CNN's P2P Live Video Player Sucks Your Bandwidth Dry

CNN has been using a Peer-to-Peer (P2P)-based video stream technology for its live streaming. In particular, CNN used this to stream the Presidential Inauguration. While in and of itself that's not a bad thing, as it shows there are legitimate uses for P2P, what isn't a good thing is the sheer amount of upstream traffic it produces.

According to Windows Secrets, one of their contributing editors noted upstream traffic on his PC at 320Mbps. And a commenter on the blog of another contributing editor noted upstream traffic of 600Mbps.

I have to say that was pretty surprising to me. Particularly since unlike a file-downloading P2P application like BitComet you can't set a limit to the outbound rate. And those figures would be a pretty big chunk of most people's bandwidth, too.

Of course, here's the big lie: while the dialog prompt says "This site requires the Octoshape Grid Delivery Enhancement," it does not. Click No and you can still stream live video from CNN. It just might be more choppy. the Octoshape Grid Delivery system is managed by Octoshape ApS, a company based in Denmark.

But since IT departments have taken to monitoring the number of connections to PCs, this'll put a damper on CNN live video streaming at work. Not that you should be watching at work, anyway, with the possible exception of a historic inauguration, that is.

Fortunately, if you already installed the program, and have decided after reading this that you would like to remove it, it's not hard. It'll show up in your Add / Remove Programs applet in Control Panel in Windows XP, or in Programs and Features in Windows Vista's Control Panel.

Thing is, this might be the future of video streaming to PCs it reduces the load on the servers. In these days of bandwidth caps, though, it would be helpful if there was a bit more clarity in the initial dialog prompt. If you know that Octoshape means P2P, you'll know you're using up some of your cap to "give" to others. If you don't, well, you don't.

And hey, let's not forget a way to control the upstream rate while we're at it.