Cerf: streaming network crunch could be eliminated

June 24, 2011 | Source: Computerworld

While Internet carriers may fret about Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming media services saturating their bandwidth, Internet forefather Vint Cerf has a simple answer for this potential problem: increase bandwidth exponentially.

With sufficient bandwidth, streaming video services of prerecorded content wouldn’t be necessary, explained Cerf, who is now a technology evangelist at Google. With sufficient throughput, the entire file of a movie or television show could be downloaded in a fraction of the time that it would take to stream the content.

“I hope that access to broadband in all of its forms, wired and wireless, will be equally accessible to everyone,” Cerf said. “We simply don’t want access to the broadband channels to be used in an anti-competitive way.”