upstream

f you live in a Verizon FiOS market, you’ve likely seen the video ads denouncing upstream speeds other than theirs. If not, here’s the gist of it: Families, at home, surfing the web, but running into slowdowns when posting music and video to the web. The tagline? “Stop living with half-fast Internet,” uttered by Modern Family’s famously funny Ty Burrell, a Verizon spokesman.

On the one hand, “half-fast” is a brilliant and funny play on words, not unlike Kmart’s “shipped its pants” campaign, or the lesser known but still funny pairing of “sofa” with “king,” to emphasize how very … anything … something is. (“That is sofa king good,” for example.)

On the other hand, and as someone who perennially frets about the state of the upstream / home-to-headend signal direction, it’s another reminder about the growing plausibility of symmetric network traffic — meaning an environment where as much stuff flows out of a home, as flows into it.

For the longest time, now included, there’s not been a need, really, for symmetry. Think about it. When you click to retrieve a web page, or to initiate a video stream, that click is tiny, compared to what comes back. In general, and at any given time, we’re using way more downstream (towards us) capacity than upstream.

For me, the first vestige of the potential for upstream capacity calamities came last Spring, when my colleague Sara set up a chicken incubator at her farm. She used a paper clip to kickstand an old iPhone, which peered into the contraption, and live-streamed the output.

It was a forehead-smack moment: Video is big. Webcams stream it. Uh-oh, upstream path. Cameras that stream become part of the machine-to-machine scene, consuming bandwidth in ways not before seen. (Hey, that rhymes!)

Then, this year, the GoPro camera craze intensified. It won’t take too many of them, strapped to the dog’s head, or the kid’s bike, to gum up the upstream path.

The keepers of the bandwidth in my circles assure me (repeatedly) that from a normal traffic loading perspective, we’re nowhere near the need to build for network symmetry — meaning, as much data moving away from you, as toward you.

That said, there’s no shortage of gadgetry in our lives that can capture and stream video, and especially those that can be triggered to run remotely — you’re at work, but someone rings the doorbell at home. Who is it? See for yourself, via a live video stream.

One thing is certain: We can expect more video running upstream, coincident with the webcams and GoPros we use to capture and send live video. That alone will contribute to a tilt toward symmetry.

As a result, the widening of the upstream path will likely go from “not in my lifetime” — the decades-old harumph amongst technologists — to lots more trial expansions next year.

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

One of the greater developments following this year’s Cable Show, if you’re into immersion learning via tech-talk, is the placement online of the 2014 Spring Technical Forum papers. For free!

Up until now, it was a $50 DVD. Earlier, and for years, the papers came out as thick, bound editions. (A weary shelf at the office sags with Tech Papers dating back to the late ‘80s.)

If this is of interest, and you’d rather read them all yourself, go here: www.nctatechnicalpapers.com.

If you’d rather this (very abbreviated and likely to be continued!) summary, read on.

As titles go, few say “read me now!” more than “Predictions on the Evolution of Access Networks to the Year 2030 and Beyond,” written by five technologists at Arris (among them Tom Cloonan, CTO, who wins this year’s Mister Prolific Award, had we one, for writing or contributing to six papers.)

Shortcut advice on “Predictions:” If rushed, or impatient, skip to page 25. There, three pages characterize scenarios — some that impact all MSOs, others for MSOs planning to extend the life of existing plant, still others for MSOs going to new ways of bandwidth expansion, like Passive Optical Networks (PONs), which is tech talk for fiber-to-the-home.

Favorite line from “Predictions,” as an avid observer of cable’s upstream (home to headend) signal path: “Some of these MSOs will change the split on their upstream spectrum … in an attempt to provide more upstream bandwidth capacity.” Both 85 MHz and 204 MHz were mentioned as candidate upper boundaries for that terrifically thin spectral slice. (The very mention of a “widened upstream” was akin to operational anathema — as recently as two years ago.)

Trend-wise, the notion of “virtualization,” expressed as “SDN” (Software Defined Networks) and “NFV” (Network Function Virtualization) blitzed this year’s papers. It’s all about doing in software what’s done in hardware, now. Example: “Using SDN and NFV for Increasing Feature Velocity in a Multi-Vendor World,” by Cox’s Jeff Finklestein and Cisco’s Aron Bernstein.

Also: “An SDN-Based Approach to Measuring and Optimizing ABR Video Quality of Experience,” by the also-prolific Sangeeta Ramakrishnan (three papers) and Xiaoqing Zhu, both with Cisco.

Another tech trendline from the 2014 stash: Wi-Fi and wireless. Need a deep dive on why the batteries in your digital life behave the way they do? Go directly to “Wireless Shootout: Matching Form Factor, Application, Battery Requirement, Data Rates & Range to Wireless Standards,” by Comcast’s David John Urban. (Warning: It’s a deep-deep dive.)

