We haven't made any caching decisions as yet, but have spoken to Qwilt a couple of times about their product and think it looks promising. Jeff's and subsequent NetFlix SSL information looked like a question that needed to be asked. Qwilt gave a reassuring reply and sent a link to a webex where they should be discussing the Netflix announcement and other caching concerns impacting universities. I read the list emails- I seldom question or comment. So I don't know if it would be OK to toss the link out. But if anyone wants it, I can email them. And if it's OK to just post it here for the curious, I can do that as well. Mary
From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Sessler Sent: Monday, March 23, 2015 2:07 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] netflix question I don't see Qwilt as a viable long-term solution. As providers move more of their content to be delivered over SSL, what's Qwilt's answer? Are they going to forge SSL certs? For those using Qwilt, you're OK will all of your traffic being spanned to the Quilt server? Are you confident that it's not looking at, storing, or transmitting data it shouldn't? Jeff >>> On Thursday, March 19, 2015 at 3:47 PM, in message >>> <[email protected]>, Frank Bulk <[email protected]> >>> wrote: We use Qwilt, too – happy with it. Our Netflix cache rate is 59.9%. It’s just amazing how much Netflix content is commonly viewed. And we move a lot more traffic than the University of Alaska. =) Frank From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Britton Anderson Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 2:50 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] netflix question This has come up a number of times on the NETMAN list too. I threw a question out a number of months ago about caching, and we of course reached out to Netflix in regards to acquiring an OpenConnect appliance. Even reached out to our ISP some time ago who we had noted were killing us with Netflix traffic from their OpenConnect appliance for some help, like a non-transit peer. We got nowhere with either. We were kind of stuck and we sought our own caching solution. We went with Qwilt. So far I think we are one of 3 Universities in the country that have it running. There's an upcoming webinar if you want to learn more about it and feel free to reach out to me off list, but as far as the nuts and bolts go--it just works. We offload about 60% of Netflix traffic locally. Apple and Windows updates all are non-issues. The biggest thing is perceived speed. It's all transparent, so clients don't care where its coming from. They just watch their iOS device update to 8.2 in 3 minutes and say "WOW". I was in our student union building over lunch last week, and heard two separate conversations about how people have thought that the network has gotten much faster because of how fast their iPhones have updated. Even apps on my own phone update in a flash. But you can clearly see how far and wide Netflix is as the top consumer of streaming video for us. I got an Apple TV to test with in our group and I hooked it up to my Netflix account and noted how absolutely smooth the playback experience was. HD is just ON all the time, no buffering. Fast forwarding, rewinding, to an instant play. Like you were watching local content... The raw reports are attached. The numbers are a bit lower for the first one since we are now at the tail end of Spring Break, but I pulled the second one from the peak time of of the last week that shows the difference of quality of experience from content delivered locally versus from the internet. Inline image 2Inline image 1 Long story short, we found that we had to help ourselves. I can guarantee we pay one of the highest rates--if not THE highest rate--for peering bandwidth in the nation up here. A server like this has turned out to be worth its weight in gold as we head into tough budget times. It will have paid for itself before the year is over. Britton Anderson <mailto:[email protected]> | Senior Network Communications Specialist | University of Alaska <http://www.alaska.edu/oit> | 907.450.8250 On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Lunceford, Daniel <[email protected]> wrote: Technically the user would also have to subscribe to the higher rate plan (when last I checked): SD: $7.99/mo HD: $8.99/mo UHD: $11.99/mo So technically, the user would have to also be a subscriber to the HD/UHD services which might limit your growth a bit. -drl -- Dan Lunceford Manager of Networking Services New Mexico Tech [email protected], 575-835-5961 -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve Bohrer Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 11:38 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] netflix question An interesting factor in Netflix (and presumably other streaming video) is that they will scale their display resolution based on available bandwidth. This can make bandwidth planning projections murky. For example, from the "Your Account > My Profile > Playback settings" menu item for my Netflix account, there are the following options: "* Auto * Low (basic video quality, up to 0.3 GB per hour) * Medium (standard video quality, up to 0.7 GB per hour) * High (best video quality, up to 3 GB per hour for HD, 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD)" Auto is the default, and the range from 0.3 GB per hour to 7 GB per hour is a factor of about 23. SO, if most of my users are currently getting "Medium" quality at peak demand times, I could double or quadruple my available bandwidth, and, even if user demand were completely unchanged, all the existing Netflix flows could expand to soak up all of the bandwidth increase. As a rule of thumb for planning, we been assuming "bandwidth demand will double about every year and a half to two years." In fact, however, Netflix demand can scale up by an order of magnitude with absolutely no change in user behavior. (Presently, we are small and constrained enough that we run an Allot NetEnforcer "packet shaper" at our edge, and streaming video gets a lower priority than general HTML traffic. Even so, during evening prime use periods, Netflix and other streaming video are generally 50% or more of our total inbound traffic.) Steve Bohrer Network Admin, ITS Bard College at Simon's Rock 413-528-7645 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
