[PeerApp]: Caching iOS9 Delivered 80% of the Traffic

Dan Rayburn posted some information. collected by PeerApp and US ISPs on iOS9 download traffic:

".. around 1pm ET on Wednesday after iOS 9 was released, combined traffic from iOS 9 downloads spiked to almost 13Gbps. Nearly 80% (over 10Gbps) of this traffic is being delivered through PeerApp’s cache, avoiding congesting of the operator and University network. 

Looking at individual systems, PeerApp said they are seeing speed improvements on the order to 10-20x; meaning customers served by their caches are getting the apple.com traffic 10-20x faster from cache. One University in particular is experiencing up to 100x speed improvement in downloads.

..In conversations I’ve had with some ISPs in the U.S., iOS 9 downloads have been accounting for anywhere between 8%-15% of traffic inside their network"

See "iOS 9 Download Traffic Peaks At 13Gbps Across 70 Telco & University Networks" - here.

Sandvine: Netflix Reaches Almost 10% of Peak Downstream traffic in Austria and France

Sandvine released its ".. latest Global Internet Phenomena Report focusing on Asia-Pacific and Europe. The report is based on data from a selection of Sandvine’s 250-plus communications service provider (CSP) customers .. and contains findings from both fixed and mobile networks: 

• Netflix is making gains in the new European markets they entered late last year, with the service now accounting for almost 10% of peak downstream traffic in Austria and France
   
• Apple Music, bolstered by a three month free trial, has surpassed Spotify as the leading music streaming service on mobile networks in Australia and New Zealand
   
• YouTube is the top mobile application in both Europe and Asia-Pacific, making it the global leader in mobile traffic
   
• Online gaming continues to drive traffic on fixed networks with Twitch and Steam now top-10 applications for the first time in Europe and Asia-Pacific respectively
   
• A prediction that Filesharing traffic share has peaked in Asia-Pacific and will begin to see significant declines as more over-the-top (OTT) video services expand to the region
   
• On a European airline, the three most popular applications by bandwidth are Facebook, general Web Browsing, and Apple’s iMessage

See "Sandvine Report: Netflix And Apple Music Making International Gains" - here.

AT&T CEO: It is Hard to Explain the SDN Concept; 10X Traffic Growth to 2020

Earlier this month I covered the intention of AT&T to use SDN ("AT&T Will Manage Data Demand w/Software-centric Approach" - here) - and it turns out it is the "most exciting thing happening now" for AT&T's CEO,  Randall Stephenson [pictured].

And it is all about Streaming Video, And Apple, And Netflix.

In an interview by Jonathan Vanian, to Fortune, Mr. Randel says:

• "You’re going to find this horribly boring, but it’s this concept called software-defined networking. You’re managing a massive global network the way you’d manage a cloud-based data center. It’s a little geekish, and only the white-socks guys and knuckle-draggers in the industry appreciate it, but it’s actually going to change how businesses operate. It’s hard to help the general businessman understand this concept.
   
• I’ll give you an example. This year’s Masters Golf Tournament came at an interesting moment in time. Over that weekend Apple released an iOS update to all of its users, the Masters was streaming over the Internet, and there was the debut of Game of Thrones. All of this was coming across the same peering point [where Internet networks connect] in our various networks, and the end customer had a miserable experience. In a software-defined network, we could have redistributed and managed that capacity in real time
   
• If you look at our core network, since 2007 the volume that we’re hauling by virtue of smartphones and video is up 100,000%. And we’re looking out to 2020, and engineering and designing to accommodate another 10X growth in volume across the network. You’re seeing this kind of mismatch playing out that has tormented us. Capacity and performance are scaling according to Moore’s law, but networks around the globe are not
   
• Without software-defined networking I don’t think the industry keeps up with these kinds of volumes. Without software-defined networking Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is going to continue to scream about how slow peering points are. You have to have this technology to accommodate video traversing these kinds of networks"

See "AT&T CEO: 'Half of our mobile network traffic is video'"- here.

To be Connected: 1B Homes, 342M Cars

While an Infonetics report forecasts 1B fixed broadband connection (by 2019, here), a new report by James Hodgson [pictured], Research Analyst, ABI Research finds that "Connected Automotive Infotainment Systems will exhibit a CAGR of 33.8% over the next 5 years, with a rapid expansion in connected navigation and in-car Wi-Fi driving growth. Developed regions, which accounted for over 60% of shipments in 2014, will account for only 37.4% of shipments in 2020. Indeed, just over half of all systems shipping in 2020 will do so in the Asia-Pacific region.

