Kontiki is a peer-assisted content delivery technology company, founded in November 2000. It was acquired by VeriSign in March 2006. VeriSign, as part of a major divestiture, sold Kontiki to MK Capital in May 2008.[1]
Kontiki is characterized as peer-assisted because it uses a combination of central servers and peer-to-peer communications. The Kontiki Delivery Manager used to provide the basis for some of the UK's video on demand services such as Sky Anytime, BBC iPlayer and 4od - but no longer, since they've moved to using Flash or Silverlight as a delivery platform.
Kontiki works using peer-assisted technology. Rather than the user downloading the entire television program from a central server, the Kontiki client combines pieces of the file downloaded from central servers with pieces of the file downloaded from other peers downloading the same content. Using this method the number of bits delivered from the central servers can be reduced, which can reduce cost. Additionally by leveraging other peers the system scales much more efficiently, and the more popular a piece of content is the more efficiently the system works. This is generally true for all peer-to-peer based systems.
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Kontiki has four parts: Network Publisher, Network Protector, Network Manager and Analyser.[2]
Kontiki operates a B2B business and allows its customers to configure the Kontiki software to suit their needs. Decisions regarding how much end-user control to expose are up to those configuring and deploying the Kontiki solution. This includes many configuration parameters, including whether or not the back end service (Kservice.exe) continues to operate when the front end (Khost.exe) is closed.
Most Kontiki client implementations allow for the back-end service (KService.exe) to continue to run when the provider's front end application (khost.exe) is closed. KService.exe continues to participate in the Kontiki network, downloading content the user has requested and possibly uploading parts of the content already downloaded to others in the Kontiki network. Each implementation can be configured individually, for example the BBC iPlayer provides an option to stop sharing when the client closes.
This can be particularly troublesome for users with broadband connections that include a capped monthly upload limit.[3]
Early versions of the Kontiki software had a few known issues that affect a small portion of the overall userbase.
To fix these issues it is recommended to upgrade to the latest version of the client offered by the service in question (BBC, Sky, Channel 4, etc...). However, some users have reported that this does not always fix the problem.[5]
Kontiki should be removed using the standard uninstallation system for your platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). When the last application using Kontiki is removed the core back-end service (KService.exe) will also be removed.
Example: If you have the Channel 4 4oD service and the BBC iPlayer installed then going to the Control Panel and uninstalling the iPlayer will not remove KService.exe. Once 4oD is uninstalled then KService.exe will also be removed.
KClean.exe is a program that eliminates all Kontiki components. However, use of this program will eliminate everything Kontiki from the system and break the functioning of applications that require it.
It is possible that the extra bandwidth used by Kontiki (and other such services) could make UK ISPs increase their prices or use technical measures such as blocking or traffic shaping to deal with iPlayer traffic. It is estimated that an hour of iPlayer downloads at peak time would cost them 67 pence at BT wholesale prices.[6] See Also The P4P Initiative.
P2P does incur more overhead than HTTP downloads, but in comparison to the size of the files typically delivered over P2P networks this overhead is insignificant. For example, when downloading a 500 MB TV show the HTTP overhead is approximately 350 bytes for request and response headers. Assuming that the overhead for P2P communication is 10 times larger, at 3500 bytes this would still only be a 0.00066% overhead.
Whether P2P is involved or not the number of bytes required to deliver a file remains roughly the same. Sending a 1 GB file to 1024 people means sending 1 TB of data, with or without P2P. The primary difference is in how the bits get there. This is not the case with realtime delivery. In order to guarantee realtime delivery via P2P, multiple peers have to send the same data. This parity data can be as much as 50% extra.
ISP networks historically have been optimized for sending bits from centralized servers to clients via the 'superhighways' of the Internet. Most P2P networks assign peers randomly and are not network topology aware like Kontiki is. This means that many of the bits being downloaded may come from far away. So it is the nature of the traffic caused by P2P, not necessarily the volume that is the key issue.
Also if traffic is streamed only from an organisations' servers, that company is paying for all the data to be streamed to Internet. With P2P the originator only has to pay for a tiny fraction of the traffic. If the users have usage based charges or cap, the users are picking up the "tab". If the users have no cap and a flat rate charge, then unlike YouTube and other real time streaming, the ISP is paying for the providers data. Many end-user (last mile) connections are asymmetric and the P2P distribution method dramatically increases load on the less capable upstream connection of the user. An asymmetric ratio of 8:1 (or worse) on end user connections is common. In contrast true centralised server traffic could be 1:20 and all paid for by the originator.