As someone who used to work for a university's residential network, this doesn't surprise me at all.
Even as of March 2007, I was seeing 30%+ of our total bandwidth being used for flash video sites during peak hours (~6pm to midnight for our users). P2P was easy to control with a worst-effort delivery policy. There was no similar solution for flash video. Even with access to cheap bandwidth in Seattle, the cost to increase available bandwidth tended to be cost-prohibitive. Many colleges and universities don't even have the luxury of purchasing bandwidth cheaply from major metro exchanges. The economics of online video work out much differently for MSOs like Comcast; content-delivery networks and settlement-free peering are easy and cheap to them. It's the last mile which is the problem. For us, the problem was the exact opposite. I see Comcast's move to cap at 250GB as a sticking their toes in the water, and perhaps trying to set a precident at the same time. I don't see a techincal reason for the caps. They don't even differentiate between outbound/inbound traffic. Considering their network architecture where last-mile egress bandwidth is so scarce, that alone makes the whole move seem like a farce. I absolutely agree that whatever they're hedging against in the future is sure to have some anticompetive tint to it. -Nick On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Lauren Weinstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The implications of this story for bandwidth caps and their potential > for anticompetitive results are obvious. > > I continue to be bemused by the mainstream press' seeming disconnect > between stories that on one hand note the massive rise in Internet > video and the launch of new Internet video services, and on the other > hand stories that detail ISP plans to limit Internet usage -- in > some cases drastically. > > These two essentially contradictory aspects are rarely considered in > the same stories. > > > http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/online-video-and-our-attention-span-get-longer > > --Lauren-- > NNSquad Moderator >
