From October 19^th through 22^nd, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) hosted Cable-Tec Expo 2010 in New Orleans.  This event is the cable industry’s pre-eminent engineering show, and each year brings together decision makers, engineers, managers, field technicians and solutions providers in one setting.

The show itself is comprised of a number of events, including technical conferences and an exhibit hall, all generally focused on advancing cable technology to deliver tomorrow’s subscriber services.  Even more-so than in years past, this iteration of the expo highlighted many sessions and vendors focusing on optimizing video and measuring subscriber quality. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we revealed to the world that Netflix streaming accounts for about 20% of downstream Internet traffic during the evening in North America.  Lately, some other stats have been floating around, interpreting our Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomena Report as saying that Netflix represents as much as 95% of Canadian Internet traffic.

While the growth of Netflix has certainly been dramatic, the fact is that it does not account for 95% of Canadian Internet traffic.   As noted above, our report suggests that Netflix accounts for approximately 20% of downstream traffic in North America.

This misunderstanding probably resulted from a misreading of one of the graphs featured in our “Spotlight On: Netflix” on page 15 of the Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomena report.  The graph was accompanied with the caption “An average day for Netflix on this network, peaking at 9:30pm”, and here it is for reference:

There are a few points that need to be made about this graph.  First, this particular graph is a snapshot from a single network in Canada, rather than a representation of the aggregate regional findings that make up the bulk of the report.  Second, and this perhaps could have been explained more clearly in the report itself, this particular graph shows Netflix traffic throughout the day as a relative percentage of the peak amount of Netflix traffic.  In this case, the peak was reached at 9:30pm, so the curve at that point has a value of 100%.  The rest of the curve shows how Netflix traffic varies: so we see that at midnight the level of Netflix is approximately 42% of what it was at 9:30pm.  The “Netflix is 95% of Canadian traffic” headlines come from a slight misreading (95% vs. 100%) and significant misinterpretation (thinking that it shows Netflix as a percentage of over-all traffic) of the graph.

Our Network Analytics product produces these “Time of Day” graphs so that network operators can understand how subscriber usage of various applications, services, or categories of application vary throughout a typical day. For  instance, here’s a report showing how the Real-Time Entertainment category as a whole varies on a particular network:

This one shows Xbox Live traffic variation throughout the day:

And this one shows how Social Networking varies:

I hope that clears things up!

Gitex Technology Week in Dubai, Oct 17-21, 2010

Last week’s Gitex Technology Week 2010 marked a special occasion.  Having started in 1981, the tradeshow celebrated its 30th year.  In 1981, the show had 3000 visitors and by contrast, 3500 suppliers participated in this year’s show.

To see how far we’ve come and to put things in perspective, let’s revisit technology available in the 50’s and 80’s:

• Just a few years before the 50’s, Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM, predicted that there would be a world market for maybe five computers.
• Not too long before 1980, companies at technology trade shows were still promoting the best punch-card available (durable, yet light weight), while the booth next door was touting their latest slide-ruler.
• In the early 80’s, Bill Gates thought that 640KB memory should be enough for anyone, yet he envisioned a computer on every desk and in every home.
• In the 90’s, we connected to the Internet using dial-up modems over voice circuits.
• Today, we use the Internet to carry voice and in our Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomenon study, real-time entertainment and social networking showed substantial growth on mobile networks. Read the rest of this entry »

Internet users simply want, or arguably expect, their Internet to work anywhere and always, whether over a wire, or over the air.  They also want to use their favourite applications on the device of their choice.  Today’s release of our Fall 2010 Global Internet Phenomenon study points to this increased demand on Internet capabilities from both fixed and mobile environments.  For instance, at peak times in North America, real-time entertainment is the largest contributor to data consumption on both fixed (43% of peak traffic) and mobile access networks (41%).

In other words, “Whenever, Wherever, However”, reflects the consumer’s growing lack of distinction between wireless and fixed Internet usage.   For this very reason, for the first time we have compared the behaviours of fixed and mobile-data users together in one report.

What this means for service providers is that now, more than ever, predictive modeling, device awareness and personalized service tiers are critical to the proper management of both fixed and mobile-data networks in order to ensure their subscribers the best possible experience.
 
Fast Facts:

• In the United States, Netflix represents more than 20 percent of downstream traffic during peak times and is heaviest between 8-10 p.m.
• Real-time entertainment is unquestionably the dominant driver of data consumption on fixed and mobile networks worldwide, and is still growing substantially; up to 43% of total Internet traffic is real-time entertainment, up significantly from past studies.
• Social networking services like Facebook, continue to be a significant and growing proportion of mobile Internet traffic; in eight months the percentage of mobile traffic in Latin America attribute to social networking almost doubled, and in North America it increased by 33%.
• There is a wide variation between the average amount of time per month Internet connections are active;  for instance, in North America fixed connections are active for about 3 hours per day, whereas in Asia-Pacific fixed connections are active 5.5 hours per day.

For more information, please download the full report , or visit us for a personal overview of the finding in your region: Cable Tec Expo (New Orleans, Oct 20-22) Broadband World Forum (Paris, Oct 26-28)