Sandvine and Procera Analyze the Olympics Games

 
As we are expecting new [internet traffic] records in the 2012 Olympic Games (see "Prediction: Worldwide Traffic will Double during London's Olymics" - here), driven by streaming video and social network activity, it is interesting to see the analysis made by the DPI vendors for the first days.  

Sandvine, in a blog post by Dan Deeth ("Going for the Streaming Gold" - here) looked at "..how NBC’s Live Extra Olympic Streaming has contributed to fixed access network traffic in the US ..Below is a chart showing the volume and share of traffic for NBC’s Olympic streaming over the weekend. At its peak on Sunday at around 10:00am it accounted for almost 15% of total network traffic. At this time, we believe most people were likely streaming swimming preliminaries, a hypothesis reinforced by the fact that the second peak seen at around 3:00pm also coincided with a swimming event, the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay"

Procera Networks launched a new site ("Analytics In Motion" -here) dedicated to the grand event. Procera found that "A UK mobile operator that we are monitoring is seeing a decline of 18% in mobile BBC iPlayer traffic on their network for Friday and an increase of 7%on Saturday from normal activity rates. This indicates that the Opening Ceremonies were primarily viewed on fixed or broadcast networks, but people started to watch events online on Saturday .. Social Networking traffic (mainly Facebook and Twitter) is up 25% in North America over normal weekend levels .. YouTube streaming traffic is at normal levels .. nbc.com streaming is very active, with an average of 2% of subscribers streaming on Friday and Saturday"

 

UK ISP: Olympics without FUP or Traffic Shaping- A Revenue Opportunity?

    

While there are many signs that the London 2012 Olympic Games will set at least one new world record - in Internet traffic (here), one ISP remains calm and certain in its ability to deliver the service, and encourges its subscribers to use it.

ZEN Internet said in a press release "The Olympics will create a massive amount of demand for bandwidth due to the BBC alone providing live coverage from 24 locations during the event therefore meaning the Internet will be used to stream huge amounts of video".

We still stick firmly with the policy of no Fair Usage Policy (FUP) and no traffic shaping on our award winning broadband services. This means that with us, unlike many other ISPs, you can enjoy your usage allowance at the fastest speed your connection can support at anytime, no matter what type of application, service or media you want to access". 
  
Compare to - "2012 Olympics: Will ISPs Use Traffic shaping to Cope with Demand?" - here.

[Nevertheless] .. "If you are going to be watching the Olympics online you may want to keep an eye on your usage. You can find out how to do this by reading our Broadband: Tracking your Usage knowledgebase article".

Is this going to be a great revenue opportunity of subscribers buying "Buying additional capacity" ? 

See "Our preparations for London 2012" - here.

BBC Uses Adaptive Bitrate Optimization with its New iPlayer Over 3G/Wi-Fi App

The BBC announced that a new version of its iPlayer iOS application (for iPhone and iPad) now allows viewing content over a 3G connection rather than Wi-Fi only and uses Adaptive Bitrate technology. An Android application will be available soon.

David Madden, Executive Product Manager for BBC iPlayer on mobile, writes to the BBC Interent Blog that "We have worked closely with the network operators to introduce 3G streaming and create a great mobile experience so you can watch your favourite TV programme wherever you are or listen to the radio when you are out and about"

"We have also done a lot of work to improve the playback experience on portable devices and have rolled out HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) video infrastructure for the apps, which uses adaptive bitrate technologies. This enables us to detect the strength of your Wi-Fi or 3G connection and serve the appropriate video quality. If you have low internet signal strength then the video stream will adapt down to suit your connection speed; if you move onto a stronger signal then the video stream will automatically improve in quality. The idea is to give you the best possible experience wherever you are" 



Source: Apple



 

Earlier this year BBC said it will allow users to track their [fixed] ISP performance (see "BBC's Traffic-Light System will Test ISP's QoS" - here). I wonder if we will see the same over the new 3G access.
 

David provides some statistics on iPlayer - "There have been record figures for BBC iPlayer on mobile with 1.5 million installs on the Apple iPad and 1.2 million installs on Android devices since we launched the apps in February 2011. In October 2011 alone 16.5 million programmes were watched on mobile devices and tablets, up by 129% from this time last year"

See "BBC iPlayer: iPhone app and 3G streaming across all mobile networks" - here.

