Google joins the fray on ISP throttling and Net neutrality

In yet another development of the battle over high-bandwidth (read P2P- and/or streaming-video) consumers and (some) ISPs' throttling of their connections, Google is preparing a tool to let consumers find out whether (and how) their ISPs are shaping their connection.

Flash now comes with bundled P2P media-streaming client

The new version of the ever-popular Flash player now comes bundled with a P2P media-streaming client. This could, in a short time, gain quite an extensive foothold for the new overlay network, and is already leading to widespread speculation.

ZDNet shows Zattoo some love

I've never had a chance to see Zattoo's P2P live TV-streamer, myself (blocked based on IP geolocation), but this brief ZDNet review is quite enthusiastic, and seems to indicate they're already getting fair efficiency out of P2P. Note also the author's comment (in the comments, after the post itself) on Zattoo's emerging advertising model.

Coming soon to a game console near you!

Forbes reports that Netflix is en route to providing VOD not just on the PC, but also on several partners' entertainment devices, and suggests that these devices will be set-top boxes, Blu-ray players(?!), and game consoles. All this is of course in aid of infiltrating the living room and bridging the gap between Internet connections and users' TV screens.

Bandwidth hogging now blamed on video streamed over HTTP, not on P2P

Gizmodo reports that most Internet traffic (and especially peak-time traffic) is HTTP-based video streaming a la YouTube, and gives some more numbers and context. P2P traffic accounts for just 20% of the total. Of course, most bandwidth consumption is limited to a small fraction of the users. Interesting...

This is all based on data from a not-quite-disinterested maker of traffic-shaping devices, so take this with a grain of salt.

Vuze posts data on ISP throttling using forged reset packets

It was recently shown (and posted here) that at least some ISPs (well, Comcast) forge reset packets from legitimate connections, in order to actively degrade the performance of BitTorrent and possibly other out-of-favour P2P protocols. Such throttling is perceived as considerably more aggressive than simply denying some applications more bandwidth.

From all the way across the hall, loyal reader Daniel L. points out this recently posted report on P2P-maker Vuze's wide survey, intended to measure this phenomenon. The evidence seems pretty damning (for many listed ISPs), although not quite "smoking gun" quality.

Comcast's "P2P Bill of Rights"

Comcast is promoting a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities"; which they are drafting with other interested parties. Presumably, this continues their recent "playing nice with P2P" strategy, and since they also stress the importance of legal file-sharing, could signal the importance of "playing nice with content owners".

More coverage from AP.

Livestation going public

Livestation is going public at the NAB annual event, and releasing just a little extra information.

P2P filtering now a mature business

This report has details of a comparative survey of P2P filtering systems (for those ISPs intent on the shaping/evading "arms race" with P2P developers). There are no technical details to speak of, but it certainly seems to be an area with many players, presumably some demand, and effective products.

Adobe Media Player launched

Adobe Media Player has been launched. It is yet another application to download and view video files, but appears to come with all the frills you'd expect (especially DVR / podcast functionality), considerable partner content to get things going, and DRM / advertising / viewership-tracking to appeal to content owners intent on turning a buck.

BBC's iPlayer popularity leads to sour relations with ISPs

British ISPs and the BBC have been making rather heated comments following the realisation that the Beeb's popular iPlayer P2P player provides a service at the expense of increased throughput on the ISPs' networks.

The BBC News site has more on this.

See also: BBC wants to build its own CDN

The business of the video-streaming business

MSNBC / BusinessWeek have a fairly interesting review of the business and businesses (but not the technology) of video-streaming on the Net. There's no news there, and the introduction is very basic, but they do give an idea of what (some) big businesses are doing on the internet TV front.

Comcast now shaping all internet traffic

Researchers at the University of Colorado have posted evidence that US ISP Comcast is shaping all internet traffic (web browsing included) by forging TCP reset packets. This may well be their promised "more protocol-neutral" shaping, following the outcry over recent BitTorrent-specific shaping.

PeerApp provides ISPs with P2P caching systems

The Jerusalem Post has a very non-tech article on PeerApp, an Israeli company which provides ISPs with systems to cache popular files for P2P downloads inside their networks. The company's website has a few more details; apparently, they sell systems to ISPs, which cache locally the files P2P programs request, and then redistribute them to subsequent requesting peers. Their products support a number of popular P2P file-sharing protocols, and intervene "transparently" (so they say) in application-level communications.

Binkx launches P2P VOD player

Blinkx have launched bbtv, a P2P-based video-on-demand player. Blinkx are (were?) primarily a video-search company, with speech-to-text technology and capabilities to search inside video by text. Their new video player is supposed to build on that by letting the user connect video content with relevant web content. TechCrunch talked to their CEO.

last100 sums up Internet TV in 2007

last100 has a summary of the main Internet TV stories they carried in 2007.

Comcast will play nice with BitTorrent

Comcast and BitTorrent have announced some sort of collaboration, after Comcast has come under heavy fire for actively disrupting BitTorrent traffic. Comcast will continue to shape traffic, but apparently without singling out particular applications' traffic. BitTorrent will strive to be friendlier to ISPs' networks and their costs. The announcement is already making waves, both pro and con.

P2P streaming media from Velocix

Velocix, formerly CacheLogic, a British CDN, now offers video streaming services (both live and on-demand). Velocix services are provided by a hybrid CDN-P2P network; their P2P protocol is apparently based on BitTorrent.

March Madness live broadcast on Joost not a resounding success

Apparently , Joost's live broadcast of the March Madness basketball games ran into technical difficulties. The "regular" (?) streaming from CBS's site worked well.

Fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control

ZDNet has up a mildly technical note/article/review on fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control.

Internet TV subscriptions doubled in 2007

Internet TV subscriptions more than doubled in 2007, according to this report, to 12.3 million. France, China, and the US lead the adoption of Internet TV.

CBC to share show on BitTorrent

Canadian public television will distribute a very popular annual show, worldwide, DRM-free, via BitTorrent. News.com has some details and some P2P-evangelism on the topic.

Joost Network Architecture

Courtesy of Lev K.'s web-browsing, here is Joost's own high-level, eminently readable description of the Joost Network Architecture, and some of their corporate concerns arising from it. A clear and interesting presentation from last year's UK Network Operators' Forum.

Tribler to offer live TV through P2P?

Uri A. points out a blog post on Mininova announcing a closed beta test for new video streaming in BitTorrent-based Tribler. Details are somewhat on the light side, but a quick search of the Tribler site leads to some specifics for users.

BBC wants to build its own CDN

The Register reports that the BBC plans to bolster its iPlayer internet TV service with a network of distribution servers located inside British ISPs, creating a Content Distribution Network over Internet infrastructure (rather than over proprietary cable). This follows their earlier effort at P2P distribution of their content, and offers a different approach to decreasing their internet traffic costs, and making the service less of a burden for ISPs.

Joost goes live

In line with previous hints and rumours, Joost will start streaming live channels (rather than the VOD they do now), initially just to cover March Madness, and presumably to try out their systems.

Cisco will distribute GridNetworks' P2P TV client

Cisco has invested in GridNetworks, makers of the GridCasting hybrid CDN/P2P TV network, and will distribute their client in (millions of) their home networking devices, definitely an interesting connection.

The GridCasting client is freely downloadable, and I could watch some demo material, but couldn't actually find content providers who use it to distribute their media.

P2P + ISP = P4P

Verizon will work to speed up (some kinds of) P2P traffic, while saving money on that same traffic, according to several reports recently. Verizon is part of the P4P Working Group of ISPs and P2P makers, aimed at creating a technology with advantages for both ISPs and P2P users; apparently they are quite excited by recent results by researchers at Yale. The main goal appears to be to maximise P2P communications within the ISP's network, saving on the much greater costs of inter-ISP communications.

There's some high-level verbiage on P4P publicly available already, and Pando (recently mentioned as working with NBC for their P2P TV offering) are evidently involved.

NBC's take on P2P: yes and no

An interesting interview with two bigwigs from NBC: worried by illegal P2P downloads of their copyrighted material, and eager to further their own Internet TV initiatives (e.g. Hulu), most recently by deciding to offer "NBC Direct" with Pando's P2P technology.

YouTube becomes a service

Slashdot links 2 reports on YouTube releasing an API (e.g. to integrate in your website) and on TiVo offering YouTube content

Pay-TV and the American Consumer

Long-time reader Talia K. points out ABI Research's recent survey, Pay-TV and the American Consumer. You need to register to download the whole thing in PDF; inside is a fairly interesting profile of US consumers, centred around what TV-related technology they have, what they would pay for, and so on.

P2P-Next: EU-funded research into P2P TV

The EU (and the BBC) are funding research into P2P-Next, a BitTorrent-based system which aims to become a standard (and open) means for distributing on-demand and live streaming content. The available details are pretty thin. There was some discussion of this recently (e.g. here), following the large EU grant.

BBC's iPlayer

The BBC lets Brits watch their television show through iPlayer, a name which apparently covers both a P2P desktop application and a Flash-based streaming video website thingy. There's a whole list of pieces on this in The Register, for example.

ISPs actively attack P2P applications

Earlier this year, there were several revelations regarding Comcast's practices intended to limit BitTorrent users.

Ars Technica's piece on the FCC investigating Comcast for this behaviour is a good place to start reading.

Some internet TV efforts to check out

For an idea of the current status of internet TV efforts, these are 4 interesting leaders to look at.

Joost: a VOD application (+ some widgets) with many channels, in open beta, from the founders of Skype, with a pretty cool UI

Babelgum: another VOD application, also in open beta, also with slick UI

Neokast: live streaming in a web-browser plugin, with a simple interface to easily start broadcasting from a webcam; claims to be a P2P network

Livestation: live streaming application, which also claims to be a P2P network; currently in closed technical trial (but I have a few invitations to send out), and broadcasting a small selection of news channels (from conventional TV networks); pretty basic UI


I haven't listed youtube and the like, as these are too obvious, and a bit wide of the "Internet TV" experience.