[Beowulf] HDTV video file sizes

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 29 May 2007, Jim Windle wrote:

> So if Netflix isn't lying when they say they have shipped over a billion
> movies that means they have moved roughly 5 exabytes of data via the US
> mail.  I wonder how that compares the amount moved over the internet during
> the same time period?
>
> compressed data rates appear to be 20-50 Mbps (lower than 20

Oh, there's little doubt about this sort of thing.  With a DSL
bottleneck, it's MUCH faster for me to drive to Duke and do an install
from its mirrors via a 1 Gbps local network than it is to wait at home
for the data to squeeze through my little pipe.  And every time I drive
to and from Duke carrying my laptop, I move 10 GB/minute between
locations which (at a GB/six seconds) is slightly HIGHER bandwidth than
the campus Gbps backbone.  If you want to move terabytes at high
bandwidth, box up some portable multi-terabyte RAIDS and fly them there.

However, I can transfer data home while doing other things.  I cannot
drive and do other things.  Network transfers are often parallelizable
in a classic sense and can complete while other things are happening (as
they are now on my laptop as I type this).

    rgb

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu