Web Video and the Net's Creaking Backbone

By Jack M. Germain
TechNewsWorld
07/26/08 4:00 AM PT

Video has quickly found a welcome home on the Web. Sites like YouTube have achieved near ubiquity in short order. TV networks have taken to putting entire prime-time shows online, and outfits like Amazon and iTunes are selling whole movies in high-definition downloads. What's the burden on the Net's infrastructure? There's room for build-up, but it won't be cheap.

Two weeks ago, Apple and AT&T outlets opened their doors to massive lines of fans eager to buy the new iPhone 3G. The stores were stocked and ready to sell, but the network -- shouldered with the burden of activating so many new phones -- was quickly overwhelmed, and the process slowed to a crawl. Demand quickly outpaced the ability of the system to provide for it, and as a result, it failed. Most users were told to go home and activate their new phones from there.

Is this sort of pile-on some sort of preview of what hides around the corner with the surge of video downloads on the Internet at large? Is the Web's infrastructure Rackspace now offers green hosting solutions at the same cost without sacrificing performance. Make the eco-friendly choice. inching toward collapse?

Stories of users overwhelming individual Web servers is nothing new. In the above example, some iPhone buyers had to leave without having their phones activated because the servers were clogged. A few weeks ago, anxious downloaders toppled the Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Web site 15 minutes ahead of its scheduled release of Firefox 3.0. A couple of months ago, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com experienced sporadic outages, perhaps costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales Double your sales close rates with SalesView. Click to learn how.. And woe unto any smallish Web site or blog that gets a hot pickup on a popular news aggregator like Fark.com.

Even more serious is the potential impact of video's popularity on the Internet. Video is developing a "friend or foe" relationship with online companies. Online collaboration tools -- such as video conferencing, Web training and webinar participation -- are fast becoming a happy alternative to expensive corporate travel.

"Recent data shows that while the Internet traffic is still growing, it's growing at a manageable rate of increase. Video makes up a significant component of overall traffic, but the backbone and peering interconnect systems can still be easily managed upwards in capacity," James Crow, vice president of technology for digital media distribution firm ON Networks, told TechNewsWorld.
Disaster Prognosis

Despite the Chicken Littles' assertions that the Internet sky is about to fall, those pushing for the increased use of video on the Web deny the end is near. Others warn that some retooling of the Web's infrastructure will soon be needed to prevent widespread traffic snarls.

Just as uses for the Internet are not static, product producers are not standing still with the technologies they use for their services. Still, increasing video use on the Web will not be free of charge or challenge.

"Video isn't a challenge on the Internet yet. It is not being overly used. But there are challenges with video ahead," Iain Molland, the North American CEO of the video streaming firm Vividas, told TechNewsWorld.
Content Delivery

Video players on the Internet are developing several technologies to mitigate the increasing consumer bandwidth needs and network responsiveness, Crow said. For instance, most video providers, of both streaming and downloading varieties, leverage edge-based content distribution networks (CDN).

These systems optimize traffic away from the backbone and isolate it to the distributed, last hop/last mile networks. These last-mile systems do represent a potential constriction point, but current technology projects like DOCSIS 3.0 and the FTTN/FTTC initiatives are directly targeting this problem, he explained.

"A company can deliver video very easily from a small server using CDN. This puts thousands of servers within the Internet infrastructure," Molland added.

CDN uses local servers as part of the process. It pushes video content to standard Web page servers while the content is stored at the edge, he explained.
Faster Networks

Internet users are being increasingly drawn to video in the form of full-length, prime-time TV shows posted online by the networks that produce them. ABC, Fox, ABC, CBS and the CW channel make some of their shows available for free on the Web through various outlets. Prime Time Rewind has a unique approach to preventing Internet overload. It links prime-time shows, but directs users back to the original network's site within a cube frame that viewers navigate to find their desired show.

This method allows Prime Time Rewind to serve as a video gateway without having to host its own online player and store all the video files locally. Instead, the content owner has to deal with bandwidth along with contributing to page views, ad revenue, etc.

