BBC iPlayer features play havoc with networks

New features in the BBC iPlayer could place significant extra demand on business networks, according to security and management firm Blue Coat.

The ability of the iPlayer to support HD content and automatically download programmes when marked as a 'favourite' are likely to have the most impact, Nigel Hawthorn, vice president of EMEA marketing at Blue Coat, told V3.co.uk.

Large chunks of an organisation's bandwidth could be used up with a one-hour HD TV show at up to 1.5GB in size, the firm warned.

"The additional iPlayer features have the potential to slow business-critical content, making companies less efficient and possibly meaning that a firm has to buy extra bandwidth," Hawthorn said.

"If a company employing 1,000 workers has a 100Mbit/s connection, this realistically means that every user has 100Kbit/s of bandwidth each. If 30 people in the workforce were to download HD content from iPlayer, all the bandwidth would be taken up."

Hawthorn explained that the streaming of World Cup games had a negative impact on businesses, and that some networks were unable to cope. Network managers should be aware of the potential problems, and determine what the bandwidth is being used for.

"The ability to monitor the network connection is important, and there are various programs available to do this," he said.

"Businesses can also download programs to split data between users. This means that if multiple users download the same program from iPlayer, the business network would only have to put in one request to the BBC."

Finally, companies may have to ban such features at work, Hawthorn added.

The latest figures from the BBC (PDF) suggest that there were 130 million iPlayer requests in May 2010, an increase of 60 per cent year on year.

Other catch-up services such as 4OD and ITV Player are also likely to add similar features, Blue Coat warned.