(Fwd) Re:Open Media?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 03:55:52PM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> But it isn't obvious to me that they'd be likely to be able to take
> advantage of that fact.
> 
> It's only really possible if they can put little "caching servers"
> near the customers, and force customers to do some combination of:
> a) Pull only the programming that's on a cache near you
> b) Enforce "broadcast" by requiring that you share programming via
> having you and 15 other nearby customers start pulling at the same
> time
> 
> If Bell doesn't have an "app server" layer at which to put that
> "sharable cache" that's near to customers (and far from the central
> place), then they're left with doing point-to-point transmissions for
> everyone, and reverting to the huge level of required bandwidth that
> Hugh suggests.
> 
> From what I see of the behaviours of the Bell portal software, I can't
> see them architecting their customer facing network to make it easy to
> cache reusable material. They've got too strong a set of habits
> surrounding buying "portal software" from other vendors and kludging
> such into place; that approach is totally inconsistent with running
> any sort of "tight" network.

Certainly the impression I get from a quick search is that live TV is in
fact multicast on FIOS TV.  Bell Canada isn't the only place using FIOS.

Video on demand on the other hand is not multicast by the looks of it.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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