Great to see this Institute going so well all these years. I will try to join in though I am in the middle of an all-nighter of a 36 hours day. I have known about CITI since shortly after I came to Columbia Business School in January 1989 for my MBA, and founded and launched .PK and Internet email for Pakistan while still a student at Columbia. Regards to the leaders there whom I recall meeting during my time at Uris Hall.
“One year after his death, we pay homage to Aaron by launching an art exhibit: http://bit.ly/1j3w5C3. The exhibit is an artistic sociopolitical commentary that analyzes some of the issues Aaron tackled through his activism. “Unbound: A Tribute to Aaron Swartz” brings together artists and activist whom, much like Aaron, work tirelessly to challenge the status quo, disrupting unjust systems, giving voice to the voiceless and building movements for justice and equity. Aaron used technology as a tool. Artists use their art. Let us bring this exhibit everywhere!”
Artists presented include Ellen Pearlman of the Volumetric Society. ISOC-NY attended the opening on March 28 2014 where the following video was captured.
CNET”S Stephen Shankland in an article Google ratchets up VP8 video quality–but so do video rivals notes that Google have released a 1.0 version of their VP8 video codec, intended to provide a royalty-free alternative to h.264. Among the new VP8 features is the ability to encode video at multiple resolutions at the same time and a 10.5 percent speed boost at decoding video, both of which enhance its use in streaming applications.
Shankland notes that the MPEG consortium is not standing still either, development of h.265 aka HEVC is also well advanced, with spec deadlined for Jun 2012. The target is to halve the bandwidth required for the equivalent h.264 quality.
To undermine Google’s ‘free’ appeal, MPEG proposes releasing a basic royalty-free version called WebVC.
On January 9, 2012 at Google NYC, the New York Technology Council presented a “Cutting-Edge Technology Showcase” to demonstrate “awe-inspiring technologies available today”. These included augmented reality games, body-imaging health applications, instant language translation and object recognition in cellphones, and on-demand 3D printed product marketing.
The Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) DASH specification has been approved by 24 national bodies and ratified as an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 23009-1), and is expected to be published in March 2012.
The specification, a new method of dynamically adaptive streaming over the HTTP protocol, will comprise two types of stream segments – multiplexed streams using MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS) or elementary streams using fragmented MP4 files (fMP4) – using a Common File Format (CFF) that allows a choice of codecs and digital rights management (DRM) schemes. DASH is expected to eventually supercede all current methods except Apple’s HLS, the differentiating factor being the use of a proprietary manifest file in Apple HLS (known as an .m3u8 file) and a standards-based XML-based manifest file in DASH (known as an MPD or Media Presentation Description file).
Additional work is to be done on the CFF – with an emphasis on establishing a common DRM scenario – at the next MPEG meeting in San Jose, California, in February 2012, after which device vendors and content suppliers will commence interoperability tests.
Cisco’s Virtual Networking Index, in a report Entering the Zettabyte Era (pdf) issued today Jun 1 2011, predicts that annual global IP traffic (Internet and non-Internet) will grow 400% by 2015 to reach 966 exabytes or nearly 1 zettabyte. The chart below represents Internet traffic.
Other predictions for 2015:
There will be 3 billion global Internet users, with average bandwidth of 27mbps.
The number of devices connected to IP networks will be twice as high as the global population.
There will be 6 million Internet households worldwide generating over a terabyte per month in Internet traffic, up from just a few hundred thousand in 2010 (but most of them will be in Asia).
Traffic from wireless devices will exceed traffic from wired devices.
Peak traffic will be equivalent to 500 million people streaming a high-definition video continuously.
Over 60% of the traffic will be video, broken down as follows:
Interestingly the report tackles the topic of possible changes to the asymmetric bandwidth status quo:
With the exception of short-form video and video calling, most forms of Internet video do not have a large upstream component.
As a result, traffic is not becoming more symmetric as many expected when user-generated content first became popular. The emergence of subscribers as content producers is an extremely important social, economic, and cultural phenomenon, but subscribers still consume far more video than they produce. Upstream traffic has been flat as a percentage for several years, according to data from the participants in the Cisco VNI Usage program.
It appears likely that residential Internet traffic will remain asymmetric for the next few years. However, there are a number of scenarios that could result in a move toward increased symmetry.
• Content providers and distributors could adopt P2P as a distribution mechanism. There has been a strong case for P2P as a low-cost content delivery system for many years, yet most content providers and distributors have opted for direct distribution, with the exception of applications such as PPStream and PPLive in China, which offer live video streaming through P2P, and have had great success. If content providers in other regions follow suit, traffic could rapidly become highly symmetric.
• High-end video communications could accelerate, requiring symmetric bandwidth. PC-to-PC video calling is gaining momentum, and the nascent mobile video calling market appears to have promise. If high-end video calling becomes popular, this will move traffic toward symmetry again.
Generally, if service providers provide ample upstream bandwidth, applications that use upstream capacity will begin to appear.
As revealed by the Level 3/Comcast contretemps late in 2011 the rules of peering are being upended as video becomes prevalent on the web and delivery networks own increasing degrees of backbone infrastructure. Peering itself is an esoteric subject. Here is a helpful primer – Unravel the Mystery of Peering – from Fred Cannone, Sales and Marketing Director, TELEHOUSE America.
On Mar 4 2011 Thomas Catan of the Wall Street Journal reported – Web Video Rivalry Sparks U.S. Probe – that the US Department of Justice is investigating the MPEG-LA patent pool over its efforts to hobble WebM, which competes with its h264 video format.
From the story
At present, no patent royalties are charged for using Google’s VP8 format. But MPEG LA has questioned that status, and last month issued a call for companies to submit patents they believe may be infringed by VP8. “I can tell you: VP8 is not patent-free,” Mr. Horn said. “It’s simply nonsense.”
For some people in the tech industry, the issue is less about cost and more about competition and control over technologies at the heart of the Internet. “How could it come to pass that it’s illegal to compete?” asked Monty Montgomery, who runs a free software foundation, XIPH.org, and supports VP8. “That’s when everybody’s antitrust bells should be going off.”
The threat of future lawsuits has helped persuade some companies to forsake VP8. Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, explained in an email to the Free Software Foundation Europe last year that a patent pool was assembled to “go after” a previous open-source format.
“All video codecs are covered by patents,” Mr. Jobs wrote. “Unfortunately, just because something is open-source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents.”
On Jan 19, as part of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee State of the Net Conference 2011, a panel of experts discussed the changing landscape of video distribution, and its implications for lawmakers. The panel was preceded by a short presentation by MIT Research Associate Dr. William Lehr outlining the state of play.
Moderator
*Gary Arlen, President, Arlen Communications
Panel
Marvin Ammori, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Nebraska Law School
Richard Bennett, Sr. Fellow, The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Susan Crawford, Professor, Cardozo Law School & Research Collaborator, The Center for Information Technology Policy
Adam Thierer, Sr. Research Fellow, Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Today Friday October 7th 2016 the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information presents the annual conference on the State of Telecom at the Columbia University, NYC. This year’s event has the theme Online Video as the Disruptor: Winners and Losers. The event will be webcast live via the Internet Society livestream channel.
imrananwar 3:00 am on October 7, 2016 Permalink |
Great to see this Institute going so well all these years. I will try to join in though I am in the middle of an all-nighter of a 36 hours day. I have known about CITI since shortly after I came to Columbia Business School in January 1989 for my MBA, and founded and launched .PK and Internet email for Pakistan while still a student at Columbia. Regards to the leaders there whom I recall meeting during my time at Uris Hall.
Imran
http://IMRAN.PK