BBC chief quits to launch online service http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/202eab38-09ae-11dd-81bf-0000779fd2ac.html
Ashley Highfield, the BBC's director of future media and technology, is leaving the corporation to launch a joint online video platform for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 which the broadcasters hope will be "a Freeview for the internet". "His appointment as chief executive of the on-demand service, code-named Kangaroo..." 2008/4/14 Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I have to say that I am very impressed with Ashly Highfield at the moment. > His defense of the public interest and also of BBC money is worthy of high > praise. > > He is 100% correct when he says that the Internet Service Providers should > provide an Internet service. The whole way the Internet has developed (and > I've been using ever since it could be reached in the UK) has required ISPs > to buy bigger and bigger pipes, to support more and more users. The > economics (which I have gone into before) provides that the more you buy, > the cheaper each bit becomes. > > The ISPs (just to recap) are complaining because they need more capacity > because the BBC iPlayer is popular, and people are suddenly watching whole > half-hour and hour-long programmes, streamed from the BBC's servers. > > I am of the mind that if you are a Internet host (like the BBC in this case) > then you pay for your end of the connection to the cloud and the end-user > pays for theirs via their ISP. > > So, Mr Highfield is correct to reject the idea that the BBC should pay for > ISPs Internet pipes. > > However, I wrote a paper about this when I worked at BT Broadcast Services > (about ten years ago, in fact) about dealing with this situation, and as I > recall (I don't have it here with me on Crete) there are a few ways to deal > with it: > > 1. ISPs by BIGGER PIPES and upgrade their network. This is 100% the correct > answer in the long run. Moore's Law tends to work at a bit-delivery level, > so the great evil here is probably the BT wholesale provision which seems to > be behaving somewhat monopolisticly, which is a tendency that I know BT has. > > 2. Use transparent or non-transparent PROXY SERVERS. This might work, but > my experience of them is that transparent proxies reduce overall performance > because they need to get in the way of each and every HTTP transaction. > Non-transparent proxies are fine on corporate and educational networks > because you deny access to people who do not use them, or you can do > complicated configuration scripts. > > 3. Store and forward: Locate MIRROR SERVERS inside the ISP network. This > seems a much better idea. Rather than the ISP being given BBC cash, which > is an intolerable idea, the ISP provide the BBC with rack space 'inside' > their networks for mirror servers. These could work in one of two ways: > > - use DNS to redirect the requests for content (the massive files that are > the video 'streams') to these servers. > > - change the main BBC iPlayer to redirect requests for the content to the > Mirror Server located in the ISPs network. > > DNS is a tricy beast and almost impossible to manage in these situations, > due to the way it is cached. If people switch networks regularly, which > they do, DNS trickery can turn into a nightmare. > > The second solution is clearly a better one. The iPlayer already checks the > end-users IP address to ensure that they are in the UK. > > It would be very simple to check to see if the users is in the range for a > particular ISP and issue a HTTP redirect (or similar) to the ISPs server to > get the content. > > The BBC would simply have to provide servers for each ISP which are fed with > each of the iPlayer content files when they are produced, and manage the IP > address lists for each server on a central BBC machine. > > This would mean transferring each file to the BBC machine inside the ISP > network just once, and this would take seconds as it would be out there in > the 'fat pipe' bit of the cloud. > > Finally, the client Flash Player software would need to know that if the > content could not be obtained for some reason from the BBC machine inside > the ISPs network, by calling back to the main BBC iPlayer server with an > extra parameter. > > The BBC could argue that the ISP should provide these mirror servers, but as > the hardware and storage costs of much machines is 'tiny' (and fixed) it > would be better for these to remain under BBC control, from a management and > responsibility point of view. > > Now, cut the crap and make it happen... > > Brian Butterworth > http://www.ukfree.tv > > > - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
