Researchers Suggest P2P As Solution To Video Domination of The Internet

JPawlak writes "NewScientistTech reports that big businesses may be realizing the benefits of P2P technologies. Blizzard uses it to distribute patches for World of Warcraft, and now researchers at Microsoft are indicating internet users may have to use it to help distribute online video clips. The growing cost associated with delivering such content may be becoming prohibitive for some companies. 'The team also suggest a way to prevent Internet Service Providers' costs jumping when their users start uploading much more data. The trick is to allow sharing only between people with the same provider, when data transactions are free. That restriction would cut the pool of sharers into smaller groups, meaning MSN's servers would have to do more to fill any gaps in the service. But costs could still fall by more than half, simulations showed.'"

Comments

ok but..

[mastershake_phd]

Sharing among people on the same network is only going to be effective for popular data. Not to mention I have a feeling Comcast would still send tell you you are using too much bandwidth even if it is all coming from within their network.

P2P != BitTorrent

[Asmor]

Saying BitTorrent (and similar protocols, if such exist) is P2P is like saying the web is the internet.

Re:P2P != BitTorrent

[Chandon Seldon]

My favorite P2P protocal is the Internet Protocal. If ISPs are going to block P2P, they should start with that one. All the other ones rely on it anyway.

Hmmm...I don't think so

[davmoo]

I have no problems at all with not for profit entities using some of my bandwidth to distribute their files.

I have serious problems with a for profit entity like Microsoft or Redhat doing the same.

The first one I call "charity" or "support". The second one I call "leaching", and its not far from "stealing".

If you're a for profit company and you can't afford bandwidth, then you need to find a new line of work. Don't expect your customers to give you freebies unless you're giving them something *good* in return, and something you're not also giving to those who don't share bandwidth.

Re:Hmmm...I don't think so

[QuantumTheologian]

Would this not be regulated by the market? If you don't want to use the extra bandwidth, don't use the product/service.

Re:Hmmm...I don't think so

[ScrewMaster]

But it doesn't seem reasonable to dismiss the system yet, when it could benefit everyone.

True, I suppose ... but then again, take a look at the caliber of the people running the show here in the United States. Largely it comes down to the Telcos and Comcast, and a few other big ISPs, none of whom are interested in anything but profit maximization. I guarantee you that if they find a way to reduce their costs using this or any other technology, they will simply pass the savings on to themselves and their stockholders. We customers will never see a penny of it in terms of our monthly expenses: all we might hope for would be an improvement in service quality, but I wouldn't bank on that either.

That's sooo 1980..

[0dugo0]

Researcher rediscovers USENET.

The idea is great, but...

[FooBarWidget]

...how do you implement it? Browsers currently have absolutely no support for implementing anything like this. I'm not sure whether it can be done in Flash. Java is so heavyweight that it would probably scare off most people. ActiveX is a no-go. You can't make people install client software either - 99% will never bother to do that. Unless you can make it work out-of-the-box on browsers, it'll not become popular.

And how do you implement P2P streaming? All P2P protocols until now allow peers to send file pieces in non-streamable order.

Re:The idea is great, but...

[Osty]

Oh and I forgot to ask this as well: how do you get around firewalls/NAT? Most people these days are behind NAT. In my experience, UPnP only works out-of-the-box on very few systems because most routers have UPnP disabled by default.

Support linux-igd? The project started back up in the past year and a half or so, along with libupnp coming back from the dead after Intel abandoned it. Help these projects get to the point where they're trivial to setup, stable, and shipped with all distributions and you solve the problem for the large number of folks using linux NATs. Better yet, that will ultimately trickly down to the router market as well, since a fair number of those use (or have used in the past) linux-based firmware. I've been using linuxigd for 2.5 years now and it's worked great with only a few minor hiccups (Xbox, Xbox 360, Azureus, Messenger, etc all work well with it), but in the past it's been a real pain to setup and actually get working.

Once people can finally get over GRC's sensationalist crap from nearly six years ago, we might finally get a real solution in place for NAT users. We all know IPv6 won't ever be widely adopted enough to make NAT obsolete.

Re:The idea is great, but...

