

  (Source: Lifehacker)
New study fuels speculations that Netflix will cause an internet meltdown








Comments     Threshold


Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By mianmian on 11/4/2010 8:46:56 PM , Rating: 5
With the growth of HD content and more streaming services, the bandwidth they took has almost no limit. Just like the CPU, the more capacity it has, the more ways people will find to slater it.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By inighthawki on 11/4/2010 8:50:55 PM , Rating: 5
Well perhaps this will finally make some ISPs in the US to increase the quality of their service to acceptable speeds that other countries have had for years now.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By micksh on 11/4/2010 9:37:16 PM , Rating: 3
Or, perhaps, instead this will make some ISPs in the US to introduce bandwidth caps, just like Comcast did. Honestly, what would stop them?
Besides, Rogers (Canadian cable provider) has stricter traffic limits than Comcast and the caps are lowered periodically.

Also RedBox is planning to start streaming next year.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By corduroygt on 11/4/10, Rating: -1
RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
They already do offer that.



RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.



- This competing service doesn't use up your monthly bandwidth



By Newspapercrane on 11/8/2010 10:12:02 AM , Rating: 1
I'm pretty sure my ISP already offers that...

What do they call it... the name escapes me... Oh yeah... CABLE.

By invidious on 11/8/2010 11:35:34 AM , Rating: 2
instead provide their own streaming service with much better quality and speed
What are you smoking? Any ISP provided service that I have see has had terrible selection and quality.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By MadMan007 on 11/4/10, Rating: 0
RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.

Who owns who again?


RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
Unlike the Democrats corporate funders?


Lawyers, Wallstreet and the UAW support Democrats almost exclusively.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By inighthawki on 11/4/2010 10:15:21 PM , Rating: 3
Honestly, what would stop them?

Perhaps people canceling their service because they can only stream 3 movies a month on their unlimited netflix plan? People don't pay a monthly fee to get access to unlimited movies if they can only watch a few before getting massive overage charges.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.


RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By ImEmmittSmith on 11/5/10, Rating: 0
RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.

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RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
you cant compare the luxury of netflix to healthcare...



RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.


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RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
You guys need MORE regulation


RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.



RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
You guys need MORE regulation




RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By Solandri on 11/5/2010 3:29:09 AM , Rating: 2
Netflix's unlimited service only costs $7.99/mo. Even at 3 movies a month, it's worth it.

No, what's going to happen is the people with ISPs who cap their "unlimited" internet are going to hear their friends with better ISPs talking about how great Netflix is. These people will then complain to their ISPs about how outrageous the cap/price is, or switch if there's a viable competitor.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By AlexWade on 11/5/2010 8:33:00 AM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately, in rural America your choices are satellite internet, cellular internet, or DSL, if you are lucky. If you are unlucky, just satellite internet. This country needs a much better internet infrastructure and it needs net neutrality. Unfortunately, every senator or representative who was supporting net neutrality lost and the republicans are more concerned about turning back time. They weren't voted in because of net neutrality. Please let the new representatives and senators know to push for net neutrality. Do it now, before corruption sets in.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By FITCamaro on 11/5/2010 8:38:47 AM , Rating: 1
Government is the reason we have such a poor internet infrastructure. Not the solution.




RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By gamerk2 on 11/5/2010 9:33:08 AM , Rating: 4
Please, stop it. Ever since the internet was de-regulated (Thank you, FCC), almost all foward progress has come to a halt. You are seeing free market economics in action: In the lack of any compeititon, its cheaper to simply throttle users then upgrade infrastructure.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By twhittet on 11/5/2010 9:46:28 AM , Rating: 3
Exactly - it's a lot easier for companies to put high speed anything in a few large cities and rake in $ than it is to put that same service to millions of remote locations. Without the government, most farms probably wouldn't even have normal telephones right now.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.




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RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.






RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
Sorry, WRONG.




It's the corporations that block community ISPs

Yes they do it through the mandated monopolies they were given.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By mostyle on 11/9/2010 7:20:39 AM , Rating: 2
push for net neutrality

Really? In America? I'm thinking not. Unfortunately we have bred a society that thinks it is okay to push our ideals on to another because our way is 'better.'

We as Americans aren't taught to be neutral. Look at the info were fed by the media constantly. In one form or another we are told what to think or believe and unfortunately a large part of the population doesn't fall into the 'free thinking' category whereas they actually would form opinions that are truly theirs rather they see an existing ideal and fall in line with it.

Popular media... There is a reason its called popular.

In case you're wondering... I am American. I just loathe the ease with which a lot of Americans can't see past the smoke and mirrors and form their own ideas.


RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By Spookster on 11/5/2010 1:24:48 PM , Rating: 1
by inighthawki on November 4, 2010 at 10:15 PM

Honestly, what would stop them?


I've been streaming Netflix through my PS3 ever since they first started offering that service on the PS3 and have never encountered a 3 movie limit per month.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By Fritzr on 11/10/2010 1:51:08 AM , Rating: 2
5GB monthly cap minus 5GB of streaming movie==maxed out on Netflix. He is just using 3 movies as approx 5GB of movies.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.


RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By mscrivo on 11/5/2010 9:50:27 AM , Rating: 2
exactly! I suggest you research the company Sandvine and see what they're all about. They are intentionally using scare tactics to push their deep packet filtering technology and further erode net neutrality. This is evil marketing at its worst.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.




comcast as a company sucks..


RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
Which one?





RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By GotDiesel on 11/5/2010 12:47:36 PM , Rating: 2
I agree.. US broadband is a joke compared to the ROW..
actually, do we even have "broadband" ?
or is it that because we are told it is.. ?

RE: Come on, Netflix is not alone.
By FITCamaro on 11/5/2010 12:50:21 PM , Rating: 1
I can get 50 Mbps up and down. In South Carolina.

By inighthawki on 11/5/2010 4:50:16 PM , Rating: 1
Well that's great for you, most places I know can get 6-10 mb connections for about $50+/month. The rate does slowly go up over the years (a few years back it was 3mb/s) but it's still going REALLY slow, not to mention the countless places that still don't even get broadband at all, or ridiculously slow broadband, for that matter.

By omnicronx on 11/5/2010 8:57:39 AM , Rating: 2
This is entirely overblown.

There is currently a one month free trial in Canada as the service just arrived here.

Ton's of people I know are just using the hell out of it while they can, but don't necessarily intend to buy it.. they also have not got their internet bills for the month yet heh (you would be hard pressed to find an uncapped plan in urban areas in Canada)

By stirfry213 on 11/5/2010 2:46:05 PM , Rating: 2
Cry more bandwidth providers.
By Boze on 11/4/2010 8:51:16 PM , Rating: 5
I really wish I could find the article where I read this - its been a few years back, but I'll do my best to recollect what the article said.

Sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s, some forward-looking politicians gave (yes, they gave... as in "free") about $300 million in taxpayer dollars to cable companies and other bandwidth providers to upgrade their network infrastructure, in order to handle, what they believed, would be an explosion of traffic across the Internet.

So what happened to that $300 million? Good question. The article I read those years ago essentially summed it up as most of the providers pocketing the free cash and doing a bare minimum of upgrades.

Would that have solved the bandwidth woes we currently see now? I don't know - I doubt it... but it definitely shows that American companies at that time weren't interested one single bit in upgrading redundancy and capacity. They were interested in the almighty dollar.

Instead of post "record" profits for shareholders, these companies need to start pouring billions of that cash into infrastructure upgrades. And I'm not talking about looking out for the next 5 years. We need infrastructure that can handle the data requirements of the next 20 years, today. Right now. Data requirements for every aspect of digital life are only going to go keep going up, I can't understand how the top executives of companies like AT&T, Verizon, Level3, etc. can't look at the numbers and figure this out. I'm a barely college educated Joe Average and it didn't too much effort for me.

RE: Cry more bandwidth providers.
By MadDogMorgan on 11/4/2010 9:12:39 PM , Rating: 5
We don't need the bandwidth for the next 20 years today, we need enough for today. Your point is relatively good, taking out the hyperbole. I'm just suggesting that companies are not likely to buy the gear today to build up for projected (read: guessed) bandwidth requirements of years in the future. Nor would it make sense for them to. As technology marches forward in equipment development, the cost per Mb/sec of bandwidth decreases. They are better off financially to wait and only build what's needed today.

What we need is to allow the process of supply and demand to work. As demand increases, someone will be motivated by the promise of profit to supply a solution to that demand.

I wish the college of barely would require a course in capitalism as part of it's core curriculum as I didn't get one either when I graduated, barely.

I also think we (voters) need to work to eliminate government granted monopolies on internet service delivery. Give more suppliers a shot at delivering what's demanded without having to buy some special legislation from local officials.

By marvdmartian on 11/5/2010 10:44:01 AM , Rating: 1
The problem with building enough for today's needs is that by the time you're done building it, it's not today anymore. Make sense?

While building for 20 years from now isn't really feasible, due to the fact that (hopefully!) technology is going to be so far ahead of today in 20 years, that our best guess may fall drastically short of our needs, I would say that building for 5 years down the road is a good idea.

With, of course, the knowledge that once you're done upgrading, it will be time to upgrade again. Much like the cell phone companies put out 3G networks, knowing full well that by the time they got it fully implemented, they were going to have to have 4G ready to begin rolling out (and why they're likely already planning their 5G networks now).

RE: Cry more bandwidth providers.
By morgan12x on 11/4/2010 10:37:30 PM , Rating: 2
Interesting... I work for one of the companies you mentioned and we have just deployed a multi terabit backbone (as in 10+) and have much much more coming next year.

RE: Cry more bandwidth providers.
By Homerboy on 11/5/2010 9:26:38 AM , Rating: 2
WTF is a Terabit backbone?
Current max link speeds are 10Gbps/DWDM and similar technologies. Exactly where did you deploy a multi-terabit backone?

RE: Cry more bandwidth providers.

RE: Cry more bandwidth providers.

RE: Cry more bandwidth providers.
Unfortunately that's the problem; I can't.






