Over the past few weeks, complaints related to IPv6 connectivity between Cogent and Google have increased, with the dispute now being made public. While reading through some NANOG emails, and my further dialog with other NANOG list readers, it appears that Google may be selectively blocking IPv6 routes through their transit providers. Initially some thought it was an error, but it now appears to be engineered this way. Here is how Google officially responded to the issue through a NANOG list member:

*From Google (re: Cogent): Unfortunately it seems that your transit provider does not have IPv6 connectivity with Google. We suggest you ask your transit provider to look for alternatives to interconnect with us.

Cogent is technically a Tier 1 backbone provider and has (or should have) a full Internet routing table. If they do not have the IPv6 routes from Google, then something, or someone is specifically blocking that connectivity. Google goes on to say:

*Google maintains an open interconnect policy for IPv6 and welcomes any network to peer with us for access via IPv6 (and IPv4). For those networks that aren’t able, or chose not to peer with Google via IPv6, they are able to reach us through any of a large number of transit providers.

Technically since Google uses transit to reach Cogent through one of Cogent’s peers, Google is accountable for this connectivity and appears to have purposely blocked it. So the questions to ask is, why? Possibly to motivate Cogent “to look for alternatives to interconnect”. In other words, Google creates an IPv6 blocking situation to welcome Cogent into giving settlement free peering to Google. Google has always paid for some transit in the past and appears to have created this IPv6 outage in order to change their existing business relationships.

Cogent historically has been the “poster child” around peering disputes and it is important to understand their side of this which is described in this next email that was also forwarded to the NANOG mailing list:

*Dear Cogent Customer, Thank you for contacting Cogent Customer Support for information about the Google IPv6 addresses you are unable to reach. Google uses transit providers to announce their IPv4 routes to Cogent. At this time however, Google has chosen not to announce their IPv6 routes to Cogent through transit providers. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and will notify you if there is an update to the situation.

Regardless of what one may think of Cogent’s peering dispute history (and perhaps the bad boy reputation played into a who’s-to-blame strategy), this actually follows the hypothesis that Google was the original instigator in the IPv6 blocking and appears to have created this problem to order to coerce a financially beneficial solution – for Google. As multiple Cogent customers told me via email, the situation is unfortunate for them because in certain locations, there aren’t any other providers to pick from. Cogent has had the same peering dispute with HE for many years, but HE is a lot less visible in the daily life of the average user than Google.

It’s hard to know for sure who is at fault without all the details. The problem creator (Google) or the network provider with a peering dispute reputation (Cogent). However, as IPv6 traffic grows, this strategy of IP blocking could cause negative impact and outages with customers and slow the adoption of IPv6. And, this Google event should come to the surprise of Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf who has been very vocal about promoting the future of the Internet over IPv6.

Given the migration to IPv6, some networks have more IPv6 Google traffic than IPv4. And as IPv6 takes a larger role in the Internet these “peering playbook” tactics could have consumer impact along with IPv6 adoption impact. If not properly managed with DNS, this could cause customer impact if quad-A records are preferred and unreachable. When a non-Tier 1 blocks part of their routing table from their Transit provider, they are not carrying a full Internet routing table and preventing consumers from getting to Google services over IPv6.

Of course, if Comcast, Verizon or one of the ISP was using this IPv6 tactic to their benefit, Internet advocacy groups and the media would be calling for their heads. Yet no one seems to have noticed what Google is doing, and is complaining about it, other than Cogent’s customers being impacted by Google’s tactics. So the question people should now be asking is, “Who is blocking IPv6 routes and why?”

We have a special streaming devices pavilion at the Streaming Media East show that allows thousands of attendees to get hands-on with more than 50 of today’s leading hardware devices and OTT platforms. You can test out any combination of gaming consoles, stand-alone streaming boxes, and smart TVs, with every streaming service in the market. It allows you to compare 4K and HDR side-by-side, learn how to cast content from small screens to TVs and gives you the opportunity to hear from many of these companies directly. No other show in the industry has anything like our demo area.