..Many OEMs have made commitments to equip the majority of their consumer vehicles shipping in 2020 with embedded connectivity. Nevertheless, a significant number of vehicles are still expected to rely on smartphone integration for their connectivity, with shipments of telematics systems supporting such integration on average expected to exhibit a CAGR of 60.6% between 2015 and 2020.

.. it is unlikely systems such as Android Auto, Apple CarPlay and MirrorLink will serve as the vehicle’s sole infotainment system. Rather, they will complement the OEM’s own proprietary system, as is the case with the new Volvo XC90.”

See "Over 342 Million Connected Automotive Infotainment Systems to Ship between 2015 and 2020" - here.

Qwilt Goes to School: Saves 65% of Video Bandwidth and 96% of iOS Updates

Qwilt announced several deployments in college campuses that - ".. provides behind-the-scenes technology which fuels the new college lifestyle that now includes consuming copious amounts of online video such as educational streaming content, binge-able shows on Netflix and streaming Twitch tournaments. 

.. Jason Sebastiani, Principal Network Engineer at Grand Canyon University said: “.. After just one week of automatically learning what it could cache, we turned the Qwilt cache on and got immediate savings. Qwilt’s Open Cache solution currently serves close to 1GB per second of our streaming video peak traffic per day, which is about 65 percent of our total video bandwidth.”

Grand Canyon University (GCU) also benefitted from Qwilt’s solution when the bandwidth-heavy iOS 8.0 update came out. The Apple software update, which slowed traffic on networks nationwide, was considered a non-event for GCU because Qwilt cached it immediately and then delivered over 96 percent of the iOS updates from cache, allowing the average user to upgrade their Apple devices in minutes.

In addition to GCU, other schools that have deployed Qwilt’s Open Cache solution to date include: Lynn University, Western Kentucky University, University of Alaska and University of Hartford.


See "Qwilt Makes Online Video ‘Binge-able’ on College Campuses" - here.

du [UAE] Upgraded its CDN for IOS8 Updates

du (UAE] announced that "Following proactive steps taken by du to ensure a seamless upgrade experience to iOS 8 for Apple customers, du has noted that Apple traffic has, for the first time on its network, reached a new high – topped only by customers’ consumption of online video. Compared to a regular day, iOS 8 upgrades caused an increase of 15 times in App traffic upgrades since its release at 9pm on 17 September 2014.

In anticipation of the increased traffic iOS 8 upgrades would cause, du upgraded its Internet Content Delivery Network to avoid network congestion, and provide customers with the best possible experience.

[related post: "DPI Deployments: du [UAE] Selected Procera" - here] 

On du’s Fixed network, its Burj Khalifa PoP (Point of Presence), which services the area around the Burj, handled the highest volume of update downloads. However, many users chose to update using du’s Mobile network, enabling their devices as a Personal Hotspot/Tether, given the WiFi requirements of the iOS 8 upgrade.

Saleem AlBalooshi [pictured], Executive Vice President - Network Development & Operations in du, said: “iPhone users comprise a significant portion of our customer base, and we were able to predict this high volume of traffic in advance, given the popularity of Apple’s smartphones. As ever, our focus was on ensuring that our customers enjoyed a seamless experience in updating their devices, and so we undertook measures to bolster our network and provide a smooth, hassle-free iOS 8 download for our customers across the UAE.”

At the end of Q2, 2014 du had 7.1M subscribers, a 45% market share.

See "Apple traffic on du network reaches new high after seamless iOS 8 upgrade experience" - here.

[ABI]: VoLTE (w/IMS) is the Next Big Thing; $30B Market to 2019

   

A new report by Sabir Rafiq [pictured], research analyst, ABI Research finds that ".. as the first wave of LTE deployments achieve coverage, VoLTE is the next big thing. VoLTE runs on IMS, and the market will total over $US30 billion through 2019 as it becomes widespread. 

Leading infrastructure vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia are fully committed to VoLTE and IMS space and equip customers with this next wave in mobile broadband. Similarly, other vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, and Cisco recognize the impact VoLTE and IMS will have on the market. These vendors are active in the VoLTE space by offering credible solutions in order to attract and retain customers ..  IMS mobile core revenue corresponds directly with the popularity of VoLTE”.

".. With the availability of VoLTE smartphones, operators realize benefits with improving quality in voice service, and also top-line growth with value adding services. This leads to increasing VoLTE services in smartphones, with Apple [see "iPhone 6 also supports Voice over LTE (VoLTE)" - here] and high-end Android  [see "New Moto X on Verizon to get Advanced Calling 1.0, run VoLTE - here] devices leading the way. 