Nortel, a provider of bandwidth-expanding technology, arms Internet video providers with more bandwidth to ensure that high-definition (HD) video and expanding Web services do not "break" the Web. Using its optical technology, Nortel can deliver both 40G and 100G network capacity, enabling four times the network throughput.

This new technology provides carriers with the capability to keep pace with dramatically increasing demand from heavy bandwidth applications like IPTV (Internet protocol TV), Internet video, HD programming and mobile video phones. Nortel's Adaptive Optical Engine uses enables both 40G and 100G transmission through fiber-optic cables.
Other Methods

Internet service providers often claim that a great deal of the excess traffic on their networks is due to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, with the implication that users illegally trading in copyrighted movies and videos are to blame. However, some P2P developers are bringing new technology to Web video distribution. Take, for instance, BitTorrent, a free, open source file-sharing protocol that effectively distributes very large software and media files. While applications using BitTorrent are popular tools among pirates, the technology is also being used to maximize the ability of the Web to handle all kinds of traffic.

"Our traffic is half of that on the Web. Web creators were sound in their architecture. Video is the latest scaling of that technology," Eric Klinker, CTO of BitTorrent, told TechNewsWorld.

From his view, people reporting that the Web is in danger of collapse are misinformed. Slow spots have always been and will continue to be a fact of life on the Internet, he believes.

"The Network is constantly being upgraded. Constant shifts occur with the backbone," he said. "We consume bandwidth in about the five to six megabyte range. This is about the bandwidth taken by a single audio track. We focus on transport only, not searching or cataloging," he explained, noting that BitTorrent is not a file-sharing operation but a transfer of files in what amounts to a separate network.
Movie Moving Alternatives

Vividas' technology streams video across HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). This harnesses the power for existing bandwidth, according to Molland, who adds that this approach is much more scalable.

"Use of video requires additional Flash server capacity. Issues have been related to not having enough equipment. This is very expensive," he said.

Because the Internet is scaled for delivery of Web pages rather than video, as video use increases it will become a bandwidth problem, he warned. An alternative measure is for video suppliers to start with CDN and switch to P2P as usage increases.
Corrective Measures

Another factor to consider about the growing use of video on the Web is its impact on Web site performance. Officials at AlertSite, which offers a Web site performance and management service, said they do not really see a breaking point for the Internet as a whole.

"But major problems are happening now and in the future with page load times, broken rich Internet applications, and as a result unhappy customers of companies whose Web sites feel the pinch from video slowing Web sites and Internet performance down," Ken Godskind, Web performance evangelist for AlertSite, told TechNewsWorld.

To deal with the bandwidth concerns, enterprise Web users should measure their Web site's performance, he said. For instance, AlertSite's product sets a dynamic base line -- online commerce sites can then use this baseline to monitor overall Web site performance under different circumstances.

"Companies should step back and ask questions. Is their network's poor performance a network problem? Can the ISP help the customer share traffic better? You may find that the bandwidth is maxed out. This will help with capacity planning techniques," he suggested.

www.technewsworld.com

Google Bombs Are not So Scary

It sounds frightening. Google "Bombs" are now going off, where web sites are influencing Google's search results by controlling where they link to and what they say in their links, according to Corante's Microcontent News site.

Of course, Google has always worked this way. What people link to and what they say in their links is a major component in how Google organizes its search results. Links can even be the predominant factor, in some cases.

The classic Google Bomb, if we're going to use that word, was way back at the end of 1999, when it was discovered that a search for "more evil than satan himself" brought up the Microsoft web site. At the end of 2000, we had the "Liv Tyler nude" incident, along with the more notorious search for an insulting slur that brought up the official George W. Bush campaign web site.

In all these cases, what people linked to helped influence the results that came up in Google. Moreover, link analysis was probably more important than usual in determining these results because few pages in the results set probably had much link value to boost them, in addition to the more traditional measures such as the words on the pages themselves.

In other words, if you have 1,000 pages all relevant textually for "liv tyler nude," then the one page that's actually developed links to it will probably get the edge over the others. Following on this, it's no real surprise to read in the Microcontent article below about someone manipulating links to get their friend to come up tops for "Talentless Hack" in Google or for a journalist to get ranked tops for his name.

