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Comcast Invests in P2P
AHTuttle writes to mention Comcast, recently under fire for throttling P2P traffic, has decided to invest in a P2P video-delivery startup called GridNetworks. "Seattle-based GridNetworks on Monday said that Comcast would make an unspecified investment in the company and collaborate on developing so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing techniques that are 'friendly' to Internet service providers."
Now that Concast are trying to show the federal government - not the customers - that they are good, I _still_ have issues with BitTorrent! It still takes over 30 minutes to get a consistent speed greater than 100kbps on a so-called High Speed network! So I will NEVER buy anything that comes out of this service because of what Concast did (completly forbid me from using BT for over 2 years)
:)
First post w00t!
An ISP will be stuck carrying traffic for whatever systems are deployed. It can't deploy one of its own and try to force people to use it (at least not without coming under fire on antitrust grounds).
And the commercial product will not become widely adopted and displace the other P2P applications. To do that it would have to be about 10 times as good an application and there isn't that much headroom available. (As for slowing down the other P2P applications, see above.)
Finally, it won't even be able to compete equally on a level playing field because it will certainly be hobbled with DRM.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This screams antitrust and conflict of interest. It screams it from every cell phone tower and internet backbone.
No, we don't have a problem with P2P...as long as you're using ours. Yeah, I know, people will always find a way around it as long as there's a network somehow connecting two computers, but that's not the point.
Aren't they just trying to speed up their internet for the average user
No, they're not. How does using method A vs method B change the amount of megabytes of data that user X wants to download? It's irrelevant, unless you can prove to me that their "method" uses less "overhead" (the amount of stuff in each packet that isn't actual data). But downloading 400MB via bittorrent, limewire, Kermit or a binary dump is still going to amount to a 400MB download.
However you may have a bright future in either marketing or politics.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
While I don't support Comcast's business or network management practices, it is fair to say that P2P is *not* ISP-friendly. BitTorrent and its peers (pun intended) are actually designed to chew up bandwidth, under the premise of "there's plenty and it's free". More broadly, though, Comcast continues to use any means possible to drag out their disruption of P2P traffic. They want to avoid and/or delay any legal input by the government, so they will try to keep up appearances of being open to "appropriate" P2P. This investment certainly seems to be another step down that path.
I don't care about time shifting when they play the shows over and over. I care about skipping commercials. Commercial skip is often disabled with these provided DVRs, so I won't use them.
I'm sure some content will be disallowed on their P-2-P systems, so I won't use that either.
Blar.
What this sort of thing _can_ do for comcast (etc) is keep the bandwidth usage from crossing one of their (toll road) borders.
Back when "the internet was monitized" and companies started charging for everything by "actual us" as opposed to "bandwidth promised" these super-smart companies discovered that they had footbulleted themselves. Now they pay X to get an OC12 but then then pay Y to actually transmit data over that link. E.g. live by the meeter, die by the meeter.
So if comcast can get you to use _their_ P2P (or VOIP etc) then they can make sure that they keep their traffic on their segments. Your tracker will suddenly only connect you to other peers on the same provider, and Comcast saves bunches.
Of course by balkinizing the network, the number of peers is diminished and the likely lifetime of a swarm declines faster. So they can also terminate offerings once they are no longer popular "enough" in the mind of the sysadmin in question.
That and since it is in-network you will start to see it looking like a win once net neutrality is killed. You know "see here, on the improved internet, local is better! by our sponsors product! be happy and consume!" etc.
So yea, in terms of green folding overhead, there is a lot less to be paid if you get your P2P from your self-approved value-added supplier.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I gotta say, this is impressive.
A corporation which has a fiat monopoly in many places (granted by local governments) has been using their monopoly to degrade one company's service. A practice for which they are already under investigation by congress. And now they are investing in that company's competition.
I gotta say that again, because I can barely believe it.
A company which has government granted monopolies in many communities has been degrading a company's service. They have come under congressional scrutiny for this behavior. And, while still under investigation, they are investing in a competing company.
The chutzpah is truly impressive. I haven't seen a pair like that in a very long time.
How completely pathetic is our monopoly abuse enforcement that a company would actually try this? would think this is a low-risk move?
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