Comments on: Itiva: The video file transfer killer app?

By: J. C. M.

J. C. M. — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 11:14:19 +0000

I’m not sure what b/s-o-meter’s problem is. This person seems content to just watching cat’s pass gas and other “compelling” streaming video content instead of giving mature solutions a chance to deliver rich media. I don’t exactly know where the bitterness comes from unless it is just stubborn ignorance about the deeper levels of delivery technology. By the way, I checked all of the links on Itiva’s website and they worked fine. B/S-o-meter: Did you check to see if your internet connection was working properly? Maybe you just picked up another virus from one of your P2P video searches for the next “funniest home video” moment.

By: Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:04:56 +0000

Sukanta,

That’s good perspective. Itiva told me that they plan to focus only on high-end volume traffic — arguing that things have indeed changed over the past eight years, i.e, that there’s an IPTV revolution happening, and thus a large enough market to serve…we shall see.

By: Sukanta Ganguly

Sukanta Ganguly — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 06:02:51 +0000

I worked on developing this type of a product six years ago at Novell and a spin-out of Novell called Volera. It was not called P2P as it is not P2P. This solution uses the proxy-cache servers in the path between the source and sink to cache content. Some of the problems that I faced then was the ISP network and cross ISP network SLA’s that need to be setup for content to be cached and stored on these intermediaries. Also, the usability and the ROI for these solutions are not as high as it is expected on paper. These things work real fine with a very few high-volume traffic content. Those were extremely few in ‘98 and ‘99 and I don’t think they are that great today either.
So not to rain on their parade, I would really like to see how the deployment brings value. I know the technology in and out and since I worked on this I would really like to see this become big.
One surprising fact is that it was new technology six-seven years ago and it is very new now too?

By: Peter Chambers

Peter Chambers — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 20:47:47 +0000

Dude,
In your article “from 5 years ago” they say that Kontiki would be “the new model of distributing content online”. 5 years later, Kontiki is hardly ubiquitous, right? Several reasons:
1/When people pay for content, they don’t like to “share”.
2/ISPs throttle packets down with packet shapers from Packeteer – ISPs hate P2P.
3/You need 20 uploaders for one downloaders – hardly scalable, is it?
4/P2P does not stream.

P2P is a social file sharing experience. Itiva is for a real mass distribution of rich content by enterprises, to real customers…

By: Shawn

Shawn — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 20:08:17 +0000

P2P is for file sharing. Itiva is for mass delivery of rich content. According to what they say, they can stream at very low cost by using the proxy infrastructure to amplify the bandwidth – this creates a multicast effect. Very clever.

By: Philip Robar

Philip Robar — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 17:07:56 +0000

No one is “hogging about half of the bandwidth of Akamai” or the rest of the Internet. That bandwidth is paid for twice. Once by the content providers and again by the those accessing the content. It’s time for ISPs and the backbone providers to stop their lying and whining and provide the services they’re being paid for.

By: Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:44:25 +0000

As I understand it, Akamai has its own servers, whereas Itiva uses the existing proxy/cache in a provider’s network. Also, Itiva’s secret sauce, as it were, is an algorithm that helps the content owner manages the delivery through this cache network.

By: Wai Yip Tung

Wai Yip Tung — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:19:49 +0000

How is it difference from Akamai?

By: matt marshall

matt marshall — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 14:32:07 +0000

Itiva is still testing with Dreamworks (including Over the Hedge), and is launching Sept 1. Thus there are no customers to talk with. Thought i made it pretty clear that it is too early to tell how these guys are going to do.

By: b/s-o-meter

b/s-o-meter — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 11:58:41 +0000

to make matters worse. . .part of itiva’s site seems to be down. . .

click on any of their ‘news on itiva’ links on the home page for instance. .. . all of them 404-file not found

If they can’t reliably deliver their own text html on their low-traffic corporate site, do any buyers really believe they can actually deliver high-value entertainment content?

By: b/s-o-meter

b/s-o-meter — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 11:58:37 +0000

to make matters worse. . .part of itiva’s site seems to be down. . .

click on any of their ‘news on itiva’ links on the home page for instance. .. . all of them 404-file not found

If they can’t reliably deliver their own text html on their low-traffic corporate site, do any buyers really believe they can actually deliver high-value entertainment content?

By: b/s-o-meter

b/s-o-meter — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 11:41:57 +0000

You’re kidding, right??

P2P is *much* more mature than Matt seems to understand.

He talks to some half-baked software co. that has a wannabee customer “evaluating” their tech–are you serious??

Kontiki, Red Swoosh, Bittorrent are the leaders here, and this P2P CDN thing has been going on for years. . . Itiva’s so late to the party, I’m surprised Matt didn’t talk to real customers, real companies or do real research before subjecting us to this hype-o-meter rubbish. . .

Here’s a news.com link from 5 years ago that does a better job describing the market:

http://news.com.com/Netscape+alumni+to+launch+P2P+company/2100-1023_3-271071.html

Maybe this is a wake up call. Matt, time to start working for a living.

By: Xiong Chiamiov

Xiong Chiamiov — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 09:55:05 +0000

Regarding this paragraph from the article in the paper:

“But BitTorrent’s technology faces difficulty moving beyond its geek loyalists. You have to download BitTorrent software, pull up a directory of what video or music is available on the network, and search for items that you’d like to download — a complicated process for some.”

I haven’t used Mainline for a while (Azureus ftw!), but if there is now a search capability built directly into BT, then Bram Cohen has changed one of his fundamental principles. It sounds like you are talking about a user downloading BT, finding a torrent search engine (like Torrentspy), and finding something they want to download. In my experience, this is more how most people are introduced to BT:

(they visit site that has something they want to dl)
Hello, it would help us a lot if you used this thing called BitTorrent. Here are instructions on downloading and installing it. After you are finished with that, come back here and click this link.

That’s how torrents are supposed to work. I offer you torrent, you take it. That’s why other p2p services still exist. BTW, I know that there are BT clients that have search boxes. I don’t use them, and they could likely get shut down. That’s what’s kept Bram out of trouble.