NetEqualizer News Blog

By Art Reisman, CTO, http://www.netequalizer.com 

Art Reisman

As the Internet continues to grow and true speeds become higher,  video sites like YouTube are taking advantage of these fatter pipes. However, unlike the peer-to-peer traffic of several years ago (which seems to be abating), YouTube videos don’t face the veil of copyright scrutiny cast upon p2p which caused most users to back off.
 

In our experience, there are trade offs associated with the advancements in technology that have come with YouTube. From measurements done in our NetEqualizer laboratories, the typical normal quality YouTube video needs about 240kbs sustained over the 10 minute run time for the video. The newer higher definition videos run at a rate at least twice that. 

Many of the rural ISPs that we at NetEqualizer support with our bandwidth shaping and control equipment have contention ratios of about 300 users per 10-megabit link. This seems to be the ratio point where these small businesses can turn  a profit.  Given this contention ratio, if 40 customers simultaneously run YouTube, the link will be exhausted and all 300 customers will be wishing they had their dial-up back. At last check, YouTube traffic accounted for 10 percent of all Internet Traffic.  If left completely unregulated,  a typical rural  ISP could find itself on the brink of saturation from normal YouTube usage already. With tier-1 providers in major metro areas there is usually more bandwidth, but with that comes higher expectations of service and hence some saturation is inevitable. 

If you believe there is a conspiracy, or that ISPs are not supposed to profit as they take risk and operate in a market economy, you are entitled to your opinion, but we are dealing with reality. And there will always be tension between users and their providers, much the same as there is with government funds and highway congestion. 

The fact is all ISPs have a fixed amount of bandwidth they can deliver and when data flows exceed their current capacity, they are forced to implement some form of passive constraint. Without them many networks would lock up completely. This is no different than a city restricting water usage when reservoirs are low. Water restrictions are well understood by the populace and yet somehow bandwidth allocations and restrictions are perceived as evil. I believe this misconception is simply due to the fact that bandwidth is so dynamic, if there was a giant reservoir of bandwidth pooled up in the mountains where you could see this resource slowly become depleted , the problem could be more easily visualized. 

The best compromise offered, and the only comprise that is not intrusive is bandwidth rationing at peak hours when needed. Without rationing, a network will fall into gridlock, in which case not only do the YouTube videos come to halt , but  so does e-mail , chat , VOIP and other less intensive applications. 

There is some good news, alternative ways to watch YouTube videos. 

We noticed during out testing that YouTube videos attempt to play back video as a  real-time feed , like watching live TV.  When you go directly to YouTube to watch a video, the site and your PC immediately start the video and the quality becomes dependent on having that 240kbs. If your providers speed dips below this level your video will begin to stall, very annoying;  however if you are willing to wait a few seconds there are tools out there that will play back YouTube videos for you in non real-time. 

Buffering Tool 

They accomplish this by pre-buffering before the video starts playing.  We have not reviewed any of these tools so do your research. We suggest you google “YouTube buffering tools” to see what is out there. Not only do these tools smooth out the YouTube playback during peak times or on slower connections , but they also help balance the load on the network during peak times. 

Bio Art Reisman is a partner and co-founder of APconnections, a company that provides bandwidth control solutions (NetEqualizer) to ISPs, Universities, Libraries, Mining Camps and any organization where groups of users must share their Internet resources equitably. What follows is an objective educational journey on how consumers and ISPs can live in harmony with the explosion of YouTube video.