If you’ve been wondering whether Wi-Fi has what it takes to stream multiple HD signals around a place, go to “Study of Wi-Fi for In-Home Streaming,” by Alireza Babaei, Neeharika Allanki and Vikas Sarawat, all with CableLabs.

There’s so much more.  Check them out for yourself, and be sure to thank Andy Scott, Mark Bell and their team at NCTA for doing the work of putting it all “on the line.”

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

Here’s one to keep a close eye on: “Ustream,” the online service that streams video, live, from any of the webcams in your life.

For instance: Sara, who runs our OTT video lab, raises chickens. Sometime next week, she’ll assemble an incubator, to keep the eggs warm and cozy.

A webcam, fed by Wi-Fi, will peer into the incubator. Ustream will live-stream from the “hatch-cam,” to the tablets, phones and PCs of anyone who wants to watch the progression from eggs to little fluffy chicks.

If you’ve read this column for any period of time, you know that I’m forever concerned about cable’s upstream path. It’s skinny, for starters – a scant 5% of total available bandwidth, located between 5-42 MHz. It’s noisy, for another.

That’s why Ustream was a forehead-smack moment for me: Ohhh, it’s not that we’re all going to be live-streaming upstream directly from the cameras inside phones or tablets. It’s that we’re going to be watching the stuff in front of our home/barn/work webcams.

As one MSO technologist noted, in the research for this column: “Cameras that stream are part of the feared “machine-to-machine” world that consumes bandwidth in ways never before seen.”

Gulp.

Naturally, there’s no easy way to model a “breaking point” for the upstream path, in light of Ustream-like traffic and webcam proliferation. As with most things technical, it depends. (No really. It does.)

A few basics do exist. Always start with node size (typically around 500 homes.) Count only homes that subscribe to broadband (say, 60% of 500 = 300.) Estimate how many homes are simultaneously online (10% of 300 = 30.)

For extra drama, imagine how many devices per home are video-capable – at least six per home by 2015, by some estimates.

Next, estimate how many of those homes (and screens) are live-streaming (say, 30% of 30 = 9.) Pick a compression technique (H.264, in Ustream’s case) to ascertain stream size (this is a big area of “it depends.”)

Subtract that number from total available upstream capacity – also a tub of “it depends.” Why: The upstream path was never envisioned or designed to carry “traditional” video. As a result, channels widths aren’t 6 MHz all day long, like they are in the downstream (home-facing) path.

Upstream channel widths typically use one of three sizes: 1.6 MHz, 3.2 MHz, and 6.4 MHz. The width differences accommodate three modulation types for sending traffic upstream.  In a small/medium/large terms, there’s QPSK (“bumpy path – slow down!”), and 16-QAM, for adequate spectrum, and 64-QAM, used in clean, wide, quiet upstream conditions.

The carrying capacity of each differs, in terms of data throughput (how much stuff can be stuffed back up the network.)

So, the math of the upstream path is far from clean,  but it’s probably time to give it a serious ago. I’m looking at you, Massillon Cable….

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

Leading into the 2007 Cable Show, I sat down with Tony Werner, CTO of Comcast, to discuss some of the hot issues of the time: Switched digital video, HDTV, and OCAP.

Video courtesy Multichannel News.

In this fourth and final segment from the CableNet 2000 exhibit areas, we geek out on the upstream signal path. “We” is me with Scott Cummings, of Broadcom via Digital Furnace. Their technology, Propane, would become a vital way to compress upstream traffic and conserve bandwidth; Scott does a great job of describing how it works here.

A NOTE IN HINDSIGHT: I’m posting these 11 years later and in large batches. If I start a “let’s talk costs” model using a 100,000-sub system with 20% penetration one more time, I’m going to have to stick forks in my ears…

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

As new VP of Engineering at TCI, Tony Werner discusses what he’s learning and doing with telephony, high speed data, and digital TV. Discussion points: Stuff is working (“the cable modems work, despite what naysayers say”); how to make phone, HSD, set-top box products share the upstream path.

[Note: I’m posting this video ONLY because it’s Tony. If you were me, would you post this? Hello? That is a one-piece jumpsuit. The hair! OMG.]

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

At the 1995 NCTA Show, I conducted a few of my first-ever video interviews. Ah, the one-camera shoot with turn-arounds, to re-ask the question of an empty chair! In this segment, I speak with Stephen Pearse of Time Warner Communications about upstream issues, which he says occur but are easily fixable. He then highlights their two year time line for deployment and finishes with some hints about why Time Warner isn’t involved in Triple Play.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.