AT&T Patents System To "Fast-Lane" File-Sharing Traffic

An anonymous reader writes Telecom giant AT&T has been awarded a patent for speeding up BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer traffic, and reducing the impact that these transactions have on the speed of its network. Unauthorized file-sharing generates thousands of petabytes of downloads every month, sparking considerable concern among the ISP community due to its detrimental effect on network speeds. AT&T and its Intellectual Property team has targeted the issue in a positive manner, and has appealed for the new patent to create a 'fast lane' for BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic. As well as developing systems around the caching of local files, the ISP has proposed analyzing BitTorrent traffic to connect high-impact clients to peers who use fewer resources.

Comments

Net Neutrality

[Rockoon]

Hard to swallow, but it violates net neutrality.

We supposedly dont want any preferential treatment of any traffic....

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Net neutrality isn't about treating all protocols equally, just all hosts.

Re:Net Neutrality

[JMJimmy]

Hard to swallow, but it violates net neutrality.

We supposedly dont want any preferential treatment of any traffic....

Not hard to swallow at all. You forget that the basics of fast lane technology: only those who pay get access. Sure, it may start out free but eventually it'll start getting a nominal fee and another and another.

Keep it neutral - it works.

Re:Net Neutrality

[meta-monkey]

No. Treating traffic differently based on protocol is fine. It's called QoS, and that's all this is. Net Neutrality is about the source and destination of packets.

What they're doing is conflating the two to confuse people so they'll say "gee I guess some fast lanes are okay..." and give up on Net Neutrality when really all they agreed is that QoS is a good idea.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anubis IV]

Part of it definitely isn't violating net neutrality, and the other part of it also isn't.

The first part is nothing more than a simple CDN. Basically, they identify popular files, cache them locally in subnets where they're popular, and then serve up the cached results in order to improve overall performance. That's a simple network optimization technique that provides data as quickly as possible without any regard for who you are or who's delivering the content. ISPs and CDNs already do this with everything from YouTube to Apple's software updates to Netflix to the DNS records for your blog. It in no way violates net neutrality.

As for the second part, it's also not a net neutrality issue, despite how it's being misrepresented to try and make it look like it is. There is no "fast lane". It's simply a method for engaging in more efficient multi-path/multi-source routing, which they already deal with on a regular basis with BGP. Basically, given multiple sources (i.e. peers) for the file that you're seeking, they'll connect you with the closest one. There's nothing contrary to net neutrality about preferentially selecting closer sources for the data you're requesting. If there was, then caching as a whole would be contrary to net neutrality, and that's clearly hogwash.

TL;DR: I read the article, and there is no "fast lane". All they're doing is caching and/or connecting you to the closest source for the data you've requested, both of which are done without regard for who you are or who is providing the content. These are common techniques already in widespread use for the last few decades. The only novel aspect of the patent is that it's "for P2P". *eyeroll*

which this would violate. Near preferred over Chin

[raymorris]

This system prefers a closer, better, faster HOST. Suppose your next door neighbor and a guy on the other side of the planet both offer a chunk of a torrent you want. It is better for it to be sent from your neighbor to you. That's faster for you and it's cheaper for the ISP than transporting traffic across the world or across the country. So that's what they patented - a system for encouraging your bittorrent client to download from your neighbor rather than from someone far away.

That's a preference for a particular host - the better one.

Re:Seems ripe for abuse

[tlambert]

Once the data leaves your network and makes its way onto theirs, its no longer your own traffic. Why people feel like they are entitled to abuse the system that the rest of us rely on is beyond me. This country has really gone downhill.

Probably because we don't feel that it's abuse; once we've paid for a certain diameter of pipe to the rest of the Internet, it's their job to let us send or receive whatever we want over that pipe, without editorializing.

Of course, if they really want to editorialize, and demonstrate a technical ability to do so, I'm going to hold them legally responsible any time my 13 year old son is successful in accessing porn over this pipe that they are supposedly capable of exercising content control on, since by *not* exercising control on that particular content, they are responsible for the porn.