Over The Top: Impacts on the networks of small internet access providers

Abstract

The Internet represents a transformative force of paradigms, making everyday situations such as how to watch movies and interact with society have a rapid transformation in recent years, driven by the distribution platforms of online video over the Internet, which consist of cross-platform distributed systems forming the so-called over the top – OTT. Sending video content on the Internet requires a variety of infrastructure devices associated with the Internet Service Provider – ISP, which must provide sufficient bandwidth Internet access to ensure quality of service. The growth in broadband Internet use raises concerns for ISPs due to the high bandwidth demands generated by OTT applications. The characterization of users’ behavior for OTT services can contribute to a better understanding of the interaction of users of these services with ISP, which will help small ISPs manage the capacity of their resources by providing a better quality of the service provided and possibilities for offering new services. This work aims to evaluate, using a case study, the impacts of OTT services, specifically Netflix, Facebook and Google, on a small broadband Internet access provider. In the research, real data were monitored and collected from all clients of an ISP using the PRTG, Winbox, Wireshark, and legacy applications tools on edge routers. With the result of the case study one can have a reference for the dimensioning of internet backbone access links with the use of CDN in the ISP environment, because users’ traffic in access to OTT services in small ISP affects on average 52% of the tráfeg the total ISP. Keywords: OTT, CDN, internet, internet provider.