With 2.5 billion monthly users, the video platform YouTube is one of the most visited sites on the internet. The platform transmits several gigabytes of data per hour to connected devices in high-resolution 4K streaming quality. Since server farms require energy for every byte, YouTube sessions have a significant impact on your digital carbon footprint.
We’ve already written about PeerTube in our article on decentralised alternatives to social networks. This article takes another look at a special feature of PeerTube: its ability to transfer content via peer-to-peer connections. Does this make PeerTube a sustainable alternative to YouTube?
How can we ensure a green digital future?
Growing e-waste, carbon emissions from AI, data centre water usage—is rampant digitalisation compatible with a healthy planet? Our latest project explores how digital tools and services can be developed with sustainability in mind.
What exactly are peer-to-peer connections?
Let’s start with YouTube and see how video streaming on the internet normally works. When I click on a YouTube link in the RESET office in Berlin, my laptop first communicates with the local Wi-Fi router. This then sends a request to the Internet provider’s DNS server, which in turn carries out a name resolution for YouTube.com. The aim of this is to determine the IP address of YouTube in order to establish a connection.
Once the connection is established, the video platform uses so-called ‘content delivery networks’ to connect me to the nearest server that can provide the video I want. The data is then transferred between my laptop and the server.
These connections are based on the server-client model, allowing YouTube to adapt its servers to the number of connected clients. In addition, my laptop only retrieves the required data and therefore requires less power. The main load is taken over by the server. YouTube also retains control and can reserve the right to make changes to content, streaming connections and more. This is despite the fact that YouTube itself does not produce the lion’s share of the content.
If YouTube worked with peer-to-peer connections, my laptop would also perform a name resolution for the YouTube domain via the Internet provider’s DNS server. However, my notebook then joins a network with other clients on an equal footing. The data transfer then takes place in fragments with other devices instead of with one device. My notebook and the devices of other users repeatedly exchange small data packets and thus act independently of the server. YouTube would only have to distribute the video to one or a few devices, which would then distribute it in the P2P network. And this is exactly what PeerTube offers us.
What makes PeerTube different?
PeerTube and YouTube are both platforms for video streaming, but they work in fundamentally different ways. While YouTube is managed solely by Google, PeerTube is run on open-source software that belongs to all of us. Users can therefore set up their own PeerTube platforms on their personal servers using the PeerTube software provided by FramaSoft.
As PeerTube is part of the Fediverse, interested parties do not necessarily have to create their own account to stream videos, write comments and upload their own content. At RESET, we could also provide a sustainable PeerTube platform using servers that run on green electricity. YouTube users can’t influence whether operaters use green electricity and they also have to trust that YouTube owners Google will handle their personal data with sensitivity. PeerTube, however, allows us to ensure that our videos are hosted as sustainably and securely as possible.
According to its own sustainability report, Google is working hard to become completely CO2-neutral by 2030. Whether Google can still pursue these goals at all in the wake of the AI boom is questionable. An analysis by Cathleen Berger on Medium found that five out of seven big tech companies lost sight of their environmental goals due to the increased use of AI, despite the fact that they were actually on track to meet them. Whether the benefits of AI applications outweigh their negative impact on the environment is also a debate to be had.
Are peer-to-peer connections more sustainable?
PeerTube works via direct peer-to-peer connections to other clients that bypass energy-hungry server farms. But is this really more energy-efficient?
System administrator Lukas Rose sees P2P connections primarily as an opportunity to build fewer data centres and reduce their energy consumption. According to him, in P2P networks, “every client can also be a server”. A small number of servers are needed to mediate connections between the clients and to initially provide the data. However, this number is significantly lower than with a client-server-based approach.
Disadvantages of P2P connections
While we focus on the sustainability potential of P2P connections, we should also briefly discuss the disadvantages of the connections. After all, users should be careful with P2P, especially when it comes to videos.
Since individual clients also distribute the streamed videos at the same time, streaming copyrighted content can have legal consequences.
Marcus Förster sees P2P networks as a threat to data protection. After all, if data is not centralised in one place, it is less easy to protect it.
Another advantage is that we don’t have to scale server systems for peak loads. A streaming service, for example, has to provide larger server capacities in the evening when many of us want to load up Netflix. Providers have to design their data centres to be sufficiently powerful to manage these peak loads.
“You can counteract this with cloud technologies and virtualisation, […] but this is only possible to a limited extent,” Lukas Rose continues. Of course, PeerTube also has load peaks and quieter times. In this case, however, the servers do not have to send a video stream to each individual user. The users can simply pass the video stream on to a larger number of other devices. “You no longer need so many servers in the different regions of the world, as large networks of users can also bridge greater geographical distances.”
Marcus Förster, on the other hand, sees problems with the efficiency of the protocols. P2P connections such as PeerTube, which work with the WebRTC standard, are “definitely not efficient”. A data centre can also be better optimised compared to a network of many laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Without studies, we currently lack an overall assessment of how much CO2 we can save via P2P connections. However, PeerTube definitely allows us to have a greater influence on how sustainably we consume and publish videos on the internet. P2P connections can help with this—but it’s not yet possible to quantify the extent to which they do this.