[update-3] The Royal Wedding Challenge - Extended Report by Sandvine

  

Sandvine published a full report on the global event of the Royal wedding.

The data was collected from "fixed and mobile networks from 5 continents, representing millions of Internet users"  and showed that "during the ceremony itself Internet traffic did briefly exceed normal levels. Immediately after the primary coverage and events ended, traffic dropped to 20% below normal levels, perhaps as many people in the Americas went back to bed after a long night or early morning" (top chart below).

Nevertheless (no surprise here, although the day was a public holiday in the UK so you'd expect majority of people watching it on broadcast TV) - "BBC’s iPlayer streaming increased to 6 times its normal levels around the world. BBC iPlayer is technically only available in the United Kingdom, but diehard royal watchers obviously found mechanisms to get around the restrictions. Looking at Figure 3, the local peaks correspond to the beginning of the ceremony, the carriage ride, and the first kiss" (2nd chart).

Other highlights:

• Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) doubled, and global video traffic surged to 26% above normal levels, peaking during the wedding ceremony itself during the wedding ceremony itself
   
• Traffic on the social media sites Twitter and Facebook peaked 30% and 10%, respectively, above normal levels and local peaks corresponded with highlights of the wedding coverage
   
• Levels of Octoshape, a proprietary streaming platform used for large-scale online events (most recently President Barack Obama’s inauguration and Michael Jackson’s memorial service) increased 60 times the normal level

Download "Global Internet Phenomena Spotlight: The Royal Wedding" - here (registration required - includes nice pictures on the newlywed couple - but none of Pippa, my favorite character in the event, so I added one). See also Tom's blog post - "Global Internet Phenomena Spotlight: The Royal Wedding" - here.

BBC's Traffic-Light System will Test ISP's QoS

      

The UK ISP vs. the rest of the world ping-pong continues.

Following the recent move by the ISPs ("UK: ISPs Publish New Voluntary Code on Broadband Traffic Management" - here) and the government response ("Your New Voluntary Code" is not Enough!" - here) the content providers join the game.

BBC News reports that "The BBC has always maintained that it won't pay to have its popular iPlayer service prioritised over other traffic .. The BBC is currently developing a traffic-light system to let users see how different ISPs treat its iPlayer service. The details of the system, due for release in the spring, are not fully decided but it is likely ISPs will be rated simply: Red for poor, amber for OK, and green for acceptable".

It seems the BBC doesn’t expect for more than "acceptable" - where is the positive approach?

 See article by Jane Wakefield "ISPs defend plans for two-tier net" - here.

 

John Tate (picture), the BBC's director of policy and strategy said: "People should be able to access the internet without the blocking or throttling of certain content due to commercial rivalry".

Few months ago there were other voices at BBC - see BBC: "traffic management may sometimes be necessary" - here.

BBC: "traffic management may sometimes be necessary"

 

In a recent blog post to the BBC site, Erik Huggers, claims that "Until that capacity is in place, the BBC recognises that traffic management may sometimes be necessary for technical reasons - for example to cope with legitimate network congestion. But this should be the exception. An emerging trend towards network operators discriminating in favour of certain traffic based on who provides it, as part of commercial arrangements, is a worrying development.". Seems like "compromise" is a good, politically correct approach recently (a la Verizon-Google - here).

See "Net Neutrality and the BBC" - here. 

The worrying development is "TalkTalk, BT: we'd put iPlayer in the slow lane"- here. " Asked specifically if TalkTalk would afford more bandwidth to YouTube than the BBC's iPlayer if Google was prepared to pay, the company's executive director of strategy and regulation, Andrew Heaney, argued it would be "perfectly normal business practice to discriminate between them". "We would do a deal and look at YouTube and look at the BBC, and decide," he added.

 

Back to BBC - "We've expressed this and other concerns to the industry regulator Ofcom and to the European Commission as part of their consultation on the issue. At this stage new legislation is not needed, since effective new EU rules have already been passed. But we do need the determination of regulators to now fully implement these rules, to prevent the emergence of practices which undermine the open internet which we so often take for granted"