Posted on 03/30/2020 6:50:52 AM PDT by rktman
Netflix app downloads have exploded across Europe over the last several weeks as "Netflix and chill" "Netflix and quarantine" has been all the rage during countrywide lockdowns in Italy, France, Spain, and the UK.
We noted last Thursday that Netflix had to reduce traffic to its European networks by 25% for 30 days to preserve internet functionality as streaming traffic surged among tens of millions of people in quarantine.
Days after Netflix pledged to reduce streaming traffic, experts are saying that European countries could start rolling out large-scale "internet rationing" to prioritize critical apps and websites.
"If we end up in a situation where worldwide, 850m children start to receive lessons virtually for an extended period of time, then networks might want to start prioritizing video traffic over gaming traffic," said Matthew Howett, principal analyst at Assembly, who spoke with The Telegraph.
British internet provider BT Group said their communication network could handle the extreme levels of data of millions surfing the internet while in quarantine. But they warned that video streaming services could start bogging down the system and leave critical networks, reserved for emergency services, exposed to slow speeds.
Besides Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube are other streaming services limiting ultra-high definition videos to European users to preserve the functionality of the internet.
The French and UK governments have reportedly asked Disney to suspend the launch of its new streaming service in both countries on March 24.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Temporarily denying everyone access to the Online Nicholas Cage Film Festival doesn’t seem to be a horrible loss to me...
How would this differ from in-person lessons?
The tech is not the problem. (Also, the problem in the article above is related to transatlantic and inter-country interconnects. Usually their local networks are reasonably okay.)
It’s obvious to me that ISP’s do not know how to calculate the BW needs of their customers (besides price-gouging for gigs and teras)...
“5G is really nothing more than a promise at this point no matter what the commercials say.”
Doesn’t 5G deal with the communication close to individual wireless end points (more, closer spaced antennas)?
If so then it has nothing to do with the switching of data that travels long distances over fiber.
Bandwidth hogs are the video streams whose main use is to provide us entertainment. Those streams are switched through the network core. 5G won’t reduce that hogging.
I've read 4G antennas can be spaced 1-2 miles and 5G needs to be closer to 500 yards.
Amazing what we build and then give up....the Panama Canal, the internet....who knows what else.
“Possible”. Right up their with “could” or “might” as performatives to push another hypothetical fear article.
I’ve noticed our Internet/WiFi is struggling occasionally.
...this is specifically *Europeans* crashing the *European* segments of the internet. The US segment of internet isn’t actually having too many problems with this.
How’s that net neutrality working out EU?
“...walking miles per day.”
Tons of people walking, running, biking around here. All doing the Six-Foot Social Distancing Coronavirus Shuffle as we meet on the sidewalk/street.
Straight subscription - i.e. no over-subscription is EXPENSIVE. Most users will not pay for dedicated bandwidth due to the cost. Thus ISPs have adopted an over-subscription model. This allows them to keep the per user cost down.
Allow me to illustrate
Assume a 10 Mbit line costs 1,000 dollars to install. If I allow 10 users to share that line under straight subscription, each person only gets 1 Mbit and has to pay $100. If I oversubscribe by a 10:1 factor, I can allow each connection 100K with a burst of up to 1 Mbit (perhaps even higher) .... if the bandwidth is available. Here is where free markets kick in. I can also drop my price point. Some ISPs will drop the price point by the same over-subscription factor so the $100 drops down to $10 but is time 100 users.
Granted this is a gross oversimplification.
Also, internet traffic is very bursty and is not a steady stream for most applications. For example, lets use your web browser. You put in the URL, the browser goes out and grabs the content and WAITS while you decide what to do. Steaming videos use a different model.
The congestion is coming from a change in the way consumers are using the Internet. As more consumers use streaming services, the ability to burst becomes less relevant and less usable.
This is exactly why I got off of the shared cable solution and paid for a bonded ADSl solution for my last mile. At least my first point of congestion is now at the central office and not in my neighborhood.
this sounds like Communist Globalist ... Greenies BS. we are going to have to ward it off these days.
Similar to Governors and healthcare capacity.
> Allow me to illustrate... blah, blah, blah, and here is how I did it better than anybody else
Sure, I know a bit of queuing theory and probability models, etc. but was trying for a little shorthand. i.e ISPs are greedy and will charge out the wazoo when given the chance.
“Perhaps rationing of resources would fall under their purview now?”
No, they don’t have anything to do with that, they just manage domain names.
Well, I left myself an out be saying ‘perhaps’. :-)
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