RIPE56 and Zattoo

I'm at RIPE56 today and tomorrow. RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) is a collaborative forum open to all parties interested in wide area IP networks in Europe and beyond, and RIPE56 is, you've guess it, the 56th meeting. The objective of RIPE is to ensure the administrative and technical coordination necessary to enable the operation of a pan-European IP network.

This week-long event brings together the best minds on IP networks from within RIPE's geographic reach (Europe, Russia and the Middle East), as well as further afield... Japan, Australia, US, amongst others I'm sure. I'm here working predominantly on the issues of IPv4 depletion and IPv6 uptake.

Right now however, I'm in a very interesting presentation by Thomas Billeter and Fredy Kuenzler of Zattoo. From their website:

Zattoo has developed a software program that allows you to watch TV on your computer. All you need is a broadband connection and a current operating system (Windows XP or Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux). The service is legal and free of charge.

Zattoo is a peer-to-peer application. This means that the data is not streamed from one central server to all users watching a certain program, but flows from one user to the next, thus also using the computing power of the users’ computers. The technology is based on research done by Sugih Jamin and Wenjie Wang at the University of Michigan and is optimized to stream live content.

Other technical data:

Resolution: 352x288 (wide screen: 480x288)
Downstream rate: 500 Kbits/second
Video-Codec: H.264

Employing a team of 50 and funding of $15m, Zattoo is already live in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. More European countries and the US are planned this year.

Of course, the business plan is underpinned by advertising revenues, although the possibility of subscription based services isn't dismissed at this stage. The pitch to broadcasters and advertisers: "Zattoo attracts fleeing viewers back to broadcast TV".

Zattoo currently serves two million users with 500 servers in 16 locations. Another 200 servers will be added in a few weeks. Less than half of content delivery is managed peer-to-peer due to the upload bandwidth constraints of typical ADSL connections.