XP EU Peering Forum More webcasting

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XP EU Peering Forum More webcasting?

• Brandon Butterworth

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BBC webcasting growth

• 1995 lt100 concurrent streams
• 1997 take off - election, Hong Kong hand over
  (1st video), Diana funeral (syndicated)
• 1999 120M 8K streams - Cricket
• 2002 1.2G 24K - Budget, Queen Mum
• 2003 2.2G 44K - Saddam statue fall
• 2004 ? - Olympics

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Webcasting the Olympics

• BBC has acquired UK broadband rights to a number
  of events
• This is new direction and expected to grow
• Conditional on UK only users - access via BBCi
  Broadband providers
• http//www.bbc.co.uk/broadband/
• No international access allowed

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Webcasting the Olympics

• Limiting to UK reduces potential audience
• Previously peaked 42K streams (2.4Gbit/s) for
  toppling Saddam statue
• That was narrowband, UK international
• Olympics predicted 50K concurrent UK streams

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Legacy Unicast

• Regular unicast Real Media and sometimes Windows
  Media streams continue
• Starting to get to the limits of sensible
  scalability
• 50K _at_ 250kbit/s 12.5Gbit/s
• Private peers added to avoided congesting our IX
  ports
• Anyone who needs a PI contact peering_at_bbc.co.uk.
  Some of you need to do this (largest peer
  estimated will be 2.5Gbit/s)
• Some propositions avoided due to scale

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Multicast Trial

• Previous trials and conference presentations
  through 2001 showed technical interest
• Lack of business need meant no pressure to
  overcome technical limitations
• BBC to start presenting content multicast only,
  providing that business need
• Technical obstacles remain and are understood,
  the purpose of the trial is to encourage
  solutions
• Equipment has matured, ADSL now widespread
• Broadband is the target, POTS survived on unicast
  

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Multicast Trial Plan

• Work with a number of pioneer ISPs, all welcome
  multicast-tech_at_bbc.co.uk
• Olympics will include 6 streams some available
  only on digital tv
• Regular broadband rates
• 225Kbit/s with some extreme 500K or 1Mbit/s
• Mostly delivery trial so content will be Real 10
• Some content trials too
• Other platforms with limited user base will be
  run in parallel (e.g. H264/AVC, perhaps BBC video
  codec)

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Multicast Trial Plan

• Stand alone infrastructure, new ASN
• Dedicated IX ports, PIs in Telehouse North if
  required (desire higher QoS than unicast)
• UK only routes as per BBCi Broadband
• Non UK use will be policed (unicast too)
• Sustaining services - at least 24x7 radio
  stations, more to come

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Beyond the Olympics

• RD led project, not a production service
• Lots of details still being worked out
• We reserve the right to try things that dont
  work out
• We encourage people to join in as predictions may
  be wrong swamping unicast platform
• Feedback welcome, well have engineer time
  allocated to working with ISPs and understanding
  issues

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Beyond the Olympics

• BBC Charter - weve committed to broadband
• Convergence will be collision
• IMP - internet PVR
• PVR - PC crossover

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Questions