This year we “hope” to expand the pavilion to allow attendees to experience VR, and will try to showcase VR technology and content from some of the leading broadcasters and developers in the space. Much of this will be dependant on when HTC/Valve, Sony and Facebook make their hardware available in the market. If you are interested in getting involved in the VR demos, with content or with technology you want to showcase, please contact me. (917-523-4562) I’m looking to make the VR experience the best it can be for our attendees and show them what the future of this industry will look like.

Thursday at 2pm ET, I’ll be moderating a StreamingMedia.com webinar on the topic of “The State of Global Streaming Formats and its Implication for Publishers and Developers“. There is a lot said about what media formats are available, but not a lot of data on what is actually being used. With a global reach and thousands of publishers, Encoding.com has a unique view of the formats that are used to deliver media and entertainment content. This webinar will present their view on the state of the market for web, mobile and OTT distribution.

The webinar will also discuss how factors like native browser support, developer adoption and the desire for enhanced web media experiences drives the usage trends highlighted in this report and how these trends are accelerated by the cloud.

For anyone responsible for multiplatform, multiple device delivery, this is a must-attend event.

Register Now to attend this FREE live webinar.

The advance program for the Streaming Media East show, taking place May 10-11 in NYC, is now live and speaker placement has started. You can see the full agenda here and read each session description and what it will cover. If you are interested in speaking on a session or placing a speaker on a session, please contact me. Here is a list of all the topics that will be covered this year (with a few more being added):

• The Great Unbundling and the Mass Re-bundling
• Encoding Live and On-Demand Video Using HEVC
• Video Goes Virtual: Business Challenges and Opportunities Around VR Video
• Building OTT Success: Improving Video Engagement
• Live Social Broadcasting: Comparing Facebook Live, YouTube Live and Periscope
• Evaluating SAAS, On-Prem, and Hybrid Deployment Models When Selecting an Enterprise Video Platform
• Hands-On With Streaming Devices and OTT Platforms
• H.265: Living Up to the Hype as the Successor to H.264
• Improving Video Quality and Reducing Bandwidth
• Streaming Deployment Architectures in Higher Education
• Cracking the Multi-DRM Code: How Best to Build Secure Playback for Video
• Adaptive Bitrate Algorithms: How They Work And How To Optimize Your Stack
• Building A Streaming Solution Within The Firewall
• The New Bundle: Moving Beyond Cable for the Digital Consumer
• Hands-On Demo: Smart TV Platforms in Action
• Building a Great Streaming Channel on the Roku Platform
• How Live Streaming Is Changing Content Creation
• DASH Today: Consortia Adoptions and Industry Deployments
• Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Media Asset Management Deployment
• Fine-Tuning Your Adaptive Encoding Groups With Objective Quality Metrics
• How Big Stars and More Money Are Changing Short-Form Content
• Advertiser Strategies for OTT
• Driving Customer Awareness And Loyalty For Your Enterprise With Video
• Business or Bubble? The Rise (and Potential Fall) of Subscription-based Monetization
• A Brand New Deal: The Thriving Evolution of Sponsored Content
• The Great OTT Migration

CBS Sports is already having problems with the SuperBowl stream. I’m having a lot of issues loading cbssports.com website, frequently getting time out errors. When it does load, I get a video window that is black, with no stream. And on the Apple TV, the CBS Sports app won’t load at all. Appears to be a website and app issue as opposed to a stream issue. Akamai is doing the stream, with some other CDNs on standby in case CBS Sports needs to switch. More to come.

Updated: SuperBowl stream on iPad, using CBS Sports app has been perfect for me since kickoff.

