TABLE OF CONTENTS Let's have a closer look at the cost of transmitting data by jumping into the IT money jungle. In order to make this exercise a little easier and illustrative, let us consider the cost in an Internet streaming environment at the server end.
Fact: Broadband adoption will dramatically increase Internet server costs. There will be a tremendous cost impact on video streaming Internet servers as broadband use grows. Much has been documented on the topic of consumer adoption of broadband Internet connections and the resulting requirement for increased video content. However, there has been no discussion of the impact of this paradigm shift on the cost to the Internet servers streaming the video. The increase in bandwidth utilization will require better and better compression techniques in order to meet the expectations of users and the cost requirements for bandwidth.
Internet Server Costs Impacted by Video: Every video played by a viewer must have a server streaming the video to it. The server must pay for every bit of the video that is streamed to a viewer. Streaming digital video requires a significant amount of bandwidth. The number of concurrent video streams from a server determines the amount of bandwidth consumed by the server.
There are two general types of digital video streams. The first, narrowband, is designed for viewers connected via standard phone-based modems typically 27 to 50 kilobits per second (Kbps). The second, for viewers using a broadband connection, such as DSL or a...
