Archive for the ‘bandwidth bandit’ Category

Bandwidth explosions

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

We are currently seeing an explosive growth in the distribution and delivery of digital video content across both fixed and mobile networks. Four years ago 100 million videos were watched on YouTube every day. It is two billion today. The BBC’s iPlayer launched in December 2007. It now delivers over 120 million requests every day which adds up to 7 petabytes of data a month.

As a result of this, the volume of data carried by mobile operators has risen twentyfold over the last two years (thanks iPhone), and is forecast to grow almost as much again in the next two years. The figures for fixed operators are less dramatic but still very significant.

(more…)

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Polycom Telepresence impresses ITSPA

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
I’ve only seen a single screen telepresence demo before and that was on a noisy exhibition floor.  At Polycom’s City Executive Briefing Centre yesterday I was treated the to a full blown demo and boy was it impressive.  The quality was astounding.

Attendees at the ITSPA Summer Forum sat on one side of an oval conference table that was mirrored on 4 large screens in front of us. A Polycom representative (sorry didn’t catch his name) did the spiel from the other room located in Slough.

It was as if he was in the same room and he could even hear the side conversations going on on our side of the table. (more…)

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Guest blog post over at Broadbandgenie

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

My monthly guest blog post is up at broadbandgenie.co.uk. World cup stuff.

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UK is 21.3% of Global internet traffic during England v Slovenia #worldcup match says Akamai

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Global content delivery network Akamai is showing its UK traffic today as 21.3% of the global internet traffic.  Whilst it isn’t true to extrapolate this to say that the UK represents 21.3% of all global internet traffic today it is a reasonable indicator as to the UK share of overall usage.

This is certainly being seen at Timico where our streaming traffic is up 357% which is even higher than yesterday’s reported budget watching traffic.  This was itself a record 309% increase. Twitter is struggling this afternoon and the live football stream from the BBC on my 100Mbps connection is not great so – now you know why.

Photo below is a screenshot showing global network hotspots.

Global Akamai network hotspot map during the world cup match between England and Slovenia

Global Akamai network hotspot map during the world cup match between England and Slovenia

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#Budget eclipses #worldcup #wimbledon #cricket for online video streaming

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Wimbledon doesn’t appear to be starting online until 14.40hrs. The budget speech is online, the England v Australia 1 day cricket match is online, there is no World Cup football until 15.00hrs. So what eh?

So video streaming has hit another high. It is up 309% on the norm. The World Cup has seen a 171% increase so many more people are interested in the budget than in the world cup. 

All the recent major political events have seen large spikes in internet traffic online. This goes back to Obama’s inauguration, the last budget speech under the Labour government and the day after Polling Day in the recent general election, which was in itself a local maximum, to use my A Level maths.

Fortunately for ISPs the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cronies are a fairly static lot.  In other words the only bit of moving is the occasional waving of an order paper (or whatever they call them in Parliament - ”The Dandy” probably). This means that the bandwidth usage hasn’t gone up in proportion to the number of users online in the way that it does for the sport. Movement means change which means lots of bandwidth usage when it comes to video streaming.

Tomorrow is the biggie.  The last England Group match and one that they have to win.  It’s all there: passion, excitement, intrigue, dissent, highs, lows, vuvuzelas,  tears and tattoos but no romance – the WAGS have stayed away.

Read all about it on trefor.net.  Order, order! No hang on the budget speech has finished. Everyone has started doing some work again.

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Sport streaming on the internet this afternoon #worldcup #wimbledon

Monday, June 21st, 2010

At work I have a 100Mbps of uncontended bandwidth to play with.  It does me. I thought I’d watch some sport this afternoon, in between stuff. This was partly because I drew Chile in the office sweepstake – they are playing Switzerland as I write – and partly because I’m taking one of my lads to Wimbledon on Thursday – centre court – keep an eye out for me in the crowd.

Both sports are being covered on BBC  iPlayer this afternoon. I can of course watch both at the same time – and that’s despite being a bloke (or is it because of it?) – (more…)

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#WorldCup streaming popularity contest – Spain v Switzerland lead so far

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

You can tell which teams hold the most interest based on how busy the network is on any afternoon this week.

It all started with England’s warm up game last week. Quite a few people watched that online but not as many as watched the Opening ceremony. Yesterday’s Spain v Switzerland match is the most popular to date.

1 Wednesday 16th Spain v Switzerland
2 Friday 11th South Africa v Mexico
3 Tuesday 15th New Zealand v Slovakia
4 Tuesday 15th Ivory coast v Portugal
5 Monday 14th Netherlands v Denmark
6 Monday 14th Japan v Cameroon
7 Friday 11th Opening Ceremony
8 Wednesday 16th Honduras v Chile
9 England pre-tournament friendly
9 Thursday 17th Greece v Nigeria
9 Thursday 17th Argentina v South Korea

This doesn’t look at evening matches which I imagine most people will watch on their TV or in the pub. It is also only based on Timico’s network so other ISPs may have different rankings (for what it’s worth – there is no money changing hands here – yet).

Just a bit of fun.

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#Microsoft Update meets #WorldCup – it’s an ISPs life

Friday, June 11th, 2010

The ISP industry woke up yesterday morning to a spike on their collective networks. I had people down to my office asking whether the World Cup had started a new trend in online TV watching. It undoubtedly reinforces the trend but this time the bandwidth rush was due to a Microsoft Update and not the football.

The football is starting to have an effect though – viewing figures during the opening ceremony were up around 30% over normal video watching. This didn’t have any ill effects on the quality of the experience at least at my end.

30 minutes into the opening game between the Hosts South Africa the score remains nil nil and the video traffic has grown by about 60% above the norm.  This is not as many people as were watching the shennanigans the day after the general election (although it almost is).  But this is not England playing here… 

Just to remind readers the concern is that online viewing is going to flood the internet and affect regular users. Warnings have been issued by many ISPs and content providers. Looks like our pipes are ok at the moment although as predicted we have hit a record high in terms of bandwidth usage. If you are making a VoIP call or sending email etc you should still be fine.

You do wonder at Microsoft’s timing though, releasing an update just before the biggest demand event the internet will have seen to date. I guess there are geeks everywhere.  Football? What’s football?

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#englandfootball #WorldCup #HDvideo demand poses big questions for ISPs #DEAct #finalthirdfirst

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Timico’s video traffic grew by around 30% when England were playing their pre tournament “friendly” football match in South Africa yesterday.

ISPs have been speculating as to what might happen during the tournament itself and especially on June 23rd which is England’s first midweek daytime match. At the recent LINX meeting in London it was suggested that the BBC is (more…)

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Budget watching – internet usage grew by 22% during Alistair Darling speech #digitalbritain

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Readers might be interested to know that internet usage on the Timico pipes grew by 22% over the same period yesterday as punters went online to watch Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling’s Budget speech.

This is roughly the same growth that we saw during the Olympics and also during last summer’s Ashes cricket tests and the Open golf.

In a sense they are similar events – jeering crowds, cheering crowds etc. I’d rather be watching the sport though.

Anyway he did confirm the 50 pence tax on phone lines.

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