From: "James O. Whitlock" Subject: Fw: Appropriate Expectations for IP-Video Quality Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 08:37:13 -0400 Organization: University at Buffalo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0058_01C14BE6.A3342770" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Unsent: 1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4807.1700 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0058_01C14BE6.A3342770 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: "James O. Whitlock" To: "WNY-PRI" ; "WNY-HPNVI-General-Membership" Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 9:40 AM Subject: Appropriate Expectations for IP-Video Quality For those of you new to large scale IP-video events and others who may be showing-off the technology to folks who have never seen it before, please keep in mind that video quality for the events this week *should* be poor for reasons outlined below. It will not be surprising if there are serious operational stability problems as well. To my thinking, the important aspects of this week's activities are 1) the truly global scope of the technologies, 2) a live and graphic illustration of part of their application-space, and 3) the sessions and presentations themselves. Please try to emphasize these aspects to newcomers and to encourage them to return for demonstrations of the quality levels that motivate most of us in more practical deployment scenarios. I'll be happy to host or support such follow-on demonstrations. The Megaconference-III and Internet2 Meeting events this week are intended, in part, to stretch the envelope of practicality for IP-video applications. They are being supported by large banks of the latest MCU's and streaming devices. Manufacturers' engineers and software developers have been feverishly developing hardware and software fixes for problems never before seen in laboratories or normal deployments. Not all observed problems will be resolved before this week's events will start. Further, in the case of the Internet2 Meeting, support planning efforts only started a few weeks ago after the WTC attack and subsequent cancellation of the physical meeting in Austin, TX. Every one is running a bit ragged at this time. In addition to the unprecedented scale and heterogeneous mix of IP-video gear involved in events this week, campus networks across the country are experiencing severe congestion and packet loss problems as a result of new file-sharing (music & video) applications that students have started to use. I've attached a recent post on the subject and our own (UB) campus is seeing hefty blocks of 100% utilization levels on our 155 Mbps Internet connectors. This is a new problem, at least at the utilization levels observed, and engineers are still sorting out available options and remedies. Without ubiquitous Quality Of Service standards and technology, however, IP-video will be the first Internet technology to suffer. The use of un-acknowledged UDP protocols and the nature of IP-Video compression algorithms and transmission methods leaves us uniquely vulnerable to network congestion and packet loss. These issues are part of what is motivating our new WNY Partnership for Regional Internetworking (WNYPRI) to work towards public sector regional and community dark fiber builds and shared IP-video production facilities in WNY. The Web site for the new group is at: http://wny-hpnvi.buffalo.edu/wny-hpnvi/webs/PRIwg/index.html Join us if you're interested and haven't already done so. Regards, Jim ------=_NextPart_000_0058_01C14BE6.A3342770 Content-Type: text/plain; name="[news] Music and Film traffic at universities growing dramatically.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="[news] Music and Film traffic at universities growing dramatically.txt" From: Cc: Subject: [news] Music and Film traffic at universities growing = dramatically Date: Monday, September 10, 2001 12:47 PM For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 3 = Optical Internet program web site at http://www.canet3.net/news/news.html ------------------------------------------- [Although Napster has been effectively shut down, as was predicted kids = at schools have quickly found other mechanisms to trade music and films - = BSA] ------ Bill Owens of NYSERnet reports... One of our campuses found through cflow analysis that about 33% of their egress traffic (combined I1 and I2) was Napster just before the shutdown last spring. Once their students came back this semester, they found that about 35% of their traffic was KaZaA and Morpheus, albeit at slightly lower total volume. Their commodity OC-3 connection is near saturation, our connection to them is at about 34%. I'm sure our other campuses are in similar situations, but most don't run flow analysis, so they don't know how badly they're being hit ;) ------- Napster Eclipsed by Newcomers (Business Thursday) http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46596,00.html?tw=3Dwn20010907 Napster, dead and gone for the last several months, is gearing up for a comeback. But a new study has found that four new file-sharing applications are more popular than Napster ever was. ----- From Dave Farber's IPer list > >Video Downloads Swamp Computer Network in U. of Delaware's Dorms > > >Technology managers at the University of Delaware had a rude awakening = this >week, when the computer network in the residential halls saw its = heaviest >traffic ever. Internet access for the 7,500 students living there -- = many of >them freshmen -- ground to a halt. > >University officials suspect that students who download movies are the >culprits. Although Delaware has in the past advocated an educational >approach to bandwidth management, university officials plan to limit >downloads starting next week. > >"We have problems with certain students downloading 19 gigabytes of = stuff," >Susan J. Foster, the university's vice president for information >technologies, says with some exasperation. "What is a student doing to >download 19 gigabytes? What is that -- the entire Library of Congress? = It >makes us think that it's video." > >--SNIP-- > >http://chronicle.com/free/2001/09/2001090701t.htm ------------------------------------- To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CANARIE-NEWS list please send e-mail = to: majordomo@canarie.ca In the body of the e-mail: subscribe news end ------------------------------------- These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily = reflect those of the CANARIE board or management. ----------------------------- Bill St. Arnaud Senior Director Network Projects CANARIE Inc +1 613 785-0426 =00 ------=_NextPart_000_0058_01C14BE6.A3342770--