Watchout - Possible Gridlock Ahead!
Published by Steve Litchfield at 20:22 GMT, February 14th 2008
...In which I ponder the scalability of modern media streaming software and services - will it all end in tears?
Yes, yes, I know I was the guy who argued that YouTube access was superior to mobile TV, and I stand by my principles on the matter. But, as was pointed out, there are other factors at stake than what you want to watch.
The streaming of YouTube videos is, unsurprisingly, very heavy on bandwidth, i.e. the amount of data that needs to stream through the air. Now, the likes of emTube and Mobitubia are most likely to be used when you're within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot and so, even if either or both applications really took off, the main bandwidth hit would be to the Internet backbone itself, via whichever router you're conncted.
BUT. There's a whole new category of software and service, typified by the likes of Phling, offering to either host all your media and then stream it to you over the air, or simply to stream it from your own PC, switched on at home. This is fine and dandy when Wi-Fi and landline broadband it taking the strain, and it's fine and cool in principle and probably works very well in test conditions today.
The trouble comes when you actually go mobile. Relying on heavy, continuous streamed data over a 3.5G connection already breaks down, irritatingly, in busy urban areas (for congestion reasons) and in rural areas (for lack of 3G signal reasons).
For example, I was in a demo booth at last year's Smartphone Show, with some guys from Social.FM, a music streaming service. We set the video rolling three times for a hands-on demo and each time the demo faltered and hung for lack of 3G bandwidth. With the number of other handsets in the hall, it perhaps wasn't totally surprising to find the airwaves severely congested, but it did illustrate the point I'm making here.
What will happen in the future if the model of having your music (for example) streamed over the air starts to take off? Even allowing for infrastructure improvements in the next few years, there is simply no way that a tenfold, let alone a hundredfold increase in use can happen without a hitch.
Now, some services, informational in nature, or the streaming of news video or audio, obviously have to come over the air because they're utterly real time and generated on the fly. But I simply refuse to go along with the modern idea that storing all my music (for example, let alone my videos) online just so that I can stream it to my smartphone without having to bother side-loading it first, makes any sense at all. Yes, it's a cool use for technology but it's not scalable and it's not sensible.
You want to listen to your music on the move? The most natural place in the world to want to have the Floyd or Amy or Noel in your ears. But please don't rely on some Web 2.0 streaming service that will cut out every time you enter a metal-framed building or journey on a tube train or simply venture where 3G signals are either too busy or fear to tread.
Hint: there's a memory card in your phone. It's got Megabytes of capacity, probably even Gigabytes these days. Its sole purpose in life is to store music and media for your delight. Use it. And let's keep the 3G airwaves clear for the information that really matters.
Steve Litchfield, AllAboutSymbian, 14 Feb 2008
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Categories: Comment, Software
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition
Feature Discussion
sturgeon
Hmm, think you are right re. the best mobile solution Steve, but surely the service providers will control the available bandwidth financially to stop this happening?
s.
Unregistered
This was predicted for the wider internet but has not happened.
Unregistered
Indeed, I remember the days when Janet was the only "fast network" in the country and most of us students didn't imagine that everybody would eventually get access to high speed internet. I also remember working on a state-of-the art research project that was having quite a few problems getting ultra-fast 100MBit/s connections working LOL
dougalzene
I've got to say I'm starting to like the idea of a "two-tier internet". By 2-tier I mean one carrying media and one carrying the original idea - information. I don't want my emails and web pages to be held up behind HD movies and people streaming their music collection from their home server to their mobile (buy a digital device, syncing works, memory is cheap , etc.).
Maybe it'll all be ok and the infrastructure will be put in place to support this, I really don't know. But what about when a couple of undersea cables are knocked out and xx% capacity is lost? We've just seen this in the near/middle-east - 4/5 in fact.
Unregistered
Well, with a bytemeter on my adslmodem I could pay different per byte for lowspeed, highspeed and streaming ADSL quality. There is no reason why not to partition internet connections into channels with different latency speeds. In fact it is very practical. Still it is difficult to achieve guarantees for connection quality are not easy to secure, since there a too many uncontrolled factors in a connection.
snoyt
krisse
Quote:
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Hmm, think you are right re. the best mobile solution Steve, but surely the service providers will control the available bandwidth financially to stop this happening?
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Well this is the point really, if bandwidth was in short supply the price would go up, which would reduce demand and avert a crisis.
