Why Content Delivery Networks Need More Capacity

We’re in the midst of an enormous media shift. For those of us who grew up in the era of broadcast domination, this amounts to a revolution in technology. Nobody worries too much anymore about how to adjust the rabbit ears for best reception. Instead, they worry about 3G and 4G coverage so they can get their videos on the go. Cable and satellite TV, the successors to over the air delivery, now have to worry about the Internet as the connection of choice for both audio and video. If over-the-air delivery is waning, then what is taking its place? It’s the CDN or Content Delivery Network.

What’s a CDN and how does it relate to the Internet? A content delivery network works with the Internet, not as a replacement. The public does not connect directly to a CDN. These are privately run networks designed to provide high bandwidth combined with low latency, jitter and packet loss. They are designed for capacity and quality to support content producers and distributors. Thus, the name Content Delivery Network. They are designed to deliver content, most often in IP video format, from point to point or point to multipoint.

What CDNs do in take a load off the Internet and ensure quality of transmission for most of the distance traversed. Say a customer wants access to an HD video download or stream. You can try to jam that through the Internet and take your chances with traffic congestion and other quality degradations. Or, the provider can send the program over a CDN directly to the Internet Service Provider. The ISP, say a cable company, then gives access to the CDN delivered content to their customer. In this case, it could be through the Cable broadband service or the content could be used to feed a separate cable channel.

Sure, content can still be degraded between the ISP head end and the customer, but at least the service providers have control of that portion of the network. They can choose how to manage the bandwidth shared by their customers to ensure satisfactory video quality.

The media shift now in progress is gravitating toward most consumers getting their video services via cable or satellite rather than through over the air broadcast channels. That’s why you haven’t heard much screaming over the replacement of analog transmission by digital. It's not that those converter boxes are so wonderful. It's that the satellite and cable set top boxes that feed TV sets are capable of providing a variety of compatible analog, digital, SD and HD television signals. Old TVs as well as new are supported.

Digital HDTV was just one phase of the transformation. What’s happening now is that more and more set top boxes and television receivers themselves come with Ethernet ports for IP content. Plug these ports into an Internet router and the TV set becomes capable of displaying video content that never leaves the Net. Netflix is an example of a content provider that uses the Internet. So is YouTube. Even the broadcast networks are providing archives of already aired shows on their Internet sites.

This move from airwaves to broadband will likely result in more and more spectrum repurposed to wireless Internet service. At the same time, IP video content will increase and require a robust delivery mechanism. This is why CDNs are growing and will continue to for the foreseeable future. Level 3, one of the world’s largest IP backbones for content delivery, recently added 1.65 Tbps of global capacity and added Toronto, Montreal, Brussels, Munich and Hamburg to its CDN. Video content delivery is now worldwide.

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1.5 and 3.0 Gbps Uncompressed HD Video Transport

It’s been over a year since analog television broadcasting with its SD video signals went off the air. What 4:3 sets are still in use are relics of an obsolete technology. They’re hanging on for the time being, thanks to Cable and Satellite receivers that feed their RF inputs. But look closer and you can see that HD channels are multiplying and SD channels are being abandoned by viewers with flat-screen HD TVs. What’s coming up fast is IPTV in high definition. Next year it will be 3D with and without glasses.

For broadcasters, show distributors and content providers, yesterday’s video transport techniques are just as obsolete as those old tube sets. What’s needed now is high definition digital transmission. The highest quality requires uncompressed transport, which, unfortunately, consumes bandwidth at a prodigious rate. No problem. Level 3 Vyvx service is set up to meet the need. Now, level 3 is offering uncompressed high definition video transport services between Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York City at 1.5 and 3.0 Gigabits per second.

Live video feeds are delivered in their native, pristine form by sending them with zero compression. Think of it as one very long connection between the studio and the control room. Or, more likely, between the scene of an event and the network control center.

Level 3 has been a major player in video transport services worldwide. Their Emmy Award winning Vyvx resources include fiber connectivity to 125 cities in the United States and Europe. They have direct connectivity to most professional sports venues in the United States and Canada. They offer Managed Video Network Services (MVNS), teleports in Atlanta, Denver, L.A. and Berlin, standards conversion, encryption and HD encoding.

The heart of the system is Level 3’s IP/MPLS worldwide fiber network. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks offer high capacity bandwidth with quality of service controls, deterministic pre-allocated paths with rapid switching to redundant paths if needed. This makes for a highly reliable, secure and high performance core network ideal for high bandwidth data and video transmission.

This is really the leading edge of what will become a much more extensive high bandwidth video transport system. Level 3 has stated that other cities will be added to the 1.5 and 3.0 Gbps service as demand increases. Even as this happens, the demand for compressed HD and even SD video transport is increasing world wide. There is more video content, live feeds and specialized programming being produced every day. Every one of these sources needs high quality and highly reliable transport services.

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Fiber Optic Speeds Come to Cable

Cablevision systems Corp. is raising the bar on broadband Internet service by breaking the 100 Mbps speed limit over Cable TV service. They announced a rollout of the new high speed Internet service starting May 11. Sign up and you can get download speeds up to 101 Mbps with upload speed of up to 15 Mbps for around $100 a month.

But just a second. Isn't Cable TV still using regular old RG-6 coaxial cable? I thought you needed fiber optic cable to get those kind of speeds.

Oh, there's a lot more bandwidth capability in copper wire that you might suspect. It comes down to how efficiently you use the capability that exists. Even common twisted pair telephone wire is capable of transporting Mbps level signals up to several miles. The latest technology for last mile delivery of business grade bandwidth is EoC or Ethernet over Copper, which is able to provide up to 45 Mbps using multiple copper pair that most businesses already have installed.

