BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.
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Large multiuser networks such as Contractual limitations pose the single largest risk factor for student housing owners. lar level and deploy multiple gateways. However, these tactics will provide only temporary relief because the continuing increase in per-user bandwidth expecta- tion will overrun any such temporary measures in a short time. Even in a 200-user network, the life expectancy of a gateway with 100 Mbps throughput is close to zero. In a larger network, saturation exists already, and operators that attempt to employ 100 Mbps core and gateway technology will be unable to provide national average performance per user. BANDWIDTH CONSERVATION Te growing trend of using the public Internet to stream multimedia will give rise to new bandwidth-conservation technologies. Today, content is streamed toward end users in "unicast" mode. Four people watching the same video require four times the bandwidth of one person watching the same video because each stream requires its own Internet bandwidth. Internet streaming is a much less efficient use of bandwidth than tra- ditional analog or digital TV, which broadcasts a single signal to multiple re- cipients. Although Internet technologies exist to support multicast viewing, they are not commonly adopted or deployed. Tis is a dilemma: On the one hand, consumers demand the convenience of Internet-based streaming; on the other hand, unicasting is a highly inefficient use of resources. student housing networks must deploy band width-conservation tech niques that keep multiple demands for identical content from consuming all available external Internet bandwidth. Campus Technologies is testing bandwidth-con- servation technologies in several deploy- ments and is convinced that this will be key to facing growth challenges. CONTRACTUAL CHALLENGES Most student housing communities are locked into term contracts for long peri- ods with limited control over the quan- tity of bandwidth provided and limited or no ability to get out of those con- tracts. Te single largest risk factor for student housing owners and operators is a lack of ability to control the quality and quantity of a critical service that will directly affect leasing and net operating income. All owners and operators must carefully examine the contract position of their assets with regard to Internet provisioning and maintain a high level of flexibility in future years. Y 38 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com | OCTOBER 2012