Natural yogurt.

bandwidth hogging internet users .

Rory Cellan-Jones writes today that...

When the BBC launched its iPlayer at Christmas 2007, there was a deal of muttering from some internet service providers about the effect on their networks and their costs of handling a flood of video streaming traffic.

Then it all seemed to go quiet for a while, despite an even bigger surge in traffic than most had anticipated. Now, though, the BBC appears to be at daggers drawn with the giant of the UK broadband market over the impact of iPlayer.

I was contacted a short while ago by a BBC colleague who wanted to tell me an interesting story. He worked in the technology department at the BBC, but was also a BT customer on the basic broadband package. And he couldn't help noticing that every evening, his speed was dropping to such a low level that watching the iPlayer became a much less satisfactory experience than usual.

This chap had access to the infrastructure behind the iPlayer and so was able to investigate further. What he found was that BT appeared to be throttling back iPlayer speeds for its Option 1 customers to somewhere around 700kbps between teatime and midnight.

...Read the full story if you like by clicking this link or the story on IT PRO .

Here is my opinion, I think that using BBC iPlayer is similar to the centre lane hogs on British motorways. These drivers stick in the middle lane not overtaking anybody but they develop a queue of traffic behind them. It is selfish and inconsiderate behaviour. Motorways were never designed for these centre lane hoggers but for considerate drivers to make best use of all lanes by overtaking slower traffic.

The internet is for everyone and we all have to share bandwidth with other internet users. BBC iPlayer uses an awful lot of bandwidth and is an inefficient use of the network that everyone pays for. I think that BT was right to throttle BBC iPlayer speeds down to 700mbps. What should other internet users suffer lower speeds because of the selfish use of bandwidth by the BBC iPlayer surfers.

People who wish to watch television programmes after they have been broadcast should buy a digital TV recorder. We have had one of these wonderful machines for over 2 years now and they are great to use. Broadband internet access should be used for information, not as another broadcast television medium that makes other users suffer lower access speeds.