10 years? 5 years?
But the concept has been created, and in that sense I think is irreversible.
Chris Burford
London
>>
THE INTERNET still has miles to go before it can rival conventional TV. Even fast modems and ISDN access can't help if the main delivery system is overloaded. This message came across loud and clear from the fuzzy, disjointed video images that arrived from Web coverage of the NetAid gigs held in London, Geneva and New York on 9 October. The UN-backed website (www.netaid.org) used 1500 Systems (www.cisco.com) and the NetAid organisers designed the system to handle 125 000 simultaneous hits, and up to 1 million in any one minute--ten times the peak Internet coverage of the last Olympics. NetAid's target was to break the billion-hit barrier by the end of the event.
ONLINE JAMMING | Internet news reports after the event--search for "NetAid" at dailynews.yahoo.com--put the total number of people who tried to access the webcast at 2.4 million. Those who did log on had to download the latest version of the RealPlayer G2 decoding software (from www.realaudio.com) before they could receive live video and sound.
Even Netropolitan's snazzy 64 kilobits per second ISDN access --feeding a 500-megahertz Windows 98 PC--didn't help. It delivered live pictures that frequently collapsed into a mishmash of frozen and blurred images. Software metering showed that material coded at 34K was often delivered at an average of 4K--and sometimes dropped out completely. Frustrated users were advised to access a menu of backstage interviews instead of the live stage show.
Watching NetAid on TV got you a much better experience, and TV stations in 60 countries were relaying the events live. So, until ultrafast, "always-on" telecoms systems like ADSL emerge--giving you up to 10 megabits per second access--Netropolitan's advice to those planning such events is this: stick to the appropriate technology. The Net is good, but it ain't that good . . . yet.
>From New Scientist, 23 October 1999