Tag Archives: peering

A brilliant plan to make online movie sharing legal

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There’s a new movie streaming service called MovieSwap that wants to make DVD movie sharing popular again, but with a modern twist that’s likely to enrage movie studios. For just €5($5.58), you can get lifetime access to MovieSwap and early access to the beta of the program this August. That’s the lowest Kickstarter tier for this new campaign, which has already reached its €35,000 goal in the first couple of days after launch. – Chris Smith, BGR

Virgin Media’s new WiFi network uses customer routers

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photo: Afagen, Flickr

Virgin Media’s turning its own broadband customers into WiFi providers. […] Virgin will open up its Super Hub routers to share connectivity. Using an as-yet unreleased app, Virgin broadband and mobile customers will be seamlessly connected to this new WiFi network whenever a hotspot is in range. As Virgin explains, Super Hub users needn’t be worried about poor personal service, since strangers’ WiFi traffic will be piped through a completely separate connection. However, even with this assurance your bandwidth won’t suffer, you can still opt out of being a part of the network if you choose. But, by doing that, you give up the right to use the new WiFi network yourself, so it’s a case of share and share alike. – Jamie Rigg, Engadget

Netflix, call your lawyers: FCC is ready for interconnection complaints

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[W]ith yesterday’s Federal Communications Commission vote to regulate broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, that’s about to change. Instead of just writing a check to obtain direct connections to the networks of retail broadband providers, Netflix can complain to the FCC that it’s being overcharged. – Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica
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Verizon: We Can Basically Charge Netflix For Peering Forever And There’s Nothing The FCC Can Do To Stop It

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Ars Technica noticed the filing, which Verizon FiOS submitted yesterday. The eight-page letter lays out Verizon’s familiar argument that the FCC can’t legally regulate Verizon’s broadband business under Title II but adds that even if they could, it wouldn’t help anyway. […] Verizon continues, “Any argument to regulate interconnection arrangements therefore would apply equally to those arrangements, but Netflix and Cogent presumably would object to doing so because those decisions — like Internet interconnection — raise issues that are distinct from the delivery of traffic in the last mile. By conflating last-mile regulation with interconnection issues,” Verizon concludes, “these entities are baldly pursuing regulatory rents that would reduce the costs of their business models by shifting them onto broadband subscribers.” – Kate Cox,Consumerist.com
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Video in demand

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Google has been perfecting a technique of pre-loading YouTube video clips for particular users before they even hit the play button. The choice is made by an algorithm which analyses users’ viewing histories and profiles. The selection is currently being cached in the memory of some mobile devices running the Android operating system, although YouTube intends to expand it to other devices soon. […] Regardless of protocol, current methods for delivering video mostly still use a traditional A-to-B form of distribution. An alternative is peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, in which data are distributed by users to each other rather than being downloaded from a central source. Such networks were popularised by file-sharing services and, until recently, were used by Spotify to build up its huge music-streaming service. Spotify now intends to rely on centralised servers instead. This, says Babar Zafar, a Spotify product manager, is because CDNs are becoming more important to deliver media to users reliably. – Technology Quarterly via The Economist
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Netflix ends one of its oldest disputes, agrees to pay Time Warner Cable

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Netflix has agreed to a paid interconnection deal with Time Warner Cable (TWC), one of the first ISPs to cry foul over Netflix’s attempt to gain direct access to broadband networks without payment. TWC complained about Netflix’s Open Connect content delivery network (CDN) back in January 2013, saying the online video company was “seeking unprecedented preferential treatment from ISPs.” […] “Just a handful of US ISPs have required these access tolls, with Time Warner being the last of the four,” a Netflix spokesperson told Ars. Netflix has asked the [Federal Communications Commission] to ban such payments. The commission is examining the paid peering deals but hasn’t promised any action. – Jon Brodkin,Ars Technica

Netflix strikes streaming-traffic deal with AT&T too

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Following recent deals with Comcast and Verizon, Netflix confirmed Tuesday that it has also reached an agreement with AT&T to provide a direct connection from the video service to broadband customers. The hoped-for result is less buffering and faster streaming for Netflix customers. […] The terms of the agreement were not revealed, but they’re likely similar to those of a “paid peering” deal Netflix struck with Comcast in February. For that deal, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast to directly connect its content delivery network to home broadband users who subscribe to Netflix. The video service came to a similar deal with Verizon in April. – Dara Kerr,CNET

This Box Can Hold an Entire Netflix

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Netflix’s Open Connect Appliances (OCAs) is basically a badass connected hard drive. But we’re not talking in GBs of storage here. No, OCAs are measured in TB. The most basic unit, known as a Rev. A, is a 100TB device. How much storage is that in practical terms? According to Netflix, HD video streams use 3GB of data per hour, so if you do a little math you’ll find that a 100TB device holds some 34,133 hours of HD video. That’s 1,422 days, or 203 weeks or just under four years of HD video. And for all that, it’s a mere 7″ x 17″ x 23″, about the size of an old-school PC tower, and weighs just 100 pounds. Heavy, sure, but liftable. It’s hard to lift four years of video; go figure. – Eric Limer, Gizmodo

4 Concerns About Comcast’s Xfinity Wi-Fi Hotspot Rollout

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For some people, it just doesn’t feel right, that a huge company like Comcast is using its customer base to expand its wireless coverage. I get that. However, we are some Wi-Fi-hungry people, and the demand is there. The biggest misstep on Comcast’s part is by turning on the XFINITY Hotpot option by default, on the cable modem. That is hubris. That’s essentially telling customers, “You know, we aren’t even going to ask you if you want this, you’ll just take the feature. Saves us from having to explain it to you.” – Samara Lynn, PCMag http://ift.tt/1v0cOoJ

Comcast is turning your Xfinity router into a public Wi-Fi hotspot

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 Some time on Tuesday afternoon, about 50,000 Comcast Internet customers in Houston will become part of a massive public Wi-Fi hotspot network, a number that will swell to 150,000 by the end of June. […] What’s interesting about this move is that, by default, the feature is being turned on without its subscribers’ prior consent. It’s an opt-out system – you have to take action to not participate. Comcast spokesman Michael Bybee said on Monday that notices about the hotspot feature were mailed to customers a few weeks ago, and email notifications will go out after it’s turned on. But it’s a good bet that this will take many Comcast customers by surprise. – Dwight Silverman, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer http://ift.tt/1l1FJqt
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