GATINEAU – Altogether now, let’s all agree that the networks upon which our broadband experiences are delivered has to be managed.
We can also all agree that congestion at certain times of the day and during certain events is a problem.
But what there hasn’t been much agreement about yet over the first three days of the CRTC’s network management hearing is just how that congestion can or should be mitigated (Using what tools? Targeting which applications, if any? Under what circumstances? What’s network neutrality mean anyway?)
And as the major ISPs themselves start to face the Commission Friday and Monday, we’re going to hear, loudly, how difficult it is to manage to keep all customers happy with their Internet experience when some of their neighbours are downloading their 10th movie of the week while that content library is uploaded to other P2P users.
Those moviemakers (in the form of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association) were one of the groups in front of commissioners today, demonstrating how the blanket network management practices of ISPs can injure businesses – especially innovative ones trying new things.
While peer-to-peer content distribution has long been thought of as a pirate’s technology, it’s about time to banish those inklings forever. True, many people do still rip off content makers using the applications to download and watch movies and TV shows they haven’t paid for.
Increasingly however, growth in P2P technology, which is most often fronted by the popular BitTorrent when people talk about it, is coming from legit businesses looking for an efficient, cheap, way to distribute their content to their customers. Besides video content, both software companies and video game makers are using P2P to reach their enthusiasts.
Cartt.ca has even come across a few cable company engineers over the past few years who are exploring using P2P to try and deliver their video content more efficiently to their customers.
That mode of distribution has serious value to Brad Fox, of Toronto’s Strada Films. The old way of distribution to TV outlets or other traditional windows, is fraught with risk and expense (not to mention big money, with a hit). Same goes for streaming high-end video. But seeding BitTorrent? Notsomuch.
Direct streaming a video can be expensive – and if that show gets very popular – too expensive. “Not only will it not make money, it will bankrupt me,” said Fox in an interview with Cartt.ca after he and the CFTPA made their case in front of the Regulator. So, in order to stream programming, “I have to be limited in the style and size of file I make available,” as he has done on deals with YouTube and Bebo.
But that’s not an optimal viewing experience for the makers, or the viewers. But by seeding BitTorrent, as the company did with its series Cerealized, and watching fans pull it in (full length and full screen) and then use the application to automatically send it far and wide – with no cost to Strada – it can get whatever video it wants as far as its popularity will carry it. The business model going this way, adds Fox, is often in merchandising: T-shirts, DVDs, script books and so forth because the content itself is given away using a free platform.
“Anything that reduces the physical cost of distribution is a huge plus,” he added.
So, P2P is great for avid viewers and content providers. However, the same cable or telco engineers working in the ISPs’ network operations centres who wonder if P2P technology might work to distribute their ‘traditional’ content also know that the BitTorrent users have voracious bandwidth appetites, causing congestion in the networks with the video content they are pulling in and sending out that not only impact their video downloads or uploads, but the surfing speed of their neighbours.
So they keep the P2P traffic, as the ISPs like to say, in its own lane. (Opponents of the practice call it “throttling” of course). However, when you try to squeeze as many bits as are in feature films into a smaller lane, traffic slows – as anyone who has driven behind a “Wide Load” knows – and that movie won’t get to its destination as fast as it otherwise would.
And for those content creators who want to see their wide loads disseminated and delivered as soon as possible, any delay, any reason for a viewer to abandon their search, is bad for business, said Fox. “Throttling is impeding our ability to attract audiences,” he explains.
Content companies want to be able to tell stories to anyone from anywhere “without being handicapped by arbitrary decisions about distribution,” he added.
And Fox had a very good example of such an arbitrary decision. Back in November, his company put together Couch-a-thon 1, an online fundraiser for Sick Kids Hospital which saw a group of four actors sit on a couch for as long as people were prepared to donate money.
Comedians and musicians came by to liven up the proceedings and Strada broadcast the event with the help of Ustream. Fox says the amount of data being transmitted on the Bell line the company was using was a steady stream of about 100 kbps.
But, he says, because the site was offering a steady stream of unencrypted content, Bell identified them as P2P and “our bandwidth just got hammered,” said Fox. “We were being considered BitTorrent traffic.
“Whatever DPI-filtering (deep packet inspection) metrics Bell was using to determine BitTorrent traffic, and throttle it, was essentially throttling our ability to create this production,” he continued.
“It created this really untenable situation where every couple of hours, I essentially had to re-boot the show and we’d come on and do a little talking head saying ‘hey everybody, we’re going to go dark here in a second and you’re going to have to go back to the site and click reload and open up your video window again… it was distressing to me as a content producer because every time we did a reset, there were 200 fewer people than before, for example.
“If it had been a commercial product and not for charity, it would have been deadly.”
Fox concedes he could have organized a commercial arrangement with Bell, but there was little time between idea and broadcast. Besides, “even a residential home connection should be able to sustain 100 kbps, he said.
The network management hearing continues through Monday.
