HD could bring the internet down
Now it seems the guys in suits down here in the US are thinking that HD video is a reason for getting rid of net neutrality.
What is “net neutrality”?
To offset that cost, ISPs want to start charging content providers to ensure delivery of large video files, for example.
Internet activists and consumer groups are vehemently against those plans, saying they amount to tilting the Internet’s level playing field, one of the things that encourages innovation. They want legislation to guarantee a “neutral” Internet, but prospects appear slim.
So if you don’t want to pay more to see your “Desperate Housewives”, write your congressman!
High-Definition Video Could Choke Internet
HD Video Could ‘Choke the Internet’?
network neutrality
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May 15th, 2006 at 9:00 am
I love downloading movie trailers in HD, so I’ll be watching this one closely.
May 15th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
I don’t think this would go anywhere.
I remember back in 1993 when the web was first coming up, it was considered bad netiquette (though the terms wasn’t coined yet) to include too many images on your web pages for no good reason. It was considered a waste of the precious limited bandwidth of the Internet at the time. The same notion today would seem ludicrous. Judging by how much heavy-weight content there are on most commercial websites today, it seems that limited bandwidth is the last thing on anyone’s mind (at least in terms of images and other non-HD multimedia content).
It didn’t take us any painful path to get from 1993 to today in terms of Internet bandwidth sufficiency. This new concern about bandwidth with respect to HD content seems to be nothing more than a short-sighted (or maybe I should say “amnesiac”) echo of the Internet bandwidth concern of the early ’90s. I believe that Internet will once again scale up without a hitch and before you know it, once the demand for that bandwidth is there.
May 15th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I think your missing it. What they want to do is charge some content providers more. What they want to do is charge video.google.com or YouTube.com more because they have higher bandwidth data than say just plain www.google.com
So should a provider of video pay $25000 a month for a T3 instead of $17000 a month just because the content is different? I don’t think so.
May 15th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Right, and I think the answer is “no”.
I was responding based on the premise that their excuse is the higher amount of bandwidth that these will use. That’s what they’re referring to when they say “offsetting that cost”.
The telephone companies tried to make the same argument when dial-up Internet use started to take off. They were saying that they couldn’t maintain their unlimited-use price plans when people start using them for connecting their computers to the Internet and leaving them connected for hours and days. We don’t hear anyone even contemplating this as an issue anymore.
What I was trying to say is, their excuse is baseless. So, even if some providers attempt to charge for such bandwidth, at the rate bandwidth is becoming cheaper and more plentiful, some other providers are bound to emerge who won’t differentiate between types of content like this, obliterating the market share of those who do.
I used to work for an optical networking company a few years ago. At one point, a back-of-the-envelope calculation had shown that carrying all the bandwidth that could reasonbly be required (by the standards of early 2000s) by all households in the US could be handled by only a handful of the optical switches of our company. And these were devices with only five-digit price tags.