no longer need a television (and hence television licence).

Isn't this rather a technical solution in search of a real-life problem?

Who are these people who have stolen the BBC from us - look at the big picture - they're trying to dump transmitters and other such hardware costs (I know they don't OWN the transmitters any more) and broadcast everything down the pipe - so it's public service by pay-as-you-go and 'dancing postage stamps' all over again for quality.

Just what level of bad or lack-of access are these people accepting in the jolly future world as compared to TV access now? Not everyone has broadband, a computer or even a computer capable of multimedia which provides a service at_least what their TV provides now.

Dave

@Shropshire

Once ISP's get offcom'd about Bandwidth Caps this will not be an issue.

This is a totally pointless theory, stick a content server in the data center??? Doesn't that completely and utterly defy the point of the BBC have data centers already which are doing clustering and traffic control?

We (the end consumer) Are not getting shafted over what is coming into the ISP's rack, we're getting shafted over what can feasibly be sent to our door based on how much 'him next door' is downloading at the same time.

Gaurantee this ends up with the BBC trying to provide Broadband services, and if they do, they can get fooked for my license fee.