[see also: "GSA: 116 MNOs Offer HD Voice - Even on 2G Networks!" - here]

VoLTE will become extremely important in the future and ABI Research believes competitive positioning will lead operators to VoLTE/IMS"

See "Mobile Broadband Operators Scramble for VoLTE, Creating an IMS Land Rush as Ericsson and Nokia Stake Claims on the $US30 Billion Market" - here.

Apple IOS8 Update - DDoS Attack? Can Cache Help?

Some traffic management aspects of the recent iOS8 release:

• Procera Networks' blog explains that ".. the latest IOS 8 update has hit some networks pretty hard. Several of our customers had such severe traffic spikes that they initially thought that they were under a DDOS attack ..  because the DDOS protection mechanisms implemented in the Procera solution kicked in, and customers were concerned that there was a wide-scale attack occurring. Using our Dynamic LiveView technology, we were able to quickly isolate the problems to Apple Devices and the Apple Update signature.
  The worst case we saw occurred in a CIS mobile network [left chart], where traffic jumped an almost astonishing 4000% at peak from normal to become one of the biggest traffic sources on the network. This bandwidth was achieved even with the operator managing the traffic using fair usage for each subscriber to ensure that the rest of the network traffic was not affected by the download. This is an astonishing number for a non-video application, and is the network equivalent of an Apple flash mob.
• 
  The European mobile network below saw [right chart] a big spike of over 1Gbps of Apple store updates in a very short time, with Apple Updates going from .01% of total network traffic to over 6% of the total traffic.

See "Apple’s Flash Mob: IOS 8 Update Resembles DDOS Attack for operators" - here.

• PeerApp has "released data that shows 96 percent of iOS 8 requests through PeerApp customers were served from the cache, allowing subscribers to download the update much more quickly. PeerApp measured apple.com traffic of a sample of customers over the period of September 15th – 21st, and found traffic peaked after the iOS 8 release to over 4 Terabytes per hour – a rate four times higher than normal traffic peaks of 1 Terabyte per hour".
  
  See "Millions of iOS 8 updates Delivered 8 to 12 Times Faster with PeerApp" - here.

Apple's CDN Goes Live; Increases Capacity 10x

 
Dan Rayburn [pictured] reports to Streaming Media that "Recently, Apple’s CDN has gone live in the U.S. and Europe and the company is now delivering some of their own content, directly to consumers. In addition, Apple has interconnect deals in place with multiple ISPs, including Comcast and others, and has paid to get direct access to their networks .. From ISPs I have spoken with, they tell me Apple has put a massive amount of capacity in place, with many saying that Apple has more than 10x the capacity they are using today, all ready to go."

[related post: "CDN Helps ISP to Manage iOS5 Update Traffic" - here]

"While Apple will probably never completely move away from third-party CDNs, like Netflix did, they will rely less on third-party CDNs over time, just like we have seen with Microsoft, YouTube and others. Level 3 will be able to make up for lost CDN business as they are one of the vendors that Apple is buying wavelengths, IP transit, fiber and other infrastructure services from .. It is also important to point out that decisions around who (Apple/Akamai/Level 3) delivers what (updates, streaming, apps, radio) to whom (ISP customers, different devices etc.) are under Apple’s control"

See "Apple’s CDN Now Live: Has Paid Deals With ISPs, Massive Capacity In Place" - here.

Apple Streaming Service in Talks to Get "Special Treatment" from Comcast

While the Comcast-Netflix agreement is claimed to be Net Neutral ("no preferential network treatment" - here), it seems that the relations with Apple maybe going to challenge Net Neutrality.

Shalini Ramachandran, Daisuke Wakabayashi and Amol Sharma report to the Wall Street Journal that "Apple is in talks with Comcast about teaming up for a streaming-television service that would use an Apple set-top box and get special treatment on Comcast's cables to ensure it bypasses congestion on the Web, people familiar with the matter say.

..Apple would benefit from a cable-company partner because it wants the new TV service's traffic to be separated from public Internet traffic over the "last mile"—the portion of a cable operator's pipes that connect to customers' homes, the people familiar with the matter say. That stretch of the Internet tends to get clogged when too many users in a region try to access too much bandwidth at the same time".

See "Apple in Talks With Comcast About Streaming-TV Service" - here.

