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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."
It's the age-old philosophy of "understand or destroy." Once they realize something can make or save them huge bucks, they'll no longer demonize it. Or at least not their own brand of it...
The CB App. What's your 20?
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
Don't they understand that they could cut their P2P traffic down to 0 by just providing the MP3s and MPGs for free on one of their own servers?
Sheesh!
Aren't they just trying to speed up their internet for the average user, and bitTorrent just happens to be the biggest bandwitdh hog?
Do they really care if you're downloading newestLinuxDistro.iso or newestDVDrelease? I wouldn't think so.
On the other hand, if Comcast was my ISP, I would prefer faster p2p over normal web browsing. I want an open Internet. Period.
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.
FTFA - it looks like they are focusing on the "legal" downloads and rentals aspect of the application. If I had to guess, they might be heading in the "hey, we provide a legal alternative to BitTorrent, so what's all the fuss" as they drop torrent packets or turn off that traffic all together.
How exactly does one download a rental from a peer?
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?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Comcast wants a slow hobbled P2P network because P2P ultimately threatens their fat juicy monopoly cable television content delivery monopoly. I don't believe it's oversold bandwidth for one second. Those fiber optic cables are just proportioned 90% cable television crap channels, 10% internet (if not 95/5%). The profit margin on internet is probably ten times greater than the profit margin on cable channels, but losing the cable channels monopoly probably represent a threat to 66% of their revenue. It's all about controlling the delivery of electronic bits.
If bandwidth were to start growing like CPU power grew, every cable television company will be competing against every cable television company in every city market for content delivery. That means eventually a la carte cable television channels. Why is it that allegedly oversold bandwidth doesn't have the slightest effect on the delivery of cable television content?
It looks like Comcast wants to move in on P2P so they can try to dominate it, eventually infest it with commercials, and control it so that it doesn't threaten their content delivery business. Right now almost every Comcast cable television customer is paying for a whole bunch of commercial infested crap they don't really want. Who has time to watch all 200 channels of crap being sent through fiber optic cable 24/7? Comcast could increase internet bandwidth a *hundred fold* if customers could start choosing to knock out the total waste of bandwidth caused by delivery of content nobody wants to watch, including HD bandwidth hogging versions of content nobody wants to watch.
It's imperative for Comcast's long term business survival that they become a P2P middleman, or they are screwed. Since they can't shut down P2P without politically unfeasible anti-trust violations (threatening every web site, every VoIP business, everything on the internet), they are going to try and grab a hold of P2P and use their dominance to try and shape P2P. You damn kids consumers trying to skim the skim, trying to middleman the middleman.
This is Comcast 2.0, as in become the 2 between the Ps.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr