On 03/07/07, Ian Betteridge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 03/07/07, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051080 > I've got to take exception to this bit: "So you can transmit worldwide to tens, thousands, millions or multi-millions of people for a few hundred pounds, compared with the BBC's annual £157 million spend on traditional broadcasting." I don't have any recent figures to hand, but in 2004 the estimated cost of BBC Online's bandwidth was about £2.4 million per year - and that, remember, was mostly just web pages. iPlayer is going to increase the BBC's bandwidth costs by a huge amount - and a whole lot more than "a few hundred pounds", even given a highly-efficient peer-to-peer system. Given its reach - Ofcom estimates it will provide 3% of all viewer hours by 2011 - I suspect that, actually, on a per-viewer-hour basis, it's not going to be as cost-effective as broadcast TV.
The whole point of using peer-to-peer networks is that after the first copy is grabbed from the initial seeder, all other clients grab their "blocks" from other peers, not the initial seed. The clients are designed to collect the least-available blocks from the network first, which causes them to no longer be the least available. I'm excluding the costs of providing the files in the first place, just the cost of providing each file to the network for the first time.
Plus you have to think of the bigger picture. Can consumer ISPs cope with the potentially-vast increase in P2P traffic? How will those 10Gb caps on "free" ISPs cope? Will ISPs just end up de-prioritizing P2P traffic on their core networks, so that at periods of
peak demand they don't suffer service disruptions? Of course. One advantage of peer-to-peer networks of this type is that the clients can grab files from the clients that appear "closest" on the network, which means the communications are often local, metropolitan, national well before they go onto the slower international links. TCP/IP is specifically designed to share bandwidth, and that's what it will do. The job of your ISP is to provide you with bandwidth - that is their job. Remember just because you have some crappy copper providing slow ADSL to your home, the backbone fiber network has an unlimited speed and capacity (in theory). Basically, even if the cost of "broadcast" via P2P systems is lower to the
BBC, it may not be lower overall when you take into account both the cost to the consumer and to ISPs. Effectively, what the BBC is doing is shifting its "broadcasting" costs on to the consumer and ISPs
Thus everyone moaning about the iPlayer!!!! If we are paying for distribution, the BBC's restrictions are offensive! -- Please email me back if you need any more help. Brian Butterworth www.ukfree.tv
