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Comcast Invests in P2P

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the evil-until-it-saves-the-man-some-money dept.

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."

15 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Neutrality, schmeutrality by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Insightful

    peer-to-peer file-sharing techniques that are "friendly" to Internet service providers. "Friendly" meaning, of course, that the customer pays the ISP extra for it.

    1. Re:Neutrality, schmeutrality by justsomecomputerguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, yes, there's probably that, immediate upfront scratch is not to be ignored...

      but I worried about the idea that they'll try to force subscribers to load their P2P software on any/all machines that want to connnect, even if you don't WANT to use ANY P2P. This is just pure paranoia on my part of course, unless I'm right.

      Why not "legally" turn ALL their customers into "bots" via the seducing promise of better video sharing on "their" P2P network. I'm just saying...

    2. Re:Neutrality, schmeutrality by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      but I worried about the idea that they'll try to force subscribers to load their P2P software on any/all machines that want to connnect, even if you don't WANT to use ANY P2P. This is just pure paranoia on my part of course, unless I'm right.

      Even with all the corruption in ISPs, I doubt that it will be passed. Because the effort of monitoring it and the effort of making a cross-platform P2P application would take tons of effort if they want at least some business as it would have to be ported to Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows CE, The Xbox, The Xbox 360, iPhone OS, Mac OS X, Earlier versions of Mac prior to OS X, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, PS3, PS2, Gamecube, Linux (all distros), FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, other versions of *BSD, UNIX, Solaris, various cell phone/PDA OSes, other Internet appliances, and all this software has to be not just maintained for older versions, but new versions yet to come out. So no, I don't think this will happen for a long while...
      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  2. Is anyone really surprised? by bennomatic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?
  3. Meanwhile, I still have issues with BT... by Doug52392 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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! :)

    1. Re:Meanwhile, I still have issues with BT... by caffeinemessiah · · Score: 4, Informative

      still takes over 30 minutes to get a consistent speed greater than 100kbps on a so-called High Speed network!

      Slow down there, champ. The BitTorrent protocol uses an approximate tit-for-tat strategy -- more peers will upload to you if you upload to more peers. This can take a while, which is why BT speeds generally trend up slowly, although I'll admit 30 minutes is a bit much even in my experience (I used to have comcast, now have at&t -- they're both crap, in short). It's all explained in this very clear and easy to read paper by Bram Cohen (the original protocol author) : Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent (PDF link).

      --
      An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
    2. Re:Meanwhile, I still have issues with BT... by joshtheitguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When you have Comcast or Cox Cable, it is a good bet to blame the ISP first.

    3. Re:Meanwhile, I still have issues with BT... by Darby · · Score: 3, Interesting

      When you have Comcast or Cox Cable, it is a good bet to blame the ISP first.

      That's true, but don't fall into the trap of thinking it must be so.
      We recently moved to a VOIP system at my work, and we have a lot of employees who work from home. Some of them are having problems. They can make a call, it connects, but no audio. One of my first thoughts was, "Stupid ISPs blocking traffic to sell their voice service". Our tech from the company we bought the system from took a phone that worked fine connecting to our office from their office to his house where he has Comcast and it failed the same way, lending another data point on that side.
      I took my phone home today, plugged it in and it works fine and I'm also on Comcast in the same area.
      My boss did the same and we had a nice clear conversation.
      So I can't blame Comcast on that one. I'd like to blame my users (obvious next step), but as of right now, I think it's probably just an issue with certain brands of home firewall/routers. Of course, if more than two
      users had even responded to our request for issues, I might have more data upon which to base my opinion.

      So, while it's good to keep in mind that they're sleazy operators and *will* lie about it, other things still fuck up ;-)

  4. That baby will be born dead. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  5. Don't they understand by ViperOrel · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  6. Antitrust by Bovius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Legal is key by ViperOrel · · Score: 3, Informative

    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?

    1. Re:Legal is key by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Informative
      That's nice - now explain to Joe WarcraftPlayer why he has to endure a forced wait just to get patches. Or explain why in the hell it takes someone 3x as long to grab Fedora Core 9 via BT than it would by grabbing it directly from an overloaded mirror server.

      Therein lies the clue you appear to be missing - not all BT traffic is illegal. Bittorrent has shown itself to be one hell of a sweet distribution channel during times when new releases of legit content and applications come out, which takes bandwidth pressure off of mirror servers.

      Also, all questions of legality and illegality aside, I honestly don't see any improvements in bandwidth that come from Comcast's forging of RST packets. If anything, it would only increase the amount of crap traffic and excess traffic (mostly caused by peer reconnects, re-establishment of connections lost, seeking new available connections, etc)...

      You'll find few if any people in here that have anything against buying legit software. The objections come from two places:

      1) Comcast is perfoming 'man-in-the-middle' attacks on their own customers, regardless of whether that attack may be justified (pirated material) or not (legit material). Conceptually, if they can do that, then what's to stop them from pretending to be you in any other context? It's a violation of many things, including existing anti-hacking laws.

      2) What right does Comcast have to interfere with legitimate traffic?

      I already know the argument - it's their network, take it or leave it... great: so let's strip the artificial monopolies they've been granted by state and local government, and remove any special privileges that they've been enjoying from said governments. Until they are willing to give those up, then they should and must be subject to us, the customer base.

      /P

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  8. Re:Perhaps we should give Comcast a break by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  9. Seriously? I am impressed. by Bob9113 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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