The search for a High-Definition Video on Demand solution

There is no free lunch: the Peer-to-Peer illusion

Video on Demand services are caught in the infamous "quality triangle": they have to balance picture quality, download speeds, and hosting costs – but they can only realistically get two out of the three.

Several Video on Demand services have looked at peer-to-peer networks (the technology that pirate networks use) to solve the triangle. Peer-to-peer networks leverage customers' own broadband connections, and thus provide free hosting to the network operator. Unfortunately, peer-to-peer networks do not solve the "quality triangle", for they cannot change the technical limitations of the underlying infrastructure.

Residential broadband connections are highly asymmetric: upload speeds (transfers from the consumer's computer to the Internet) are significantly lower than download speeds. For instance, the typical ADSL2 connection in France is 20 Mb/s down, 1 Mb/s up. It is a crippling limitation, because on a peer-to-peer network, the average download speed is necessarily equal to the average upload speed.

So, a peer-to-peer Video on Demand service has only four options:

  • Do nothing (trade off speed for quality and cost);
  • Degrade picture quality so as to fit a 1 Mb/s pipe (trade off quality for speed and cost);
  • Provide the missing 19 Mb/s themselves (trade off cost for quality and speed);
  • Find a way to make users upload 20 times longer than they download.

We have already stated clearly that the first three options are not acceptable to consumers, because physical substitutes provide a better product, especially since they view picture quality as important.

The problem with the last option is that since consumers will be using their connection for other purposes, it cannot be taken for granted. As a consequence, it is unrealistic to expect to be able to use their hosting capacity for free.

Moreover, that approach fails to account for the fact that the cooperation of ISPs cannot be taken for granted either. In fact, most residential ISPs have set up soft traffic caps (i.e. transfers slow to a crawl after X GB); some have dropped unlimited plans altogether; others are even actively disrupting peer-to-peer traffic. So, even if consumers are willing to lend their computers for free (or don't know it is happening), ISPs are likely to interfere in order to protect their own profit margins.

To put it in a nutshell, peer-too-peer networks are not the answer to the Internet Video on Demand conundrum.

Next page: The four commandments of a High-Definition Video on Demand solution

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