It's a bit hard to believe bandwidth IS in short supply though when the price has dropped so dramatically so quickly, on both landlines and mobile networks. That can't be a drop in demand, so it's presumably an increase in available bandwidth.
slitchfield
Yes, but my point is that even if the available bandwidth doubles, or even quadruples, it'll still not cope if a hundred or a thousand times more users start to expect problem-free media streaming. At the moment, it's only geeks getting up to this sort of thing. The mobile industry has numerous players who want to see their streaming solution go mainstream...
Unregistered
Thank you for at last mentioning us digitally poor rural folk.
Eight gig broadband, 3.5 G, you tube, downloaded music - what are these things ?
Rural bliss is quiet but digital ANYTHING is only for the city folk.
We cannot even get FM radio let alone digital services (with the exception of very slow internet down the very long telephone wire but that does not allow for streaming TV). This new fangled digital TV and DAB Radio sometimes work provided it doesn't rain.
The point I am making is that these technologies will always fail to reach 20% of the population because it is "not economic" to provide the transmitters.
So less hype about fantastic new phone services and more pressure on service providers of all kinds from the BBC to the phone companies would be very welcome.
Spooner
Unregistered
Perhaps you should spend 30 minutes researching Content Delivery Networks and P2P Caching servers before you write your next article on this, mmmkay? Most of the content names you just threw out there are already cached so they don't do this sort of thing to ISP networks. Honestly, it seems like you just threw this "chicken little" post together just to get hits instead of doing some actual research into the subject.
slitchfield
To: Unregistered [side note - why do whingers always want to stay anonymous?!]
Rubbish. I'm talking about local data congestion in the user's cell. I don't doubt that many components in the streaming chain can handle a lot of extra bandwidth and data serving from various sources. But the bottleneck will be where the user is. In my case, in Reading, Berks, where the data contention is *already* enough to significantly reduce 3.5G data speeds....
robgreb
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
Perhaps you should spend 30 minutes researching Content Delivery Networks and P2P Caching servers before you write your next article on this, mmmkay?
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Well, I've read the Wikipedia articles and you're still talking b*ll*cks.
(I already know how CDNs and caching work; I just wanted to make sure you weren't being misinformed by Wikipedia.) These technologies reduce the strain on ISPs' networks and can alleviate pressure points in a network. What they won't do is increase bandwidth in a given 3G cell by a factor of 100.
Mobile operators will consider these and other techniques when upgrading their networks. But until they do (and this was the whole point of Steve's article) you can expect sluggish or unworkable access to content while on the move.
R
bvlad
I'd happily take sluggish and cheap access to content while on the move over very expensive access.
I actually do agree with Steve's point, but I think this will definitely not be happening tomorrow. Or next month.
And I also think that the thing that should be happening now is mobile internet access getting cheaper. Only after it becomes really cheap, there maybe will be a gridlock. But by then hopefully some flavour of 4G would have solved these issues.
And I honestly don't buy that cheap or expensive mobile internet, in HSDPA networks at least, has anything to do with demand right now. It's all about operators' revenue and how they think they'll be getting more (either by sticking to absurd pricing schemes and hoping for few users, but with high revenue generated by each, or going cheaper and pushing it to the masses).
Imho, this should be talked about more. Now that even the EC is looking into this, maybe we should all try and 'lobby' cheaper (and actually unlimited) mobile internet. Because otherwise, we'll all turn into WiFi Hotspot-hunters.
Unregistered
Quote:
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Originally Posted by bvlad
maybe we should all try and 'lobby' cheaper (and actually unlimited) mobile internet
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If you live in the UK, there's a petition at
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/FreeAccessWiFi/ for the government to "provide" (meaning presumably subsidise) municipal wifi networks.
I doubt the government will do it, but a large number of signatures might poke the market enough for cheaper commercial solutions to emerge.
Unregestered
Hi, Graeme from Oxy Systems here, the developer of phling!
We are working to include a “play from handset” feature, particularly for newer handsets with large (gigabyte+) memory. The home PC is still where the user rips CDs, purchases online music, and has “unlimited” storage – and we will still provide access to that (as well as to the phling! MusicStash in the network for when PC is offline). However, through a combination of sideloading and OTA downloading/saving the track to the phone, phling! will be able to significantly reduce the mobile data network traffic. An additional user benefit is that the tracks on the handset will not be limited in bit rate/quality to available network speeds and will be usable in weak signal areas, etc.
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