CNN Uses P2P Plugin for its Live Stream
Written by Ernesto on January 24, 2009This week, millions of people watched Obama’s inauguration on the Internet through one of the many sites that offered a live feed. CNN’s broadcast was without doubt one of the most used viewed streams, with a peak of more than a million simultaneous viewers and also one that was using P2P technology.
Despite the fact that there are thousands of legitimate uses for peer-to-peer technology, most businesses are not keen on using it because of the negative associated with it. One of the areas where P2P can really make a difference is with video streaming, either live or through sites like YouTube.
Offering a decent quality stream can quickly cost tens of thousands of dollars a month for medium sized sites, and millions of dollars for bandwidth hogs such as YouTube. So, why not share this burden and throw in some P2P? That’s probably what CNN thought too, as they offered a P2P supported live feed of Obama’s inauguration. With 25 million viewers on CNN.com, this was probably the largest P2P live stream ever, although CNN did not reveal how many people used the P2P plugin.
CNN has been working with the Denmark-based company Octoshape for a few months now. Users have to install the Octoshape plugin for their web-browser, and this makes the regular Flash player through which they view the stream, P2P compliant. This means that users who download the video partially to their computers also share it with others.
Thus far, CNN has not commented in public on their use of Octoshape’s P2P plugin. However, from an insider who’s familiar with the technology, TorrentFreak learned that approximately 30% of the bandwidth for CNN’s live stream comes from peers. This obviously results in a significant reduction in bandwidth costs for the broadcaster. The rest of the bandwidth still comes from central servers to ensure that there is enough available for everyone.
CNN’s live stream was only boosted by Octoshape for those who watched it through the default Flash player, not the Windows media stream. The Flash team from Adobe has been working on their own P2P Flash implementation for a while, but thus far we are not aware of any public tests of their technology.
It is interesting to see that CNN supports P2P based streaming solutions, even though it’s a shame that they went for a closed source solution, instead of an open source product. Last year, the Tribler team showcased their open source streaming application which relies solely on P2P, through BitTorrent. Tribler is currently working with several European TV-broadcasters to test this technology in the real world.
In theory, broadcasters can send a live stream to millions of people by only sending out the stream once, from a single server. With the current upload speeds and the throttling efforts by ISPs, this still only works in theory. Nevertheless, since more and more TV is being watched online, filesharing technology is the future.
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30 Responses
It seems they've been using Octoshape for quite I while, I think I noticed a few weeks ago. It's a closed technology, but it was very convenient to install, no need to even restart the browser.
Like I said in an earlier post, watching TV online IS the future (partly because of the digital switch). It will be fun to watch the companies choose to either stream the shows themselves through bittorrent, or rather allow pirates to do it for them.
Personally, I wouldnt mind seeing a few ads in a live stream vs no ads in a cut version from a torrent site.
http://bluehumor.org
"..filesharing technology is the future.." and those who oppose it (**aa) are going to be saying hello the the Dodo pretty soon.
I think these past few years will be looked upon as the dark ages of the internet coming of age, instead of embracing it and working with the technology they chose to fight it with all they had, catching a few poor souls as "example makers" and not even making a dent overall, on the other hand they could have been known as the people who made a huge impact with the resources they had (and still have) on hand.
Really a pity, history has shown us time and again, the wrong people have the money and power to really push change, but choose instead to just push their greedy agendas.
http://www.eZee.se
"..filesharing technology is the future.." and those who oppose it (**aa) are going to be saying hello the the Dodo pretty soon.
I think these past few years will be looked upon as the dark ages of the internet coming of age, instead of embracing it and working with the technology they chose to fight it with all they had, catching a few poor souls as "example makers" and not even making a dent overall, on the other hand they could have been known as the people who made a huge POSITIVE impact with the resources they had (and still have) on hand.
Really a pity, history has shown us time and again, the wrong people have the money and power to really push change, but choose instead to just push their greedy agendas.
http://www.eZee.se
First….oh bollox….shouldnt of had a dump first….sorry….epic fail…lol…
This is quit interesting Thanks TorrentFreak
Wonderful news!
opposite with the reset of England…..
Wonderful news!
opposite with the rest of England…..
filesharing technology is the future
And the RIAA and the MPAA are the past. Dan Glickman and Mitch Bainwol are the past.
Down with the MPAA and RIAA! Down with the old order! Up with the new!
"With the current upload speeds and the throttling efforts by ISPs, this still only works in theory. Nevertheless, since more and more TV is being watched online, filesharing technology is the future."
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The p2p-technology is impossible to stop, and this is the future… Each time more and more people are using it, as consequence of the benefits of a significant reduction in bandwidth costs, and also as an excellent, cheap and reliable distribution medium; accessible to the masses.