The story goes on to ponder whether Google will succumb to future bombs, especially "Money Bombs" where people are trying to manipulate Google to make money. Anyone in the search engine marketing industry will probably be having a good chuckle over this. Attempts to manipulate Google through links for money reasons have been going on for ages. People have created entire networks of interlinked web sites, in an attempt to influence Google.

Google combats these attempts by identifying what it considers to be "artificial" link structures and adjusting or eliminating their influence in the rankings. Google has also recently taken action against reciprocal link pages, link "farms" and guest books, downplaying their importance in its link analysis algorithms. And there's no doubt that Google will take action against weblogs, if those weblogs are seen as manipulating results in a way that doesn't correspond with user expectations.

Google Time Bomb Microcontent News, March 3, 2002 http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/googlebombs.htm

There's a section in this that ponders whether Google gives "older" links less weight. Google doesn't care how "old" a link is. Instead, Google is likely to weight a link more heavily if it's on the home page of a web site, primarily because that home page is likely to have more links pointing at it -- thus upping its PageRank score. If a link moves from that page to an "inside" page, that inside page has less of a reputation and thus can transmit less to other pages. And by the way, the proposed "solution" of blogrolling isn't going to be that helpful. The more links that are on a page, the less reputation that gets passed to them from the parent page, under Google's system.

Google hit by link bombers BBC, March 13, 2002 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1868000/1868395.stm

Summarizes the Microcontent News article above. However, the Microcontent article did not say that the attempt to Google Bomb for "daniel pearl" was successful. Nevertheless, the BBC article turned this into a fact.

Google on guard for practical jokers Reuters, March 14, 2002 http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-859805.html

Has comments from Google, explaining that for more popular terms, Google Bombs aren't likely to go off. Google Search Engine Unfazed by 'Googlewhackers' NewsFactor.com, March 14, 2002 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16768.html

Google's been quite public in saying that it has to combat link spam, so it's extremely odd to then see the search engine quoted as saying Google Bombs have not been used for marketing or commercial purposes. But perhaps they were referring only to Google Bombs off of weblog pages.

Bush's Dubious Victory At Google

The Search Engine Report, Feb. 6, 2001 http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/01/02-bush.html

Explains what happened with an unmentionable search and the George W. Bush campaign web site.

Lookin' For Liv In All The Wrong Places
The Search Engine Report, Nov. 3, 2000
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/11-liv.html

This Google blip wouldn't make Liv Tyler very happy, though it's still hard to see which page for this particular search she would have liked best.

More Evil Than Dr. Evil?The Search Engine Report, Nov. 1, 1999 http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/99/11-google.html

The classic Google blip, that put Bill Gates on par with Satan. By the way, the answer to the riddle mentioned in the story is "nothing." See http://www.exodus-coach.co.uk/A_Riddle.htm.

More About Link Analysis
http://searchenginewatch.com/subscribers/more/linkanalysis.html

For Search Engine Watch members, explains how search engines make use of links from across the web to find pages and rank them in relation to searches. Includes many tips on how to locate "important" sites and request links that can help you with search engine positioning efforts.

By Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch

21 dumbest-ever tech predictions

Second-guessing the future is never a good idea, as pundits from Bill Gates to Sir Alan Sugar prove

"They couldn't hit an elephant from that distance." So said Major General John Sedgewick in 1864 just before being hit by the bullet from a Confederate sharpshooter.

He's not alone in making bad predictions, the history of the tech industry is littered with them. Here are 21 of the worst:

Phones

1. "Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." -- The Boston Post, 1865

2. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union memo, 1876

3. "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the Post Office, 1878

4. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidised item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." -- Steve Ballmer, USA Today, 2007

Audio and video

5. "Radio has no future." -- Lord Kelvin, inventor of the Kelvin scale, 1897

6. "The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage." -- Charlie Chaplin, 1916

7. "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming." -- Lee DeForest, inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.