[Amdocs]: Newer Smartphones are Hungriers (for Data)

Actix (recently acquired by Amdocs) reported some interesting findings from a research it has conducted during 2013 analyzing 100,000 devices in Europe and North America:

• "Smartphones launched in 2013 consumed more than seven times the data of those launched in 2009 and 40 percent more data than 2012 models, according to Actix’s latest research on global mobile users
   
• Apple handsets dominate data use with almost twice the data per session than the average Android phones
   
• Tablet users consume more than twice as much data as smartphones, while MiFi devices drive almost nine times more data consumption"

See "2013’s Smartphones consumed seven times the data of 2009’s" - here.

Citrix: Mobile Ads Generate 1.6% of iOS/ 2.2% of Android Data Volume

Citrix Bytemobile published its "Mobile Analytics Report, November 2013" (here) that "provides insight into subscriber behavior and related factors that affect subscribers’ quality of experience (QoE) with mobile data services".

Main findings:

• Three applications - Media Player, Browser and Google Play - generate 83% of mobile data volume associated with Android devices, with Media Player accounting for more than half. This is similar to application use on iOS devices, as reported by Citrix ByteMobile in Q2 2013. On iOS devices, Media Player, Safari and App Store generated 77% of mobile data volume.
   
• Mobile ads constitute a small fraction of monthly quota -  generated 1.6% of iOS data volume, as compared to 1% in reported in Q1 2012 and 2.2% of Android data volume, as compared to 2% reported in Q1 2012.
   
• The ratio of mobile subscribers receiving image-based ads versus video-based ads is 20-to-1.

• In the Q2 2010 Mobile Analytics Report, ByteMobile found that 90% of mobile video data by volume was associated with the FLV format, which is primarily associated with laptops. Today, the primary mobile video format is MP4, a format which is most closely associated with smartphones. This MP4 traffic represents 67% of global mobile video volume.

iOS7 Update Traffic was 20% of Total; Crashed College Internet

Apple's iOS 7 update had its effect on the internet, causing increase in broadband traffic and disconnections to universities' campuses:  

• Dan Deeth brings to Sandvine's blog some stats on Apple's iOS7 update - "below is a report from a single North American fixed access operator, showing both the bandwidth and traffic share that Apple Updates accounted for over the past few days. Upon release at 1PM ET, Apple Updates immediately became almost 20% of total network traffic, and continued to stay above 15% of total traffic into the evening peak hours".
  
  See "Traffic Spotlight: iOS 7 Launch" - here.

• Peter Jacobs reports to Business Insider that "Several college campuses have reported that their wifi networks have crashed today and were likely affected by mass downloads of Apple's new iOS 7 operating system". 
  
  "Ohio University’s Internet access is problematic [see "Ohio University Tries to Block Netflix as 'Internet pipeline is overflowing'" - here] but the Office of Information Technology is working to remedy the situation .. In a university-wide email, students were asked to wait to download iOS 7, Apple’s new software upgrade, to potentially prevent further delays" (here)
  
  "It looks like iOS 7’s release managed to crash NYU wifi" (here).
  
  See "iOS 7 Downloads Have Likely Caused Multiple College Campuses To Lose Internet" - here.

Citrix Identifies the 4 Top Mobile iOS Applications

Citrix released the ".. Citrix ByteMobile Mobile Analytics Report for the second quarter of 2013. The Mobile Analytics report provides insight into mobile data subscriber usage patterns and the impact this behavior has on operators’ networks".

An interesting finding is that "four apps – Media Player, Safari, App Store and Facebook – generate 82 percent of mobile data volume on iOS devices, with Media Player accounting for nearly half .. Facebook has risen in prominence and increased its relative volume by 5X over previous measurements. Facebook generated 1% of data volume in Feb 2012 and now generates 5%. With 1% of mobile transactions, the eBay app now generates enough traffic to be a significant mobile data contributor and in so doing becomes the first Ecommerce app to pass the 1% threshold".

Source: Citrix ByteMobile Mobile Analytics Report

See "Citrix: Data Provides Insight into Mobile Subscriber Behavior and Mobile App Preference" - here.

[ABI]: OTT Video Revenues to Reach $20B by 2015

Here is what carrier and MNOs are fighting for - $20B content revenues in 2015, according to ABI Research findings.

"Companies like Netflix, Hulu, Apple, and Amazon helped drive the over-the-top (OTT) video market past $8 billion in 2012. The three largest markets—North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific—experienced YoY growth in excess of 50% in 2012. The continued spread of connected CE and increasingly mobile devices, like tablets, are expected to push the market past $20 billion by 2015"

See "Over 60% Growth in Worldwide Over-the-top Video Revenue in 2012" - here.

