Bittorrent Implements Cache Discovery Protocol
An anonymous reader writes "CacheLogic and BitTorrent introduce an open-source Cache Discovery Protocol (CDP) that allows ISP's to cache and seed Bittorrent traffic. Currently, Bittorrent traffic is suffering from bandwidth throttling ISP's that claim that Bittorrent traffic is cluttering their pipes. This motivated the developers of the most popular Bittorrent clients implement protocol encryption to protect bittorrent users from being slowed down by their ISP's. However, Bram Cohen, the founder of Bittorrent doubted that encryption was the solution, and found (together with CacheLogic) a more ISP friendly alternative."
On the cache the files are stored as file chunks, with only a reference to the file hash value, not the filename. So the ISP has no idea what is in the cache, so it is the same as the file being passed through their network.
And who doles-out the multicast group addresses? I think the problem is harder than you think at first glance.