P2P - From Internet Scourge to Savior

microbrewer writes "The MIT Technology Review has up a feature discussing the future of p2p networks. Specifically, they look at their role in content distribution, in the age of ubiquitous video services. Soon, the article asserts, the very same p2p-style networks that 'threatened' legitimate business may be the basis for most video-on-demand services." From the article: "So how could additional P2P traffic actually be a good thing for the Internet? Carnegie Mellon's Zhang points out that because peer-to-peer networks exploit both the downlink and uplink capacities of users' Internet connections, they distribute content more efficiently than centralized 'unicast' technologies. Zhang also says it should be possible to label P2P traffic so that service providers can track it and decide how much of it to allow through their networks. He and colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley have founded a startup, Rinera, to develop software that will give service providers such control."

Comments

But are the existing channels ready for this

[ztransform]

It is a good theory that moving distribution to many decentralised locations will improve content distribution. But present-day distribution networks and large-bandwidth sites have already bought and installed the infrastructure to send large volumes of bandwidth to Tier-1 ISP distribution points, and so forth to smaller ISPs etc. This works today.

I am agreed that P2P isn't necessarily bad - in fact if P2P algorithms could favour traffic within the same subnet, or indeed allow an ISP to somehow inform the P2P client which nodes are on the same ISP, then an ISP could actually benefit as traffic fills up the internal pipes and less traffic has to be purchased from other ISPs.

To expand on this point, perhaps a multicast protocol like DHCP on the local subject could be implemented; call it the "ISP IP Directory" protocol, or IID, and basically a P2P client would send a multicast query to the IID address with a query ("is x.x.x.x within your network? Or within your preferred peers?") and the IID server would respond with a yes/no. Then P2Ps could optimally download from preferred addresses..!

A shift in thinking in the design of P2P protocols is required if we really want to optimise bandwidth and content distribution.

Re:Yeah but

[Capt James McCarthy]

It depends upon your ISP. Speakeasy's agreement states that I can use all of my bandwidth 24/7 without any problems. A SysAdmin's ISP.

Label P2P data? Is he effing kidding me?

[PopeRatzo]

"Zhang also says it should be possible to label P2P traffic so that service providers can track it and decide how much of it to allow through their networks."

We have lived in such a rare time. We had access to a communication tool like no other in history. And for a brief moment, it was free - totally free. Unencumbered by the dictates of rich and powerful, it was without parallel in history. Anybody who connected to this great web of systems had just as much chance to make his message heard as anyone else. My email of undying love to my wife-to-be received the same access and dispatch as the advertising messages of multi-national corporations. Anybody with a good idea could put it out there for the world to see and if it had merit, it would gain in popularity. Google sprang from this freedom. So did Slashdot. And goatse. And it was the unusual confluence of public money and free enterprise, along with some very smart and generous folks, putting energy into something new and unprecedented that made this happen. Take one bit out of the equation - say the taxpayer-financed Department of Defense, or a Linus Torvald, or a Netscape or the many other pioneers who contributed to this vast project - and it doesn't happen, or it happens in a way that prevents the kid in the basement in Des Moines the opportunity to play.

But people who have acquired wealth and power don't like it when any old slob can do what they do. I mean, what good is being rich and powerful if it doesn't let you move to the head of the line? Now, a race is on to crush the experiment in liberty that has been the Internet. I guess it was too radical, too much of a danger to tyranny and concentrated wealth, to last very long.

We should all feel privileged for having seen the rise of this rarest of creatures - the fully open agora of information and ideas - and we should all feel sad that it couldn't be defended from the greedy and power hungry.

"scourge"? try "broadband sales driver"...

[plasmacutter]

Seriously.. everyone i knew from close family to the furthest acquaintance didn't think broadband was necessary or worth it until p2p traffic caught on.

yeah... all those people are using that 4-10 megabits a second so cnn.com will load faster.. riiight.