ALU: Signaling Issue with New Facebook

Lindsay Newell, VP, Marketing Networks & Platforms Group, Alcatel-Lucent, writes in a post to ALU's blog that "On November 15, Facebook released new versions of their mobile app for Android and iOS. Prior to the new release, Facebook signaling and airtime already accounted for 10% and 15% of the overall load on 2G/3G networks, respectively. As users around the world updated and started to use this new version, we quickly noticed a dramatic increase of almost 60% in the signaling load and 25% in the airtime consumed by the Facebook application. During the same period, the number of Facebook users increased by only 4%. Clearly, it is not the swelling of Facebook’s community that intensified the load, but rather the introduction of new Facebook features for mobile users and underlying platform changes .. The effect on service provider networks was significant, driving up overall (total) signaling traffic and airtime consumption by 5-10%".

"Another trend we detected was an increase in popularity of Facebook video traffic — a whopping 350% increase in volume since the November 15th launch — the most growth of all Facebook traffic".

See "New Facebook: not only draining your personal time, but mobile network capacity as well" - here.

AT&T Opens FaceTime to iPhone 4S

One more step towards FaceTime over cellular for all and a more Neutral service by AT&T. The MNO now opens Apple's FaceTime to all subscribers on tiered-plans (i.e not on unlimited plans) even if they use the historical, stone-age iPhone 4S!

The evolution of AT&T FaceTime policy started with the plan to surcharge its use (July '12 - here). Since then AT&T has revised the policy every 3 months:  open to shared-data plans only (Aug '12 - here), open to LTE only on all tiered plans (Nov '12 - here) and the current announcement.

A blog post by Marc Collins (pictured), SVP, Data and Voice Products, explains that "in September 2012, we explained that we wanted to roll it out gradually to ensure the service had minimal impact on the mobile experience for all of our customers. As a result of ongoing testing, we’re announcing AT&T will enable FaceTime over Cellular at no extra charge for customers with any tiered data plan using a compatible iOS device".

See "FaceTime Update" - here.

Does Android Provide Better Data Usage Control?

DataWiz for iOS

In the 4th episode of their "Reasons no to Buy iPhone5" series , Kevin Smith and William Wei of Business Insider compare the data consumption control iPhone and Android have in the data caps era.

Note that this relates to build-in features of the iPhone, while there are plenty of applications, including by MNOs, that provide the necessary information for iOS for example - "New Mobile Usage Tracking App Predicts Future Usage" - here



See "Android Kills The iPhone When It Comes To Preventing Data Overcharges" - here.

Sandvine: 9X Increase in Apple's Traffic on iOS6 Release Day

    

Have you downloaded the new iOS6 yet? According to Sandvine many people did.
 
Dan Deeth presents in the company's blog "a chart [below] made using data from fixed access networks in the US that shows a comparison of iTunes and Mac App Store traffic from yesterday with that of the average levels of the previous two Wednesdays in September .. See that huge spike at 1:00PM EDT yesterday? That is when iOS 6 was officially released to the public. This massive increase in traffic was then sustained throughout most of the day, and actually escalated as people got home from work in the evening. This resulted in traffic from Apple’s servers yesterday being over 9 times their average traffic levels"

See more - "Traffic Spotlight: iOS6 Launch Day" - here.

AT&T Facetime Discrimination: Complaint to be Filled with the FCC

 
AT&T plans to block Apple's Facetime over 3G service to certain customers (see "AT&T will Block Facetime/3G to non Shared Data Plan Customers" - here) is probably going for FCC examination. This could be a test case for the ability of DPI and policy Management vendors to sell application-aware monetization solutions to the US market.

  

3 public internest groups - Free Press, Public Knowledge, and the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute announced that they have "..notified AT&T of their intent to file a formal complaint against the company. In the complaint, the three organizations will assert that AT&T is violating Net Neutrality by blocking the popular video-conferencing application FaceTime. The groups will file the complaint with the Federal Communications Commission in the coming weeks".

  

According to the press release "Under the Open Internet rules the FCC passed in 2010, AT&T cannot block apps that compete with the company's traditional voice-calling service.The groups urged the Commission to stop AT&T's actions .. the letter to AT&T is linked here".

See "Public Interest Groups to File Net Neutrality Complaint Against AT&T for Blocking FaceTime on iPhones and iPads" - here.