本文摘要：During the World Cup games, many of us broke away from the workday to catch the emotional matches. At my office, like at many other companies large and small, we played the games’ live streams from the ESPN app on a big projector. Sure enough, the lag has been bad, as demand has swamped the servers. WatchESPN was outright crashing during theU.S.-Germany game last month.世界杯期间，我们中的许多人都在工作日脱身去看那些令人激动的比赛。

During the World Cup games, many of us broke away from the workday to catch the emotional matches. At my office, like at many other companies large and small, we played the games’ live streams from the ESPN app on a big projector. Sure enough, the lag has been bad, as demand has swamped the servers. WatchESPN was outright crashing during theU.S.-Germany game last month.世界杯期间，我们中的许多人都在工作日脱身去看那些令人激动的比赛。和许多大大小小的公司一样，我们公司也用大投影仪通过ESPN客户端来收听实况转播。

延后很得意，这是一定的，原因是市场需求让服务器不堪重负。上个月美德大战时，ESPN的服务器索性瓦解了。I’m guessing nobody is really surprised, given, as some might recall, the Oscars livestream crashed; HBO Go fizzled during the True Detective finale and Veronica Mars movie backers couldn’t get their free digital downloads on time.我猜中没有人知道深感车祸，因为有可能还有人忘记，奥斯卡颁奖典礼的网络直播就瓦解过；《真为搜》（True Detective）大结局时，HBO的客户端也无法长时间用于；《美眉校探》（Veronica Mars）电影版的拥趸某种程度无法顺利进行免费iTunes。

We’re used to these delays. The Internet literally can’t handle the amount of TV we watch; the idea behind “TV everywhere,” where television broadcasters provide viewers with access to online content via live or on-demand, may be impossible with our current infrastructure.我们对这样的延后早已习以为常。互联网显然处置没法我们观赏的大量电视节目；“电视无处不在”的意思是电视台以直播或串流的方式向观众获取在线内容，但现在的基础设施有可能无法构建这样的点子。Netflix NFLX -1.00% takes up about 30% of home Internet bandwidth in North America, and data from Procera estimates that anywhere from 6% to 10% of the online streaming service’s subscribers watched at least one episode of House of Cards Season 2 in its first weekend. Yet House of Cards doesn’t have nearly as many viewers as a moderately successful TV show. A total of 4.6 million people watched the premiere of USA’s Suits, for example, which for a series, is an impressive but not gargantuan hit (but one of my personal favorites!). And that’s not even broadcast, it’s cable. A highly anticipated episode of How I Met Your Mother could pull in close to 11 million viewers.Given such viewership, it seems the Internet literally cannot handle television.奈飞（Netflix）占有了北美大约30%的家用互联网比特率。网络数据统计资料机构Procera估计，《纸牌屋》（House of Cards）第二季播映的首个周末，6%-10%的奈飞用户最少观赏了一集。

不过，这样的观众规模还追不上一般顺利的电视节目。比如说，美国电视网（USA Network）的《金装律师》（Suits）首次播映时的观众人数为460万。这样的观众规模对一部电视连续剧来说早已很相当可观，但还算不上疯狂出现异常（不过这是我最喜欢的电视剧之一）。

此外，这部电视剧甚至没以无线形式播映，只是转入了有线电视网络。《老爸老妈的浪漫史》（How I Met Your Mother）中倍受期望的一集可以惹来近1100万观众。考虑到这样的收视率规模，互联网或许知道没有办法支撑电视。Because it takes up that whopping 30% of home Internet bandwidth, Netflix is disrupting traditional “peering” structures whereby two or more networks, which are required to be connected at a hardware level, exchange traffic for free. The networks that Netflix connects to are sending significantly more traffic to their peering partners than they’re receiving in return. The extra traffic forces many of these last-mile providers to either spend money to upgrade their infrastructure, or their users will suffer from a degraded viewing experience.由于掌控了超过30%的家用互联网比特率，奈飞超越了传统的对等平联成结构，也就是两个或多个网络在硬件层面相连在一起，免费互相交换数据。

