A CNET News Article states Video may have killed the radio star, but it doesn't have to kill the Internet.
That is if Internet service providers can figure out how to keep up with the video-driven bandwidth demand on their networks. Peer-to-peer technology provider BitTorrent says it can help.
Video consumes more network resources than any other media distributed on the Web. Even poor-quality video from YouTube eats up more bandwidth than e-mail, music downloading, and voice over IP services. And when you throw full-length high-definition video into the mix, you're talking about even more bandwidth. Depending on the compression used, a single HD video stream can eat up 20 megabits per second worth of bandwidth.
And as consumers subscribe to faster and faster broadband connections at home and sites like YouTube and Hulu come online offering all kinds of video choices, more people are watching video on the Web. According to ComScore Video Metrix, Americans are currently watching upward of 10 billion videos online a month. By the end of 2007, online viewers averaged more than one video a day.
This is just the beginning. ABI research forecasts the number of viewers who access video via the Web will nearly quadruple in the next few years, reaching at least 1 billion in 2013.
All this video is great for viewers, who are able to pick and choose what they watch and when. But for Internet service providers like the phone companies and the cable operators, it represents a massive challenge. Some providers, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are testing out new ways to deal with "bandwidth hogs" or individual users who use an inordinate amount of bandwidth.
Last month, Comcast began testing a new system that will throttle back or slow down traffic during times of congestion for heavy bandwidth users. The new system was developed after Comcast faced stark criticism for singling out and slowing down peer-to-peer traffic.
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