[JordanL]

Browsers currently have absolutely no support for implementing anything like this.

Except for Opera, which is about the only program you actually need to interface with the entire web.

About the only thing it's not useful for is SSH and FTP.

Support Microsoft!

[haakondahl]

Download a P2P client and learn how to use it *today*. Help Apple! Share all of your files; learn how to become a seed. Lend the RIAA a hand--do their R&D for a new distribution model.

There is a term in Low German for the feeling I have right now--SchadenGoFuchyourselves.

Re:I've seen this happen here in italy

[Antique Geekmeister]

I've used bittorrent effectively inside a corporate firewall for transmitting DVD images, especially because HTTP and FTP couldn't handle files larger than 2 Gigabyte easily. The security models aren't built in: authentication of the content remains a separate step. But transmitting DRM enabled files, such as Windows Media files for the BBC's well-publicized Iplayer project, seems a natural approach and would help prevent fakery of the files. (That's a big problem for PiratesBay and other Bittorrent sites.)

Re:haha oh wow

[arivanov]

Actually they will.

Especially when someone points to the idiots from Redmondia (and other places) that they should stop reinventing multicast again and again. The technology to do what is needed is there, the ability of ISPs to control it so that it is not detrimental to other users is also there. It has been there since the dawn on the Internet. And it is Multicast. From the viewpoint of network design and network operation theory, P2P is nothing, but an extremely lame sorry and sad excuse for Multicast emulation.

Implementing it is solely a matter of minor network tidy-up for most ISPs along with some software updates for the CE devices (where not supplied by the ISP).

By the way, the same methods which are used to control multicast are also valid for P2P services. TTL adjustment down to under 8 will usually cut down the traffic to be solely within an ISP while cutting it down to under 4 will cut it down so it stays within the same RAS device (2 for non-NAT setups). It is also trivial to deliver a correct setting on a per-ISP basis and to autodetect the necessary setting adjustment.

There is no rocket science here and no research to be done. All the tech is already out there. The problem is that the suppliers of P2P services and developers of P2P software deliberately do not want to do this. In fact, they are doing everything they can to steal more service than the ISP is willing to allocate to them. As a result the ISPs have no other choice but to love this and use a big stick to provide the luving to the customer.

Oh yes, they will indeed love it...

[rucs_hack]

Most ISP now like people to be on limited download limits per month, and charge for excess. If this takes off, the number of 'accidantal' overrtuns will potentially skyrocket, and profits will be up.

I wouldn't be surprised if the unlimited tag is removed completely so they can be sure of cashing in on this.

I'll happily use p2p if it fulfills four criteria

1: It's legal.
2: Its to my direct benefit (people who just leech being removed from the system).
3: My ISP won't try to ass rape my bank account each month with overuse charges.
4: Microsoft don't run the show.

If they manage that, no problem, if not, well then it'll be time for a new technology, won't it.

obligatory

[wwmedia]

Nerd: I've developed a program that downloads porn from the interet a million times faster than normal

Marge: Who would need that much porn

Homer: [drools]...oohhh..1 million times faster..

Re:haha oh wow

[arivanov]

I probably did not express my thoughts clear enough. Let's give it another go.

There are two portions to a P2P network - discovery and data fetch. Discovery determines where do you get your data from and fetch is the actual data flow. An ISP can confine a P2P service to its own network by either limiting discovery or by limiting the actual fetches.

The discovery is where the P2P networks lamely emulate a multicast application. They try to determine if a piece of data A is present in any of the surrounding nodes B,C,D,E,F. In order to do that they in the trivial case transmit to each node. In the more modern networks they transmit to hypernodes and get info from there. In either case they try to emulate a multicast network via a tunnel mesh (just the way people try to emulate Multicast on ATM LANE).

Compared to that a discovery mechanism based on multicast with a unicast reply can give you the information on where exactly is the piece which you are interested with one request. There is usually no need for hypernodes either. It just works. Magically. Further to this, you can set your discovery scope to find nodes which are 1,2,3...n hops away by tweaking TTL. Further to this, it is a true P2P network - totally serverless. If you throw in PKI authentication you can also make it as secure as you wish.