The reality and the facts is that in a near future, the only ISPs that will be able to compete will be those that will offer reliable, very fast (upload and download) and stable connections to its customers; without ridiculous caps, without restrictions… In a few words, ISPs that will be able to satisfy these exigencies.
"With the current upload speeds and the throttling efforts by ISPs, this still only works in theory. Nevertheless, since more and more TV is being watched online, filesharing technology is the future."
——————————
The p2p-technology is impossible to stop, and this is the future… Each time more and more people are using it, as consequence of the benefits of a significant reduction in bandwidth costs, and also as an excellent, cheap and reliable distribution medium; accessible to the masses.
The reality and the facts is that in a near future, the only ISPs that will be able to compete will be those that offer reliable, very fast (upload and download) and stable connections to its customers; without ridiculous caps, without restrictions… In a few words, ISPs that will be able to satisfy these exigencies.
Nba.com also uses Octoshape to stream live games in their Nba Broadband package.
@Ghost: Hulu already does this, and TV.com will soon follow suit.
"Despite the fact that there are thousands of legitimate uses for peer-to-peer technology, most businesses are not keen on using it because of the negative associated with it."
I find this statement hard to believe – but if somebody wants to provide some supporting evidence that businesses won't move to P2P based applications due to negative connotations please do. This is purely my assessment bases on what I have studied in the past and from talking to people that are at the "coalface".
Businesses are conservative in the way that they operate – essentially it doesn't make sense to take unnecessary risks. Risk boils down to how much money they make in the end.
If a function of a business can be done using a tried, proven and cost-effective method or technology most businesses will choose to use it over another method of carrying out the function that is more cost effective but is not proven or has a risk of not working as intended. This is especially true of IT functions: businesses have lost billions of dollars from trying new ways of doing things that involve IT: whether it's at the level of their own employees productivity using interfaces, customer satisfaction or in the case of many propietary systems even carrying out the core functionality it was designed for. One example of what I'm saying is that the vast majority of businesses do not use Linux for their employee's desktops despite the fact that Linux is now amply capable of providing functions at least as good as Windows for a fraction of the cost.
In the business world large IT projects have a reputation of not living up to expectations and what the client paid for: back whn I was doing Comp. Sci. I learned the rather staggering statistic that 56% of IT projects were considered failures because they either didn't deliver what they promised or required large amounts of extra money to make them perform as they were meant to.
I suspect this is the reason much more than any negative connotation associated with P2P in general. If say MS is capable of paying for servers and bandwidth that deliver data to end users it is a risk to then turn to a P2P platform to try and achieve the same outcome.
Actually most implentations of P2P are very easy to stop – just for the point of arguing with your comment of "impossible". Off the top of my head all an ISP would have ot do is provide an extremely limited range of ports that can be used and see you later Bittorrent.
Not that ISP's do this but just saying…
As for your second point: this is rather obvious isn't it?
That would be great and all if you didn't have to be in the U.S. to use it. Hulu says they are trying to go international but the evil (Seriously evil) copyrights have kept the rest of the world (including US armed forces serving abroad on US bases) from enjoying this service. I am currently living in Korea and the only way I can watch my favorite shows is to either hope they come on AFN or download from EZTV. I hate this whole thing with the MAFIAA and their strangle hold on the media. I hope that the stigma of sharing will go away eventually. I do not appreciate being labeled a pirate while my only way to keep connected is considered illegal. I really wish lawmakers would get their heads out of their asses and make legal precedent saying otherwise.
old news: what about p2p programs like TVU, sOPCAST ETC.???
LOL, way to go CNN! You Rock!
RT
http://www.privacy-tools.net.tc
I just tried that site (Hulu) out this morning and I"m pretty impressed with it. Very nice.
YAY! p2p is finally used by a major media company. I guess this is the kind of positive attention that p2p finally needs. It has always been criticized as the biggest source of piracy.
http://stuckinframes.blogspot.com
So, does that addon work on operating systems besides Windows? If it was pure flash, there'd be nothing to install, but since there was…
Mac OS 10.5 worked like a charm
P2P works only with many ppl online..
http://sreedinesh.blogspot.com
One down, any Linux users?
I was watching the CNN stream at 12 on Tue and the site was dog slow and the video even stopped. I did not know it was P2P and it going down with everyone watching is not was P2P is suppose to do. Plus before I got to watch it I was put in a short queue.
Doesn't matter, Linux users don't watch CNN.
…And I have to wonder what makes you think that.
even CNN is using P2p..great!
Heya. I did some research about Octoshape some time ago: http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/plugins_for_the...target=”_blank”>http://http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/plugins_for_the...andgot a comment from Adobe regarding their participation.
http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/plugins_for_the...target=”_blank”>http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/plugins_...
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