Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, Bandwidth Grows and Congestion Bubbles

Will Law, Chief Architect, Media Engineering, Akamai

Abstract: The massive growth in bandwidth demand is being fueled by three factors: the rapid adoption of OTT video delivery, the standardization around adaptive segmented delivery and a rise in video quality and bitrate. In this session we’ll look at real data gathered over the Akamai network over the past decade, we’ll quantify the extent of the bandwidth problem and we’ll see how current delivery methods are incapable of meeting projected demand. We’ll then examine an array of technologies which collectively have the ability to begin to address the capacity problem and, if Friday 13th permits, demonstrate a few of them.

CV: Will Law is a Chief Architect with the Media Engineering group at Akamai. He has been involved with streaming media on the web for the last decade with a strong focus on client-side development and wrote many of the early connection frameworks that still drive much of the traffic flowing over Akamai today, including OVP, HDCore and OSMF. He has a current focus on MPEG DASH and HTTP delivery, mobile media, connected devices and security. Law is a founding board member of DASH Industry Forum, holds Masters degrees in Aerospace Engineering and an MBA and has worked previously for a series of five engineering and media-related startups.