RE: Cry more bandwidth providers.


Crashed the internets?
By joeRocket on 11/4/2010 8:45:31 PM , Rating: 5
Blame Canada!

RE: Crashed the internets?
careful cuz then they might go on strike

RE: Crashed the internets?
Give us a share of that internet money!

By sapiens74 on 11/4/2010 10:21:01 PM , Rating: 2
10 Bucks a month, with Blu Ray, Unlimited Streaming, Goodbye Cable (canceled months ago) and even parental controls to block certain ratings, and it connects to every know device I can possible connect.

Netflix rocks!

By Chaser on 11/5/2010 9:08:51 AM , Rating: 2
I signed up a couple weeks ago. The downloadable "instant viewing" selection at best only 20% of the total available movies.



Netflix in Canada
By armagedon on 11/5/2010 9:30:32 AM , Rating: 2
I cannot believe that so many Canadians went for that service here. We`re so bored and desperate to watch 5-10 years old crappy movies. The Canadian film selection is outrageous and anyone paying for that is plain stupid. As long as we don`t have access to the US catalog I don`t see any future here after the novelty wears off (and the free trial).

RE: Netflix in Canada
By The Raven on 11/5/2010 11:52:04 AM , Rating: 2
If I haven't seen it... it's new to me!! ;-)

It is not a novelty in our house. We have no need to see movies or TV shows as soon as they come out. Let time determine which ones are worth it as there is no way to see them all.

If you are worried about seeing movies as soon as they come out, you should be watching them all in the theatre. Why wait 4 months to get it on DVD?

The point is that old to you might be fresh to someone else. But with the way things go these days they just remake old movies so what the hell is the difference?

And besides, if you "need" the movie as soon as it comes out, you can get the DVD in the mail with Netflix.

RE: Netflix in Canada
By armagedon on 11/5/2010 3:46:48 PM , Rating: 2
I think you don`t know what you are talking about. There is no mail service with Go to and check out their selection. It`s pathetic and nothing to do with the US counterpart. They are treating us as idiots. Screw them.

Not the tubes!
By emenon1 on 11/4/2010 9:40:57 PM , Rating: 2
Won't someone think of the tubes!

RE: Not the tubes!
By NanoTube1 on 11/5/2010 9:11:58 AM , Rating: 2
Don't worry, I will take care of the tubes and they will be ok.

And do you know why?
By lolmuly on 11/5/2010 3:50:05 AM , Rating: 4
The rent is too damn high!

Awesome Deal


I call BS
By Alexstarfire on 11/5/2010 12:25:37 AM , Rating: 2
I find it VERY HARD to believe that Netflix alone would account for 20% of the entire planets' internet traffic. The US alone? Perhaps. Even then I'm still a little skeptical. I mean, you've got Comcast and the like saying the top 10% or so internet users are using over half the bandwidth they provide. Kinda doubt those people are just watching videos online, especially from Netflix.

This study could just be about places that stream/serve video but I couldn't find anything that stated such.

2GB movies = fail
By Shadowmaster625 on 11/5/2010 8:03:22 AM , Rating: 2
Most of my 700MB encodings look just as good as movies on netflix, which are around 2GB. If they used better compression the could cut their bandwidth in half or more.I am really surprised netflix isnt on this. If they really want to grow past the next couple years, they need to lead the way in the field of video compression. Their failure or success hinges upon the development of an entirely new form of data compression. They are uniquely positioned to do it due to their very large library of video data.

RE: 2GB movies = fail
By omnicronx on 11/5/10, Rating: 0
ISPs are ltrying their best
By XZerg on 11/5/2010 9:15:57 AM , Rating: 2
ISPs are ltrying their best to locking this up and throwing the key away. Why? Most of these ISPs are also TV cable providers and cannot and do not want Netflix to eat into their revenues. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them buys them outright and then changes their internet bill to not charge the Netflix bandwidth to lock in customers. Think ISPs following the Cellphone business plans - lock in sites (services as they would like to call it) and then claim free bandwidth usage there but other sites will cost you mega $$$ if you cross the cap!

Either the above model is in works or will be shortly given Cable TV is on its way out in next decade or two with Internet doing almost everything.

Are these the same people
By spamreader1 on 11/5/2010 9:28:05 AM , Rating: 2
That said youtube would crash the internet?

Not from netflix
By DrApop on 11/5/2010 2:40:15 PM , Rating: 2
I don't see how netflix is going to dominate internet bandwidth. Their library of streamed video, while large, is largely a borish and poorish video selection. Every now and then they have must see videos but most aren't of blockbuster release nature. I watch more Hulu than I do Netflix.

The numbers don't add up
By thesafetyisoff on 11/5/2010 6:17:25 PM , Rating: 2
because I'm always reading that 60% of internet traffic is porn, and another 20% is spam.

By ShaolinSoccer on 11/6/2010 12:35:15 AM , Rating: 2
Funny how Akamai was mentioned. They not only supply for Netflix, they supply for everyone including Dailytech. They practically know everything about everyone...

Not that I'm against it. Just throwing the info out there...

