William B. Norton, Equinix
In previous research we documented three significant disruptions to the U.S. Peering Ecosystem as the Cable Companies, Large Scale Network Savvy Content Companies, and Tier 2 ISPs started peering openly. By peering content directly with eyeballs, they effectively bypassed the Tier 1 ISPs resulting in improved performance, greater control over the end-user experience, and overall lower operating costs.
This paper predicts a new wave of disruption that potentially dwarfs this previous redirection of Internet traffic. Short video clip web sites, full length motion pictures, and television shows are now available via streaming to on-line devices and via downloading to iPods. More sites are coming on-line High quality movies from independent producers are being distributed via peer-to-peer methods. We observe these flash crowd effects and the larger movie file sizes as the crest of the first wave of significant incremental load on the Internet.
The majority of this paper details four models for Internet Video Distribution (Transit, Content Delivery Networks, Transit/Peering/DIY CDN, Peer2Peer) across three load models. The cost models include network and server equipment along with pricing models for various distribution methods. Over one hundred walkthroughs of this paper have led to stepwise refinements of the models and insights into why one would prefer or not prefer one model over the other.
The summary of the paper is a comparison of these video distribution techniques in terms of $-per-video units from the Video Service Provider perspective. We highlight cascading obstacles preventing large scale delivery of video traffic using commodity transit in a single location. The CDN solution and the multi-site Transit with Peering solution bypass some of these obstacles, while the peer-2-peer solution, while controversial, yields (by far) the lowest cost solution from the video service provider perspective.
Bio:
Bill Norton is Co-Founder and Chief Technical Liaison for Equinix. He focuses on research on large-scale interconnection and ISP peering, and in particular, scaling Internet operations using optical networking. Bill has published and presented his research in a variety of international forums. From 1987 to 1998, he served in several staff and managerial roles at Merit Network, directing national and international network research and operations activities and serving as NANOG coordinator. Bill received a B.A. in Computer Science and an M.B.A. from the Business School at the University of Michigan, and has been an active member of the Internet Engineering Task Force for the past 15 years.
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