Who's afraid of peer-to-peer video?

Craig Matsumoto, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

March 27, 2007

2 Min Read
Pooh-Poohing P2P

8:20 AM -- ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Another OFC/NFOEC in the land of mouse ears and rental minivans...

Here's an interesting point from the The Optical Society (OSA) (OSA) Executive Forum, yesterday's preview conference to OFC/NFOEC. Andrew Schmitt of Nyquist Capital asked a service-provider panel what they're doing now that peer-to-peer (P2P) represents most of the traffic on their networks.

All four denied the "most" part, but they agreed P2P video is an up-and-coming bandwidth eater. (See P2P Camp Swarms Video.)

Whether they need to do anything about it is, judging by the varying responses, debatable.

  • "It is probably the portion of our video traffic that is growing at the fastest clip... The pressure on the upstream network is why we are paying a lot of attention to it." — Ernie Carey, VP advanced network technologies, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T)

  • "We don't see a huge amount at the moment, but that's going to be the major growth, and we've got to have the network to handle it." — Dave Payne, manager of broadband architectures and optical networks, BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA)

  • "Yes, upstream is going up, but downstream is going up as well... [The ratio of 1:4 download:upload amounts] hasn't significantly changed over the last three years; there is a slope to that curve, but it's not significant." — Vik Saxena, senior director of network architecture, Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK)

  • "If you can find enough uplink speed, which is what we've done with fiber-to-the-home, then that [question] goes away." — Glenn Wellbrock, director of backbone network design, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)

    I should also note there was a surprise (to me) appearance by Georgio Anania, formerly of Bookham Inc. (Nasdaq: BKHM; London: BHM). I've got some Q&A fodder I may post later today.

    — Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Craig Matsumoto

Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Yes, THAT Craig Matsumoto – who used to be at Light Reading from 2002 until 2013 and then went away and did other stuff and now HE'S BACK! As Editor-in-Chief. Go Craig!!

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like