Technicolor has announced that they have pulled their patents from the HEVC Advance patent licensing pool and will now license their patents directly to device manufacturers. Almost a year ago I heard that Technicolor wasn’t happy with how HEVC Advance came to the market, with licensing terms that didn’t make sense and were simply too expensive, thereby stalling adoption. Someone from Technicolor even confirmed for me off-the-record that months ago, they told HEVC Advance to stop using their name as one of the companies in the pool. So I’m not surprised to see this latest announcement that Technicolor will not longer be a part of HEVC Advance.

Of course this isn’t good for those that need to license HEVC patents as now you potentially have to pay MPEG LA, HEVC Advance and Technicolor. In addition, I am hearing that Sony may also start licensing their HEVC patents directly to hardware manufactures, which means you may need to pay four different companies. After Technicolor’s announcement, HEVC Advance put out a press release to say that Technicolor’s 12 patents have been removed from HEVC’s Patent pool. The only positive here is that Technicolor is only looking to have device companies pay and says they do “not plan to license industry players for content streaming.” So if content owners don’t have to license the patents, that’s at least one positive development.

Of course this isn’t good news for HEVC Advance which already had to change their licensing terms after launching in the market and now loses one of the founding members of the pool. While HEVC Advance and companies that have patents related to HEVC technology have a few years to get some revenue from licensing, the writing is already on the wall. The next generation codec after HEVC is going to be royalty free, thanks to what the Alliance For Open Media and others are working on.

Data from Adobe has shown that tablet and smartphone viewing accounted for nearly 40 minutes of daily viewing in 2015. This growth has not come at the expense of desktop or connected devices as mobile will continue to be a major story in 2016 as it drives overall growth in video consumption. While this is good news overall, it does present a number of new challenges that will face publishers in 2016.

What this data shows is that video viewers are increasingly accessing content through multiple entry-points throughout the day. These entry points, by nature of technology and context have unique user experiences. What works on desktop, can be intrusive, clunky, and bandwidth hogging on mobile. Those 37 minutes of desktop and connected device viewing are more continuous than the hop on / hop off viewing habits of mobile.

Anonymous data from a publisher that began with a mobile to desktop split of 81/19 in September 2015 and moved to close to 50/50 by year-end by increasing overall desktop views.

Iris.TV shared with me some data from one of their customers that publishes to both web and mobile environments and saw desktop views increase to a level where by month four, shares of views was split evenly on desktop and mobile. There was an increase in Video Lift and reduction in bounce rate across the board as well. Iris.TV measures the average video engagement in the viewing session as Video Lift, which is the measure of recommended video views divided by the initial clicked views. Bounce rate is the measure of viewers exiting the viewing experience prior to completion of the initial clicked video. Mobile bounce rates began at 84% but over time reduced to 75%. Video Lift increased from 22% to 39%.

By better engaging the user in mobile, publishers can organically drive them to desktop where there is higher video adoption and lower bounce which translates into more videos completed per session and more ads served. The data shows that publishers can grow overall value by programming content across devices to engage viewers. User engagement is a critical driver of adoption and retention across platforms, but especially on mobile. For the most part, programming a consistent user experience across devices has been the domain of the TVE/SVOD/OTT offerings from Netflix, Amazon, and the like. Viewers of films and serialized TV are able to pick up where they left off across devices with authentication via logins. YouTube and a few other mobile apps have been able to offer cross devices experiences, but they are few and far between.

The portion of the market that should be innovating around cross-device programming are publishers of short-form ad-supported video. Upwards of 70% of short-form videos are directed from social media, followed by audience development and organic traffic. Social is a mobile medium with Facebook leading the way. Publishers need to manage the mobile social video experience to drive engagement but not become too dependent on these platforms for video. By not programming better on their O&O mobile web, they are leaving money on the table and missing opportunities to increase user engagement and retention across all entry-points.

So what can publishers do? Budgets are tight and not everyone can invest in video-centric apps. But publishers can and should be utilizing data-driven business intelligence to determine what videos perform well and in what context. The focus should be on video performance with respect to content category, device, content length, social engagement, and time-of-day, which would improve the user experience.