Ohio University Blocks Netflix, Backpedals [GigaOM]
The growing popularity of Netflix and other streaming video services among college students has managed to max out at least one university's network, prompting it to attempt to block Netflix. Ohio University's Technology Department observed that sixty percent of its network bandwidth was being consumed by streaming video and Netflix alone accounted for 28 percent of traffic, causing severe network congestion.
In an effort to eliminate the traffic jam, The school added ten percent to their total bandwidth. When that effort didn't resolve the issue as users immediately consumed the additional capacity. Then, the university's Technology Department tried to isolate and block the Netflix traffic. That resulted in shutting down the entire university network connection to the Internet - not exactly a case study in successful network management.
Now the university has limited connections to a maximum of 5 Mbps downstream in an attempt to get a handle on the issue of streaming video bandwidth consumption.
Several years ago, universities faced a bandwidth crunch caused by P2P downloads. That's no longer the case if Ohio University's situation is typcial. Only 6 percent of their overall bandwidth load is from P2P protocol use.
OU is experiencing a very common problem for all ISP's today as the Internet is being utilized in ways it was never originally intended or designed for. I know that all responsible providers work diligently to keep up with demand but sometimes find themselves playing catch up where heavy usage is abundant. Some, like AT&T, are setting monthly caps for usage while others are switching to some form of metered billing for usage, much like the cellular phone companies charge.
Thanks for the response, Nate. In all honesty, my new Insight Turbo line smokes my previous DSL. Only had it for a day and I can already tell the difference is huge.
Having said that, I've spent a lot of time in FIOS areas down in Florida, and Verizon's service smokes everything I've ever used, in epic fashion. Too bad they don't service Columbus.
Posted by: Gnomatic | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 11:13 PM
Gnomatic, from other people on here, apparently never. lol, hate to bring bad news but seems like Columbus people are always describing themselves as the red-headed step child that is ignored.
Posted by: Nate Hiatt | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 07:39 PM
Ex AT&T customer here. Dropped them like a bad habit once I learned of the impending usage caps. Bullocks!
I'm now an Insight customer in Columbus. Not bad so far, but the internet bandwidth is a bit less than I'd prefer. When can we expect the DOCSIS 3 rollout in my area?
Posted by: Gnomatic | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 11:44 AM
First, OU should just implement caps on student usage. The small private college I went to, we all had a 5gb monthly cap, even in the labs as it was tracked by our login ID.
Second, I want to know what Mike means by "the Internet is being utilized in ways it was never originally intended or designed for." It appears to me that it is working as intended: Moving data from one place to another. The type and amount of data is irrelevant. Bandwidth costs have steadily decreased year over year, but our monthly fees stay they same as they are paying for the infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, not the bandwidth.
Last, Mike, we still have crappy roadrunner service here in Columbus. When are we going to get anything better? All your other markets have 10MBPS to 50MBPS available.
WOW says they have completed their DOCSIS 3 upgrades, they are going to outpace Insight, which is already the slowest ISP in town.
Posted by: Sam | Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 12:09 PM
Totally agree with both of you guys. I wonder if Michael is trying to "educate" us because Insight is looking into usage based billing too? If that is the case then I will gladly switch my capped 20mb Insight connection to a third party DSL connection without any limits.
I'm ok with sensible network management, but hard caps and overages are nothing more than a money grab by greedy corporations.
Posted by: Aries Silva | Saturday, March 19, 2011 at 10:26 PM
So basically, the internet is growing faster than the telecom companies are willing to invest in it. That's fine, but don't irresponsibly oversell bandwidth and then punish the consumer for the mistake. I much prefer OSU's throttling approach... the hard caps ATT is implementing are just an excuse to squeeze more money out of their customers.
Posted by: Roger Chui | Saturday, March 19, 2011 at 12:34 AM
"...for all ISP's today as the Internet is being utilized in ways it was never originally intended or designed for."
Mike, please educate us as to what the internet is "designed" for. AT&T is trying to price gouge their consumers, nothing else.
Posted by: Nate Hiatt | Friday, March 18, 2011 at 04:40 PM