Controlling streaming video traffic on a network

Controlling streaming video traffic on a network
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Streaming video traffic from sites such as YouTube is flash-flooding bandwidth pipelines throughout the Internet. A recent report by deep packet inspection equipment provider Ellacoya suggests that P2P traffic is no longer the Internet's largest consumer of bandwidth. Instead, video-streaming formats that utilize the Internet as a transport mechanism have taken the top spot, accounting for 46% of all Internet traffic. In fact, streaming video represents 36% of all HTTP traffic. And of that 36%, YouTube represents 20% – equating to 10% of all traffic.
Why is this situation important to VARs and service providers? The simple fact is that the explosion of real-time bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming video can put a substantial dent in the performance of your customer's key business applications. Estimates regarding YouTube's total daily bandwidth usage (through its content delivery partner, Limelight Networks) vary between 25 and 200 terabytes. The trick to delivering prerecorded video content is to rapidly transfer it to the client's machine and then have the client play it from a local hard drive, instead of directly from the site. Most video sites deliver files to the client faster than real time, so a two- to three-minute video is received in as little as 20 seconds, thereby giving the best local playback experience.
The problem with streaming video is not the file size (usually four to 10 megabytes, although it can be as much as 100 megabytes); rather, it's the rate of delivery. The content distribution network's sole purpose is to get that file down your customer's Internet connection to the client as quickly as possible, using as much bandwidth as possible. Even companies with substantial bandwidth can experience backups and clogged network traffic. No matter how much bandwidth your customer might have, the content distribution network on the other end has even more. Thus, every click on a YouTube video unleashes a tsunami of data that floods your customer's connection. These factors can pose a real problem for businesses that rely on Internet-based service providers for business-critical applications, such as payroll or CRM systems, and those businesses that host customer-facing services on their office's Internet connection. Service degradation and brief outages can occur if the connection becomes saturated with bursts of streaming HTTP traffic.