A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
More than a hundred million people around the world streamed last Friday's boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PAUL VS. TYSON")
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Declaring your winner by unanimous decision, Jake El Gallo Paul.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, not all of them had a smooth experience, including me. I had a little trouble with the feed. It froze once. I had to exit Netflix and then restart it. And the picture from time to time would pixelate - you know, blur with those little squares. Social media was flooded with complaints about poor picture quality, and some users could not connect at all. So that got us wondering, is the internet ready to stream big live events? I'm going to ask Michael Smith, professor of information technology and policy at Carnegie Mellon University. So professor, what makes it so difficult to stream something live over the internet to millions of people?
MICHAEL SMITH: Well, the internet was designed for point-to-point communication. Broadcast channels were designed for, you know, multi-point communication. That's why it's called broadcast. So we're trying to get the internet to do something it wasn't really designed to do.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, would it even be possible today to have everyone who wants to watch the Super Bowl, for example, do so online instead of on cable or satellite?
SMITH: Probably not today.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
SMITH: And here's the analogy I would think of - right? - in 2014, HBO online would crash every time they launched a new episode of "Game Of Thrones," right? So 10 million people watching "Game Of Thrones" would crash it. Tonight, we're going to watch the Browns play the Steelers - go Steelers - on "Thursday Night Football." Ten million people are going to watch it. It's going to be just fine. So we've moved from 10 million being the problem and - to a hundred million being the problem in 10 years. I think we're going to get even better over the next 10 years.
MARTÍNEZ: Well, so you mentioned tonight's game. I know Netflix is just about - what? - a month away from another big day of sports. It's going to stream two NFL games on Christmas, and one of them is going to have a halftime show by Beyonce. So, I mean, what do companies need to do to make it possible to stream hundreds of millions - or to stream for hundreds of millions of people at the same time?
SMITH: Yeah. So Netflix right now has got to be working on their server capacity and their intermediate buffering nodes to make them ready for these two NFL games. I think it's going to turn out just fine.
MARTÍNEZ: You know, I used to say when I was a sports radio host a long time ago that eventually, we're all going to be watching things like the Super Bowl pay-per-view. In some ways, I think we're getting close to it. I mean, is that what's going to happen with pretty much every single big sporting event - eventually, one day, we're going to just stream all of them?
SMITH: I think we're going to stream all of them. And I think you're right. We're getting closer to pay-per-view or pay-per-view in a big bundle like ESPN+ or Amazon Prime.
MARTÍNEZ: Callers used to say I was crazy, Michael...
(LAUGHTER)
MARTÍNEZ: ...That it's never going to happen. No way. You're nuts, A. But...
SMITH: Feel free to call them back and tell him you were right.
MARTÍNEZ: I guess I'll have to pull the tapes. So Michael Smith is a professor of IT and policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Smith, thanks.
SMITH: My pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF JUICE CUICE'S "DON'T LET GO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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