奈飞相连的网络向对等网络发送到的数据相比之下多达了从对方那里接管的数据。这些多出来的数据被迫许多这样的“最后一哩”服务供应商升级自己的基础设施，否则，用户的收视率体验就不会折扣。

Earlier this year, Comcast CMCSA -0.69% and Netflix signed a paid peering agreement designed to improve Netflix’s performance, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are consistently at the limits of bandwidth when it comes to streaming high-quality video. Sure enough, a few months later, images of Netflix error messages blaming Verizon for slow bandwidth started going viral online.今年早些时候，康卡斯特（Comcast）和奈飞签订了一份收费直联协议，目的提高奈飞的节目播映效果，但这个措施并无法转变这样一个事实。那就是，播出高质量视频时我们对比特率的用于总是正处于无限大状态。

可以认同，几个月后奈飞谴责威瑞森（Verizon）影响网速的报错信息图片就不会像病毒一样在网上传播出去。I binge-watched the latest season of House of Cards.Even though my wife and I pay for an upgraded Verizon FiOS Internet package, every episode came through in painfully grainy quality. Every now and then, when the scenery barely moved, it would snap into much better focus, only to remind me how bad the viewing quality was. Obviously, as we later learned, the issue wasn’t Verizon to my house, but Netflix to Verizon.我一集不落地看了《纸牌屋》的近期一季。尽管我和我妻子出售了威瑞森的FiOS套餐Ultra，每一集的画质仍然惨不忍睹。

偶尔地，每次画面基本定格的时候，清晰度就不会显著下降，这不能让我想起画面质量到底有多差劲。就像我们后来了解到的那样，问题似乎不是出有在威瑞森到我们家这个环节，而是奈飞到威瑞森。The problem is potentially bigger: Cord-cutters like to talk about being free of the constraints of cable bundles, but the trend I’m seeing is that bandwidth deals could turn into bundles themselves. Imagine you move into a new neighborhood and have a choice of Internet service providers; before you select, you need to do some homework on who has deals in place with the video content companies you like to watch over the Internet.问题可能会显得更加相当严重：拒绝接受有线电视的人讨厌把挣脱有线电视套餐的束缚悬挂在嘴边，但我看见的趋势是，网络视频服务本身也有可能以套餐形式经常出现。想象一下，你搬到了家，可以在一些网络服务供应商之间展开自由选择；那么在你作出要求之前，你必须再行实地考察一下，想到哪些网络公司可以获取你讨厌在线观赏的视频内容。

We truly want “TV everywhere.” Yet when most people talk about problems with Netflix and its ilk, they’re talking about concerns that their subscription rates are going to go up or that some studio is going to pull their favorite movies from on-demand streaming. With theAereo U.S. Supreme Court decision, cord-cutters are now quickly hunting down their next best options. But as long as these bandwidth problems are as glaring as they are (and getting worse) we’re not going to make the strides we need, and the industry won’t be able to deliver the experience that consumers are hungry for. And judging by the fact that Netflix more than doubled its Emmy nomination haul this year, I’d wager they (we) are pretty hungry.我们当然期望“电视无处不在”。然而，许多人谈及奈飞等公司的问题时担忧的事情是收费下降，或者某些电影公司把他们最喜欢的电影撤离串流表格。

随着美国最高法院裁决网络电视公司Aereo侵害电视台版权，拒绝接受有线电视的消费者现在开始很快找寻次优方案。但只要这些比特率问题仍然这么引人注目（或者显得更糟），我们就没有办法朝著向前迈向，这个行业也就没有办法为消费者获取他们渴求的那种体验。

奈飞今年取得的艾美奖奖提名减少了一倍以上，我得说道他们（也还包括我们）的期望程度非常低。

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