There’s one question that comes up at almost every family gathering or dinner with friends. Sometimes five minutes in, sometimes when the coffee is already on. But it always comes up, almost word for word:
“Wait, when I’m watching the match… what exactly gets shared?”
It’s a good question. I’d say it’s the best one. There’s usually a bit of fear beneath it, and that fear almost always comes from the unknown: things nobody ever bothered to explain out loud. It happens with regular folks and with some of the most veteran (and most conservative) engineers in the industry. The answer is much shorter than anyone expects: the match. A few seconds of the match they’re already watching, encrypted, while they watch it.
That’s it. But while we’re here, the rest is worth telling: why Quanteec exists, what it does and why I think live streaming requires building far more servers than it needs. And yes, feel free to add whisky to your coffee.
A million copies of the same goal
Picture a final. A million people watching the same stream, at the same second. With the classic model, each one gets their own copy, sent by a CDN (short for content delivery network: the fleets of servers spread around the world whose job is to get video to your screen). A million identical copies of the same goal, crossing the same networks at the same time.
To hold up, streaming platforms and networks build capacity for the peak: those few hours a year when everyone watches the same thing. The rest of the year, much of that capacity sits waiting, lurking in the dark.
On the other side of the screen, the exact opposite happens. Every viewer’s home has an upload connection (the one going from the home to the Internet) that is installed, paid for and practically empty. According to OpenVault, the average subscriber uses ~0.4% of their upload capacity over a month.
Oversized servers on one side, millions of idle connections on the other. I call that waste. And that’s where Quanteec comes in.
What we do, in two paragraphs
Online video travels in small pieces of a few seconds each, called segments, and the player stitches them back together as you watch. Quanteec adds what we call a peer-assisted layer, peers being the viewers themselves: while someone watches, their player can pass a few of those pieces to nearby viewers watching the same thing. It all happens inside the video player the platform already uses, through a small piece of code (373 kB on web, lighter than most photos on your phone). Nobody installs anything.
The consequence is counterintuitive, and there’s my favorite part: the higher the number of viewers, the more capacity there is. Just keep this in mind: with a CDN, every new viewer requires extra capacity. With Quanteec, they can add extra capacity. And the CDN is still there as backup: if a segment is slow to arrive from another viewer, the player fetches it from the CDN and the match goes on without anyone noticing.
Tested where it hurts most
By then, my uncle has grabbed the whisky instead of the coffee and asks, rather offended: “All very nice in theory, but in practice this must be chaos.” I breathe, smile and answer: “It’s been in production for years.”
In case the millions of posts never reached you, or, like my uncle, you don’t use LinkedIn much, here it is: it works, and at scale. Our favorite example is France Télévisions. Because we’re in France, because it’s public television and because they were the first to come and tell us, straight up: “I want P2P, I know what it is and how well it works.” They’ve been running Quanteec on france.tv for years, and big sporting events are exactly where it shows.
Take one night: Paris FC v PSG, Coupe de France, live on france.tv. 85% of the video traveled from viewer to viewer; only 15% came from the servers. Rebuffering, the spinning wheel that freezes the image right before a goal, took up 0.12% of viewing time with Quanteec against 1.07% on the CDN alone. The first piece of video arrived almost twice as fast, and delivery used 64% less energy.
The Six Nations and the Winter Olympics told the same story: same crowds, and the servers carried a fraction of the load.
So, what really gets shared?
Back to the opening question, now that my uncle has dozed off.
What travels between viewers are those small pieces of the match they’re already watching, encrypted. No account data, no personal files, nothing that says who’s who. And we’re strict about the rules.
The viewer’s connection always comes first. Our software keeps an eye on how busy the connection is and only uses the share nobody needs (engineers call this congestion control). The moment someone starts a video call or an online game, that traffic takes priority and we step aside. On mobile data, sharing is off by default, so nobody’s data plan pays for it.
The device barely notices. Sharing uses at most 3% of the processor and less than €1 a year of electricity. On a phone, it adds 0.40% to battery use at most, and below 10% battery it stops sharing altogether.
And nothing is stored on the device. The content passes through memory and moves on, so when the match ends, so does the sharing.
“Isn’t this just like BitTorrent?”
Second classic question, this time from my cousin: 40-something, my uncle’s son and, back in the day, a prolific downloader of Britney songs.
They have one thing in common: users exchange data directly. But that’s about where the resemblance ends. A torrent moves entire files, between strangers, and keeps running after you close the download. Here, a few seconds of the match travel from memory, between people watching the same match, and only while they watch it.
For whoever owns the broadcasting rights, what matters is this: viewers only pass along encrypted pieces, never the watchable video. Every piece is checked before it plays, so nobody can slip in altered content. And the locks platforms already deployed stay exactly as they are: DRMs, copy protection behind paid streaming services, plus time-limited access keys and country restrictions.
GDPR, no fine print
The family’s lawyer, my aunt, had been sharpening her nails since before her husband spoke. So when her son lowered his head, she struck: “And is all this GDPR compliant?”
To connect nearby viewers, we process two pieces of data: the IP address (the number that identifies each internet connection, a bit like a street address) and the city it belongs to. Within a second, the IP is hashed, meaning it’s swapped for a scrambled code, and it’s never shared with anyone. We don’t know who the viewers are, and as a matter of fact, we don’t need to.
Legally speaking, it rests on what the GDPR calls legitimate interest, so platforms don’t need to add one more consent pop-up window to the pile. What they do need is to tell viewers it happens, and one paragraph in the privacy policy covers it. Quanteec answers directly for that data, as what the law calls an independent data controller. I know that paragraph by heart: I write it on a napkin for my aunt.
How to tell viewers is up to each platform: a line in the terms of use or a switch in the app. We recommend the switch, for a reason that comes next.
StreamBoost: if they share, let it show
With dessert, my niece looks up from her phone: “And what do I get for sharing?”
Maybe the most interesting question of the evening. Because what we really want to do with our technology is give viewers back the place they deserve: the very center of how the match gets delivered. And whoever does that work deserves a reward. That’s why we built StreamBoost.
We won’t make many friends saying this, but we’re proposing a new business model for streaming: one that adds value for every party involved, instead of concentrating it in the same few places. StreamBoost is where you can see it. Right from the player, viewers turn on Boost Mode and see in real time how much energy, water and CO2 they’re helping save. While they share, they earn points (we call them QOINS), level up and climb a leaderboard.
The switch we recommended for informing viewers becomes a way to take part. And for the platform, a direct relationship with its most engaged audience.
Bottom line
Let’s close with one idea, and pay attention because it’ll be on the exam: we don’t need that many servers. The capacity is already there, in every home watching the match.
What gets shared when you watch a match? A few seconds of the match you’re already watching, encrypted, using a connection that would otherwise sit unused.
In return, the match rendering comes with greater quality, to a greater number of viewers, and with fewer servers built for three hours a year. Sounds like a good deal to us.
If you have any other question in mind (and I hope you do), the FAQ is at quanteec.com/faq. And if it’s not there, you’re invited to the next family dinner. Or write to me at pvazquez@quanteec.com.