Bandwidth

Hi,

I had this fairly simple idea but cannot see why it hasn't been 
implemented:


IMHO:..

Bandwidth has become one of the Internet's primary problems, created by 
large amounts of graphics attempting to solve the typographical 
limitations of HTML, and corporate logos, pictures, etc., a lot of 
which are unnecessary.

Whilst this may for the forseeable future be unavoidable, large 
animation such as movies and 'live' broadcasts could be cut down in 
their deployment across networks.

I take the following assumption before suggestion a solution:

   When anyone requests a file, for example and 2mb .mov from a server 
in USA  to themselves in Britain, it gets downloaded uniquely, i.e. 
just for them.

So then, what if an event was being shown, like the ones from 
Microsoft's web site frequently advertised, which attracted many people 
from Britain to watch it? Presumably, taking x to be the number of 
viewers, their would be x number of copies of the stream being 
broadcast from the server, across the atlantic, via Telehouse and/or 
LINK, to their ISPs to themselves. Why???

Surely, intelligent routers would say, hang on, if x number of requests 
are coming from Britain, let's only send one, and have a final point of 
separtion in Britain where a server gives the incoming (one) stream to 
the many?

Now, if this is already happening, then forget I asked, but I bet it's 
not.

I know that information is actually split up and sent many ways around 
the net to it's destination, but if there was only one copy, there 
wouldn't be so much of a traffic problem in the first place!

Well, that's my idea, anyway. Yes, tell me I'm wrong, but thinking 
logically, I would have thought this would be a good idea.

Regards,

James Green

Term e-mail: jmkgre@essex.ac.uk   |   Home e-mail: jg@cyberstorm.demon.co.uk
Homepage: http://www.cyberstorm.demon.co.uk

Received on Monday, 24 November 1997 05:20:56 UTC