8. "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- Harry Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

9. "[Television] won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Darryl Zanuck, movie producer at 20th Century Fox, 1946

10. "Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan." -- Mary Somerville, educational broadcast pioneer, speaking in 1948

Computing

11. "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949

12. "I went to see Professor Douglas Hartree [in 1951], who had built the first differential analysers in England and had more experience in using these very specialised computers than anyone else. He told me that, in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this country could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built - one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them." -- Lord Bowden, American Scientist, 1970

13. "I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- Business books editor, Prentice Hall, 1957

14. "The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most." -- IBM to the founders of Xerox, 1959

15. "In the mid-70s, someone came to me with an idea for what was basically the PC. The idea was that we would outfit an 8080 processor with a keyboard and a monitor and sell it in the home market. I asked: 'What's it good for?' And the only answer was that a housewife could keep her recipes on it. I personally didn't see anything useful in it, so we never gave it another thought." -- Gordon Moore, Intel

16. "We will never make a 32-bit operating system." -- Bill Gates, speaking at the launch of MSX in 1983

17. "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time." -- Bill Gates, foreword to the OS/2 Programmer's Guide, 1987

18. "Two years from now, spam will be solved." -- Bill Gates, World Economic Forum 2004

The Internet

19. "Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." -- Robert Metcalfe, 3Com founder and inventor of Ethernet, 1995

What the?

20. "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years." -- Sir Alex Lewyt, president and founder of vacuum cleaner maker Lewyt Corporation, 1955

21. "Next Christmas the iPod'll be dead, finished, gone, kaput." -- Sir Alan Sugar, CEO of Amstrad, Daily Telegraph, February 2005

What's your favourite stupid tech prediction? Write in with your comments below!

By Rob Mead

Ariane 5 - Two more telecommunications satellites launched

Yesterday evening, an Ariane 5 ECA launcher lifted off from Europe's Spaceport at Kourou, in French Guiana, on its mission to place two telecommunications satellites into geostationary transfer orbits.

Lift-off of flight V184 took place at 23:47 CEST/Paris on 7 July (21:47 UTC/GMT; 18:47 UTC-3/Kourou). The satellites were accurately injected into the correct transfer orbits about 30 minutes later.

The payload comprised ProtoStar I, which will provide K-band/C-band relay capacity over Asia, and Badr-6, which will provide video broadcasting services for the Middle East and North Africa. The payload mass was 8639 kg; the satellite masses totalled 7537 kg, with payload adapters and dispensers making up the additional 1102 kg.

This fourth launch of the year keeps Arianespace and Europe's Spaceport on target for the seven missions planned for 2008 - the busiest year ever for Ariane 5.

Flight timeline
The Ariane 5's cryogenic, liquid fuelled main engine was ignited first. Seven seconds later, the solid fuel rocket boosters were also fired, and a fraction of a second after that, the launch vehicle lifted off.

The solid boosters were jettisoned 2 min: 20 sec after main engine ignition, and the fairing protecting the payload during the climb through the Earth's atmosphere was discarded at 3 min: 15 sec. The launcher's main engine was shut down at 8 min: 57 sec; five seconds later the main cryogenic stage separated from the upper stage and its payload.

Five seconds after main stage separation, the engine of the launcher's cryogenic upper stage was ignited to continue the journey. The upper stage engine was shut down at 24 min: 48 sec into the flight, at which point the launch vehicle was travelling at 9370 metres per second (just over 33 700 km/h) at an altitude of 640 kilometres and the conditions for geostationary transfer orbit injection had been achieved.

At 27 min: 34 sec after main engine ignition, ProtoStar I separated from the launcher's upper stage, followed by Badr-6 at 35 min: 35 sec.

Next launch
The Ariane 5 ECA for flight V185 has been delivered to Kourou and is being prepared in the Launcher Integration Building. Flight V185 will launch SuperBird-7 and AMC 21 into geostationary transfer orbits at the beginning of August 2008.

Ariane 5 ECA
Ariane 5 ECA is the latest version of the Ariane 5 launcher. It is designed to place payloads weighing up to 9.6 tonnes into geostationary transfer orbit. With its increased capacity, Ariane 5 ECA can handle dual launches of very large satellites.

From: http://www.esa.int