DrPeering -

Why is there metering of bandwidth for consumers in some regions, and all-you-can-eat for the rest of us? Is there a relationship to piracy - like, I would expect there is less peer-to-peer because of the metering?

Pat

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Pat -

Most of the world doesn’t meter retail consumer bandwidth. Thanks to AOL in the U.S., we all now expect all-you-can-eat Internet and some of us make full use of it. The peer-2-peer folks for example keep their Internet connection open 24/7, feeding the world’s insatiable desire for all things available for free and getting greater ability to download what they want in return.

In some parts of the world, like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, consumer Internet services are metered. English eyeballs love english content, and in these places, most of that english content is located on the other end of an expensive transoceanic cable. Or so the rationale for metered bandwidth goes. I call these areas “culturally contiguous zones”, and these island areas incur expense to fetch this remote content.

As I learned on my latest trip to New Zealand, these areas also get “legitimate” Hollywood movie and television content very late in the game (6-18 months after airing in the U.S.) if ever. Some kiwis complained that even then, there are so many commercials that the content itself gets cut out to make room for the commercials !

As a result, peer-2-peer downloads of edited television shows and captured movies is very high, and they don’t mind paying for Internet bandwidth to download the content.  Australians communicated the same point as well.  As one Australian put it - “we want it, and we are simply not going to wait.” And of course, the ISP services are more valuable to the consumers because they can get this content over the Internet services without fear of infringement enforcement.

But the meter does still run...If only there was a way to get the desired content without incurring any cost....

Direct Connect wifi Hubs

Well, there is. An ISP explained over drinks...

What was popular on campuses in New Zealand was swapping USB thumb drives with movies, music, etc. on it. Now, the concern is its replacement: devices like Direct Connect wifi Hubs / Wi-Drives. These are essentially wifi access points with a disk drive, so you and your friends connect your computer over wifi to the Wi-Drive SSID, and have access to all of the shared movies, music, etc. on the drive. It is a network replacement for swapping thumb drives.

All you need is a single copy of the latest hollywood movie retrieved over peer-2-peer or a mega download type site. Once copied up to the community wi-drive, everyone can fetch it during class. It is better than peer-to-peer since it is

Free. Since the content is shared across a local layer 2 service, it doesn’t go through the layer-3 campus metering as peer-2-peer does, so it costs $0 to share files.

A No Risk Exchange. Since it is a layer 2 service with the range of a wifi signal, Hollywood’s anti-piracy agents can’t see it. Once a single copy gets to a campus ad hoc wi-drive, the entire campus will have it and Hollywood can’t know about it.

Mobile. One can take the wi-drive to class, to a party, to a friends dorm, to a friends home and have a full movie archive swap fest and people may not even know who is sharing.

This isn’t much different from an Apple Time Capsule except that instead of seamlessly backing up, it is a platform for speeding file sharing. But what was interesting to hear was that the ISPs were so concerned about the resulting decrease in P2P traffic, and the adverse affect that would have on their metered traffic revenue.

It was also interesting to hear that it is illegal to capture Internet traffic in New Zealand, so ... even if there were anti-piracy agents in the field, they would be arrested for invasion of privacy before the copyright violator would be sued for infringement.

The only thing missing is the automation of the p2p download to populate the local layer 2 file sharing. It would be interesting if the layer 2 wi-drives could get automatically populated by people who roam between wi-drives propagating recently downloaded and copied content.

Video Internet Ecosystem and Hollywood Video Distribution Ecosystems Morph

The Hollywood Video Distribution Ecosystem and the Video Internet Ecosystems continue to morph and react to one another. As we will hear about in the “Emerging Video Internet Ecosystem” white paper, the Video Internet is evolving at a much faster rate than the Hollywood distribution system.  Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Internet Regions where bandwidth is metered, and the traditional purveyors of content are not providing what the consumers want. Here, the incentive to bypass the system is great.

Dr Peering

DrPeering@DrPeering.net