The magic behind the Cablevision advance is called DOCSIS 3.0. DOCSIS is the standard for transporting broadband data on cable television systems. The acronym stands for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. If you have a cable modem, it's running one of the DOCSIS standards. What this standard does is define how to create data channels that fit into standard 6 MHz TV channels so that they will pass unhindered through cable equipment. The cable operator decides how many channels it needs to set aside to support the demand for cable modems.

The latest version, just coming into service now, is DOCSIS 3.0. This upgrade specifies bonding up to 10 NTSC TV channels of 6 MHz each to provide a bandwidth of 60 MHz. MHz and Mbps are not the same. With clever modulation schemes, you can get a lot more than 1 Mbps from a 1 MHz channel. The DOCSIS 3.0 standard offers cable operators 4 channel bonding for a maximum usable speed of 152 Mbps downstream and 108 Mbps upstream. The 8 channel bonded option gives a maximum usable speed of 304 Mbps downstream. That's lots of room for growth as demand increases.

What is driving the need for 100 Mbps Internet service? It's all about the video. With that amount of bandwidth, a user can download a full-length HDTV movie in less than 10 minutes. Make no mistake about it, HD video is a snowball that is starting to roll downhill. Internet service providers that get in its way with things like slow connections and bandwidth caps are going to get rolled over as the public embraces IP TV. Satellite and Cable operators would like to insist that they be the providers of all TV content on a subscription or pay per view basis. The public is having none of it. They're going to third party providers, such as Netflix, or going directly to TV network websites to get episodes of their favorite programs that they've missed. YouTube remains a popular destination for shorter video clips, but may well become a clearinghouse for full-length programs of all types.

How far will this go? Look for other cable companies to embrace DOCSIS 3.0 and match Cablevision's 100 Mbps speeds. I'd also expect the same from Verizon's FiOS, a fiber optic technology that has plenty of bandwidth available. Those silly bandwidth caps are going to disappear at least for high-end bandwidth users. Nobody is going to pay $100 or more a month for broadband and then be told they've used up their allotment by mid-month. That means cable companies sucking it up and installing faster Internet backbones and agreements with content delivery networks as well as boosting speeds to the users.

Will Video Kill The Internet Star?

Streaming video and video downloads have grown to the point where they are now the biggest bandwidth demands on the Internet. The question is whether video packets will multiply so fast that the Internet superhighway will become as clogged as many physical highways.

Video is no different from previous "killer aps" such as email, Web browsing, instant messaging, blogging, or social networking. All of these applications started small, grew rapidly and eventually became part of the mainstream. There an actual pattern to all new technology introductions that looks like a letter "S" when you draw it on graph paper. The pattern is so familiar and repeatable that it goes by the term "s-curve."

The s-curve or growth curve increases slowly at first as the product or service is introduced. Early adopters get on board quickly because they like to try new things. This causes the curve to inflect upward. Then there is a long period of steadily increasing adoption when most people learn of the product or service through word of mouth, advertising, and editorials. As the mature part of the cycle is reached, growth slows and the top part of the s-curve forms. Eventually there are very few new users and technology moves on to the next innovation.

We're heading up the video s-curve now. It's more than YouTube. Many TV networks finally realize that there is a huge audience for their program episodes that can't be present when it debuts over the air or on satellite. We're probably not far from the time when every show will be available online right after it airs or perhaps simultaneously. The next step will be programming that was never aired originally because of the huge costs involved. Not just home videos, mind you. Even professionally produced programs that have appeal too limited for broadcasting. Content delivery networks will be the broadcast, satellite and cable channels of the future.

As fast as video over the Internet is growing, there is one more piece to put in place before it goes totally ballistic. That's the Internet tuner for your TV sets. The switch from analog to digital service is currently grinding through the marketplace. By the time it is complete and NTSC tuners are a thing of the past, it's likely that new sets will have Internet capability built-in. Right now that marketplace is developing in the form of set top boxes such as Apple TV. As directories, program guides and video search become more standardized and the television set becomes a small computer with a really big screen, the Internet will be the most popular way to distribute video content.

But isn't all of this new content going to jam up the Internet backbones to the point where nothing moves? The actual backbone paths are in a constant state of upgrade and will probably keep up. The real difference between downloading video and downloading a Web page is Megabytes and Gigabytes versus Kilobytes. In other words, it's a matter of scale. Private content delivery networks help to relieve the congestion from the long-haul paths and push the problem closer to the user.

The real overload potential is at the Internet Service Provider, particularly shared bandwidth services such as Cable broadband and DSL. You probably experience this now if you are a home subscriber or have business DSL or Cable connections. Available bandwidth seems to vary all over the place, although times when the most users are online are typically the slowest. That's often early evenings and right after school lets out. It doesn't take many video program streams or downloads to swamp out all the email and casual browsing traffic.

What can be done about this? ISPs seem like they are trying to one-up each other in offering more bandwidth for the same monthly fee. But they are really responding to a change in content that requires orders of magnitude more bandwidth than what was typical when they started offering broadband connections. ISPs are also peering with content delivery networks and legal P2P companies to minimize the network paths involved in transmitting video over IP.

As a business owner, you can best protect your bandwidth interests by leasing exclusive or dedicated bandwidth for your own Internet access, telephone trunk lines and video uploads/downloads. Competitive T1, Ethernet, and OCx bandwidth services all offer dedicated connections at prices lower than you might expect.