In previous research we documented three significant disruptions to the U.S. Peering Ecosystem as the Cable Companies, Large Scale Network Savvy Content Companies, and Tier 2 ISPs started peering openly. By peering content directly with eyeballs, they effectively bypassed the Tier 1 ISPs resulting in improved performance, greater control over the end-user experience, and overall lower operating costs.

This paper predicts a new wave of disruption that potentially dwarfs this previous redirection of Internet traffic.  Short video clip web sites, full length motion pictures, and television shows are now available via streaming to on-line devices and via downloading to iPods. High quality movies from independent producers are being distributed via peer-to-peer methods. We observe these flash crowd effects and the larger movie file sizes as the crest of the first wave of significant incremental load on the Internet.

The majority of this article details four models for Internet Video Distribution (Transit, Content Delivery Networks, Transit/Peering/DIY CDN, Peer2Peer) across three load models.  The cost models include network and server equipment along with pricing models for various distribution methods.  Over one hundred walkthroughs of this paper have led to stepwise refinements of the models and insights into why one would prefer or not prefer one model over the other.

Editor’s Note: This sequence of web pages is based on research done in 2006 to early 2008.

The summary of the paper is a comparison of these video distribution techniques in terms of $-per-video units from the Video Service Provider perspective. We highlight cascading obstacles preventing large scale delivery of video traffic using commodity transit in a single location. The CDN solution and the multi-site Transit with Peering solution bypass some of these obstacles, while the peer-2-peer solution, while controversial, yields (by far) the lowest cost solution from the video service provider perspective.