Apple iPhone/iPod Touch Streaming Media Capability and Impact to your Network

Michael J. Menozzi

CS_525, Computer Science Department

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Colorado Springs, CO 80923

Abstract—Apple has recently allowed steaming media technologies in their Apple Store and available to use on AT and T and wireless networks. With this capability there is an inherent negative impact to the users local network along with the service provider. This study plans on modeling several types of situations that impact the network in a negative manner using streaming media sources. OPNET Technologies will be used to display the effects and potential bottlenecks on select networks along with a deep-dive analysis of spikes over a select set of bucket widths.

Keywords: Network, Bottleneck, iPhone, Streaming, OPNET

I.  Introduction

Streaming live media over a connected smart-phone to the network has been present in a number of providers in order to provide a service to customers. However, this has not been the case with AT&T and use of the iPhone over the 3G networks or even over the built-in WiFi capability. Stunning as this is; it is presently being changed and for the wiser. With the ever-widespread use of such media sites as Facebook and Youtube this capability only becomes more and more desirable.

One of the more interesting issues related to this functionality is the fact that other phones on the AT&T network are allowed to stream live media; just not the iPhone.

II.  Options Available

The first application most people would say to use to stream live video from a portable device such as the iPhone, Android or other smart phones would be to use Skype. While this is the logical choice for many Smartphones such as the Android, it is not the optiomal solution for the Apple iPhone. This is because AT&T does not allow 3G to be used for streaming live video; only works on Wi-Fi current according to Skype’s website [1]. As shown in the following figure, iPhone Disallow, the user is shown that 3G streaming is not allowed.

Figure 1; iPhone Disallow

Interestingly enough, AT&T had approved the idea of using 3G service for streaming live video in November 2009, with Skype announcing in February 2010 that the service would be coming soon. However that is not the case and Skype has released a new version of its software without the feature. Basically Skype had to cripple their software to make it work on the AT&T network with Wi-Fi.

In a deal with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), AT&T relents, bowing to openness pressure, decided to allow 3G telephone calls on it’s network, however as of the writing of this paper that has not occurred [2]. This appears to have something to do with the recent announcement that FCC was planning on extending internet openness rules to wireless networks. This of course has caused a bit of angst amongst the wireless carriers. From what this author can find; the internet openness rules are not something that is quite a law yet.

Another interesting fact to mention is AT&T allows live streaming video for other devices, but not the iPhone. This could be because of the number of iPhones in service, which is estimated at around 13 million subscribers. This accounts for approximately 25% of current wireless revenue for AT&T [3]. Translated, this is 15% of AT&Ts subscribers who have an iPhone. With this level of potential users attempting to use services such as Skype can wear on a network that is already being criticized for slowness and unresponsiveness, which appears to be on a path for an upgrade sometime this year.

There are a couple of other solutions for streaming live video over the internet with portable phones. One of the applications is called Ustream which has been around for a number of years. Just recently this application has been allowed on the AT&T networks via the iPhone. In this particular application the user can stream live or record streams on the web that multiple people can watch from a web browser [5]. Further, you can put this information on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook via the built-in application.

Essentially there are a lot of applications that can perform the streaming functions similar to what I have mentioned in this paper. Some have video and others do not. In the case of getting around the issue with Knocking Live Video, the CEO of the company demonstrated via two iPhones how to accomplish that task. The established a phone call via the two iPhones and then executed the Knocking Live Video application. Once they were connected one of the users can knock to the other user and stream live video while they are on the phone call.

III.  The Experiment

In this particular experiment I downloaded the application Knocking Live Video [4] from the internet and installed it on the following phones:

1.  HTC Android Eris with Verizon service.

2.  Apple iPhone with AT&T service.

Once each had their own accounts I established a Knocking Live Video session between the two phones to produce a live video feed.

While this video stream was being sent between the phone I had eliminated the security features on my wireless network which would allow my Apple Macbook Pro to record the traffic in the air via the wireless network card and onto Wireshark. Wireshark was setup to filter only for traffic to and from the phones over the Wi-Fi connection.

Packets / 29109
Duration (min) / 3.097433333
Avg. packets/sec / 156.629
Avg. packet size / 875.235 bytes
Bytes / 25477215
Avg. bytes/sec / 137087.534
Avg. Mbit/sec / 1.097

Table 1; Packet Data

As you can see in the above table, table 1; Packet Data, for the duration of the capture on Wi-Fi 29109 packets were captured over a period of 3 minutes. The interesting factor in this case is the average amount of megabits being sent by the streaming video. With just over 1 Mbit/sec on the network, there is not a lot of traffic traversing the local area network. However if this is the typical stream that comes from a phone to another phone and you are sending this across the 3G network then there can be significant impact to the network load and available bandwidth. This is no doubt the reason why AT&T is concerned about alloing a tool such as Skype full access to their networks to perform streaming video with voice. There could be a complete or degraded effect on the network and would immediately cause outages and repairs.

As you can see in the following figure, Figure 1; Live Video, one phone was shooting the front window of my breakfast nook of the house and the other was capturing that information. In this case the iPhone was streaming video to the HTC phone over the Wi-Fi network. In this particular situation the delay between the phones for the video was measured at less than a second to catch up.

In one of the experiments however, the iPhone did not swing over the Wi-Fi network and remained on the 3G network instead. During this time noticeable delay between pictures was approximately 4 seconds for the HTC to catch up to the video being streamed from the iPhone.

Figure 2; Live Video

IV.  Future Work

My intent for this project was to capture this data via Wireshark and import into OPNET Modeler to make a simple model and execute the data flows. However, due to technical issues with the host server for OPNET and the issues related to compiling the data traffic this was not accomplished. The data was analyzed via Wireshark summaries but not the ideal situation for this type of analysis. Hopefully this summer I will be able to complete analysis similar to this problem with the available tools in order to better understand what type of data is flowing across the network for streaming live video.

References

[1]  https://support.skype.com/faq/FA10062/Can-I-use-Skype-over-3G;jsessionid=0CF58C6FAD0F204D5BE31E37E8319F06

[2]  http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/iphone-att-skype/

[3]  http://seekingalpha.com/article/199104-at-t-iphone-makes-up-25-of-mobile-revenue

[4]  http://knockinglive.com/platform

[5]  http://www.tuaw.com/2009/12/09/stream-audio-and-video-live-from-your-iphone-with-ustream-live-b/