Swimming Upstream

Swimming Upstream
By Martin Vilaboy
Until very recently, the quality and quantity of upstream capacity on a broadband network was merely an afterthought for most users and providers of consumer high-speed Internet services. After all, according to figures from Ellacoya Networks, upstream traffic throughputs are only about 25 percent of downstream traffic throughputs.

But changes in user behavior during the last year or so are altering the ratio and have some industry observers wondering whether upstream data channel assets are being underutilized by broadband service providers.

“A number of factors in global consumer behavior are coalescing that indicate the traditional flow of content is changing,” argues Vince Vittore, Yankee Group senior analyst. Due to the increasing popularity of peer-to-peer networking, the growing usage of network-based storage by residential users, rising numbers of telecommuters and the emergence of user-generated content, among other things, “service providers across the world now must begin focusing on the capacity of upstream bandwidth,” he says.


Currently, very few service providers limit the percentage of upstream bandwidth that any given subscriber can consume, and even less, if any, have applied quality of service metrics to upstream channels, says Vittore. Even so, “there is a business model for both.”

Not that it would be easy, and the market would be somewhat limited. But just the existence of such a discussion is a severe departure from traditional thinking, and it’s a consideration that no longer can be easily dismissed.
Arguably, the primary candidates for premium upstream services are users of peer-to-peer networking. Again, according to figures from Ellacoya Networks, active peer-to-peer users account for only about 10 percent of global broadband subscribers but consume 37 percent of upstream bandwidth. And while peer-to-peer applications don’t necessarily require big pipes in the upstream to operate, many of the files shared among users’ PCs are video files, Vittore argues, so a larger upstream path would enhance the user experience.

Of course, active peer-to-peer users still generally operate in the shadows of the Internet, considered, by content providers at least, to be infringing on copyrights. “As a result, many service providers are hesitant to publicly discuss monetizing upstream capacity, seeing it as a tacit admission of collaboration with potential criminal activity,” says Vittore
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On the other hand, this relatively small market is likely to grow, and grow more legitimate, as peer-to-peer networking services, such as Joost, that work in partnership with content providers, become widely available, he suggests.

Among the more general Internet population, the explosion of user-generated video and video sharing can not be overlooked. According to Yankee Group surveys of technically advanced families, digital cameras and digital video camcorders rank second and third among consumer electronic devices most likely to be purchased by U.S. consumers during the next 12 months. The addition of high-definition video cameras further compounds matters, providing more and more users with the tools to create and upload larger and larger video files.

Along similar lines, “Video chat, remote security monitoring and telemedicine all would benefit from increased upstream bandwidth,” Vittore argues.

In some ways, a growing emphasis on upstream channels is almost inevitable. As Vittore points out, much has been said and written during the past few decades about the differences between the “lean forward” user experience of the Internet and the “lean back” experience of traditional media consumption. Still, there hasn’t been much change in direction, until recently.

Content, almost exclusively, has flowed from a source somewhere in the network to the individual user, but that’s no longer the case. And no service providers wants to get caught leaning in the wrong direction. FAT