This is becoming a more common question as more ISPs are adding monthly bandwidth limitations. People need to be able stay under their bandwidth limits, or else get charged for that extra bandwidth they use.
Why Netflix uses so much bandwidth
Netflix delivers movies and TV shows streaming straight to your internet-enabled device, such as a computer, PS3, Wii, etc. This streaming process uses bandwidth, which registers as data that has been downloaded. According Netflix, if you are watching an HD movie with 5.1 surround sound, you will have about 2.2 gigabytes in download in just one hour. That’s using their highest quality, no slow-downs on the network, speed.
Netflix does attempt to scale their streaming quality based on your available bandwidth and if there are any slow-downs with the network, which allows for the best video quality your connection can support. This does not, however, allow you to determine how much bandwidth you’re going to be using or how much you have used for the month already.
Why is this a problem for ISPs?
Imagine that your connection to the internet is a road. Your road merges with main roads as you get further from your connection, and finally, you hit the freeway (known as a backbone). Now, the more people on the road, the slower things are going. When everyone is coming home from work, the speed limit is 65 MPH, but you may only be going 25 MPH because of the traffic. It’s a similar concept with the internet and your speed. Netflix adds a huge amount of traffic to all of these roads, and that creates a strain for the ISPs that are carrying these backbones. Now imagine Netflix as a two-trailer semi truck completely loaded. It causes other traffic to be slow, it takes up a lot of space, and can create cracks on the road. If Netflix was in use by all of its subscribers and there were no bandwidth limits, it would be like Los Angeles during rush hour.
What can I expect from Netflix?
In terms of bandwidth, if you were to watch 60 hours of non-HD content a month, you would be at about 62 gigabytes. If all of that was the highest quality HD with surround sound, you would be at about 134 gigabytes for that month. And that doesn’t include any other downloads, web browsing, or games being played online. All of these activities use bandwidth, and it all adds up.
In terms of what Netflix plans to do about it, it is still up in the air. According to a blog post, Netflix allows users in Canada to reduce their streaming quality. This is due to the fact that Canadian ISPs have severe bandwidth limits, and this has been conflicting with the Netflix service.
When Netflix will bring this option to the US, or if they will at all, is anybody’s best guess.
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Netflix is the service using the greatest bandwidth at present, but don’t forget Apple, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu+, Spotify, GrooveShark, Google (cloud services), and so on.
We are witnessing a techno- fiduciary analog here to natural selection.
Several outcomes seem possible as a result of this selective force acting on the internet infrastructure.
1. ISPs will meter bandwidth and charge consumers according to usage. This is already happening and is itself analogous to another well-known influence albeit in the realm of physics this time, not biology. That force is friction– the force that restrains systems. Innovation will continue under this model, but like a windup clock with molasses on its gears.
2. Consumers will collectively recognize the challenging burden that streaming places on their ISPs and will elect to return to more conventional forms of content delivery. ISPs providing such fringe technologies as wireless broadband will live happily ever after. Innovation will be afforded an appropriately respectful burial under this model.
3. The prevailing forces, financial and physical, will shape a new paradigm of distribution and billing that benefits consumers, ISPs, and content providers/originators in mutually equitable fashion. Innovation under this model will continue to thrive to everyone’s benefit.
4. Technology will come to the rescue and provide more efficient transmission capabilities which both increase capacity and maintain or lower costs. Innovation thrives and everybody wins, though rural areas will be the last to benefit due to their necessarily lower concentration of potential profit per physical area served ratio.
5. The government sees the light and realizes that internet infrastructure is the new interstate highway system. Congress subsidizes wiring America with a high efficiency fibre optic superhighway system. Jobs are created and the economy is boosted. This solution is so intelligent that it will surely become the subject of vigorous partisan quarreling and bills sponsoring this approach will languish indefinitely in the halls of government, collecting dust. After all, shooting off Cruise missiles is a lot more fun. They go bang!
But, seriously, doesn’t this last idea seem like it might not be a bad approach? Eventually the internet sales that are occurring now without benefitting individual states are going to become taxable under some new– and likely insanely, arcanely, machiavellian system imposed by congresspeople who are mostly out of touch with internet issues altogether.
Doesn’t the idea of Congress legislating net neutrality scare the pants right off you? Does me, for sure. Even relatively well-meaning inquiries like the one Al Franken encouraged into the iPhone/Android tracking issue tend to be obsolete even before they are convened. Congress is too slow to be able to successfully legislate technology that is evolving at such a fast pace. It is not a facile enough organ to respond expediently to issues engendered by innovation. Relying on Congress for this is like hiring a retired gunslinger to go after the fastest gun in the West. Odds of success are not high, in other words.
So, like you probably are if you care about any of this at all, I’m just crossing my fingers. Lots of good that’ll probably do! But what else can we do? One thing is for sure: the solution that arises will distribute the burden of cost equitably across the entire base of interested parties– providers, copyright owners, users, and all. That’s how evolution works in the capitalistic jungle we call home.
Hey, James. Thanks for the comment!
You make some great points. And, most likely, the technology and equipment will be the ones to further enable future generations of streaming technology. As it is, currently, we are in the process of upgrading our tower-to-tower backhaul equipment that will enable us to have more flexibility in the future.
Another great option for the time being would be for Netflix (and possibly other streaming services) to give the End User the ability to determine their max bandwidth usage. Even what Netflix is now doing in Canada would work well here, as well.
Thanks again for the comment, James.
Government can do everything right? how about the private sector builds this new fiber super highway at 1/10th the cost that the Government and the public who wants this technology pays for it.
Hahai actually found this to be a little funny! Maybe just more ironic. I like it either way.
Thanks for the comment, Jefferson.
What is it that you find ironic?
Aha ha ha, I want my Net Flix and I want it the way I want it. The demand is so high now for better streaming capabilities that I see corporations profiting from our need as more of a likely outcome. Though getting charged more for streaming capability, doesn’t change the issue of available bandwidth. If you take say a pie, and cut it 3 ways, you can still cut 1/3 into a 1/2 (of the original 1/3) and then try cutting 1/2 of one of the 1/3′s from that. There’s still only 1 pie.
My point is you can still only stretch this so far and it’s less likely to work out for us, than it it is for those who stand to gain from this.
Though, eventually something will be done and something will improve but not before it is exploited to its fullest and the most profit can be made from a decaying situation.
Or maybe I am late in saying this and it has been exploited? MY current ISP has pulled a bait & switch on me, which has prompted me to read some forums on the subject of bandwidth and incidently led me here. Thank You Guys for the posts and I hope this is equally ‘entertaining’ since I said nothing of educational value and strictly speculation, lol.
P.s. I am not the same Derek as the above post.