GNG News Guy
05-22-2008, 02:01 PM
http://i.dslr.net/urls/90/13090.gif (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Whats-Behind-Comcasts-Sudden-Love-of-P2P-94646)
In less than a year, Comcast has gone from a company that was using forged packets to throttle upstream P2P, to one that's promising to embrace P2P as if it were a long lost Uncle. The company has been heavily promoting their involvement in the development of a new "P4P" architecture (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/93441) by Pando Networks that only serves file parts from local peers to reduce hops. The coalition involves some fifty organizations, including AT&T, Verizon and many P2P vendors.
Pando and the new coalition believes they can speed up P2P transfers by as much as 235% across US cable networks and up to 898% across international broadband networks. In Verizon tests, Pando increased the percentage of data routed internally across their networks from 2.2% to 43.4%, which they claim reduced inter-ISP data transfers by an average of 34% (up to 43.8 % in the US and 75.1% internationally).
Comcast's involvement in the Pando P2P trials falls under the umbrella of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (http://www.dcia.info/), which Comcast just joined in order to develop a "new framework" of systematic cooperation between P2P vendors and ISPs. Comcast this week also began investing in Seattle-based startup GridNetworks (http://www.gridnetworks.com/), which focuses on P2P video delivery. Next month they'll expand Pando testing. Why the sudden P2P love?
The FCC investigation of Comcast's traffic shaping (and the beating the took from network neutrality advocates) obviously started the ball rolling. But alongside the desire to improve P2P efficiency, I'd argue we're seeing a new and highly coordinated effort to eradicicate a problem for ISPs, content creators, and legit P2P delivery outfits: piracy. Comcast's P2P love also goes hand in hand with a massive new billing shift.
http://www.thegng.org/quote_left_white.gif"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content."http://www.thegng.org/quote_right_white.gif
-Comcast CTO Tony Werner
While Comcast preaches their love of P2P, the company continues to throttle upstream P2P traffic and will until the end of the year. At that point, it's likely they'll implement their plans to implement a 250GB usage cap (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/94240), and begin charging customers for over-use. When Comcast joined the DCIA, Comcast CTO Tony Werner's language was telling:"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content."
In short, Comcast customers who want to use P2P to trade copyrighted files are about to either become second class citizens, or find themselves booted from the Comcast network entirely.
Comcast lawyers recently realized that instead of employing throttling techniques that anger network neutrality advocates, they can cure congestion problems by prioritizing their own P2P traffic (or P2P traffic from preferred, legal vendors), while leaving regular P2P traffic alone (sort of). As an internal source recently told me (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/94240), Comcast wants to begin terminating the accounts of users who receive four DMCA warning letters per year.
Comcast solves their congestion problems, gains added revenue from charging over-use fees, prevents piracy from competing with their own content, gets the FCC off their back, and gets to tell anyone who doesn't like it that they're simply fighting for justice. It's really a fairly ingenious way to solve what's been a disastrous PR problem, but it does raise a number of questions:
•Does Comcast plan to throttle "illegal" P2P traffic?
•What do non-coalition P2P video delivery members have to do in order to play with the major ISPs, and doesn't that make ISPs the P2P content delivery gatekeepers?
•Do ISPs intend on forcing users who want to use P2P to use their P4P network?
•Will the ISPs' new P4P project track what content is being shared and penalize users for sharing that copyrighted Air Supply album? Does part of the design involve making tracking easier on the MPAA & RIAA?
I hope to talk with ISPs, P2P companies and Pando Networks over the next few months in order to get a more complete picture of what's clearly a major shift in the industry.
In less than a year, Comcast has gone from a company that was using forged packets to throttle upstream P2P, to one that's promising to embrace P2P as if it were a long lost Uncle. The company has been heavily promoting their involvement in the development of a new "P4P" architecture (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/93441) by Pando Networks that only serves file parts from local peers to reduce hops. The coalition involves some fifty organizations, including AT&T, Verizon and many P2P vendors.
Pando and the new coalition believes they can speed up P2P transfers by as much as 235% across US cable networks and up to 898% across international broadband networks. In Verizon tests, Pando increased the percentage of data routed internally across their networks from 2.2% to 43.4%, which they claim reduced inter-ISP data transfers by an average of 34% (up to 43.8 % in the US and 75.1% internationally).
Comcast's involvement in the Pando P2P trials falls under the umbrella of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (http://www.dcia.info/), which Comcast just joined in order to develop a "new framework" of systematic cooperation between P2P vendors and ISPs. Comcast this week also began investing in Seattle-based startup GridNetworks (http://www.gridnetworks.com/), which focuses on P2P video delivery. Next month they'll expand Pando testing. Why the sudden P2P love?
The FCC investigation of Comcast's traffic shaping (and the beating the took from network neutrality advocates) obviously started the ball rolling. But alongside the desire to improve P2P efficiency, I'd argue we're seeing a new and highly coordinated effort to eradicicate a problem for ISPs, content creators, and legit P2P delivery outfits: piracy. Comcast's P2P love also goes hand in hand with a massive new billing shift.
http://www.thegng.org/quote_left_white.gif"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content."http://www.thegng.org/quote_right_white.gif
-Comcast CTO Tony Werner
While Comcast preaches their love of P2P, the company continues to throttle upstream P2P traffic and will until the end of the year. At that point, it's likely they'll implement their plans to implement a 250GB usage cap (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/94240), and begin charging customers for over-use. When Comcast joined the DCIA, Comcast CTO Tony Werner's language was telling:"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content."
In short, Comcast customers who want to use P2P to trade copyrighted files are about to either become second class citizens, or find themselves booted from the Comcast network entirely.
Comcast lawyers recently realized that instead of employing throttling techniques that anger network neutrality advocates, they can cure congestion problems by prioritizing their own P2P traffic (or P2P traffic from preferred, legal vendors), while leaving regular P2P traffic alone (sort of). As an internal source recently told me (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/94240), Comcast wants to begin terminating the accounts of users who receive four DMCA warning letters per year.
Comcast solves their congestion problems, gains added revenue from charging over-use fees, prevents piracy from competing with their own content, gets the FCC off their back, and gets to tell anyone who doesn't like it that they're simply fighting for justice. It's really a fairly ingenious way to solve what's been a disastrous PR problem, but it does raise a number of questions:
•Does Comcast plan to throttle "illegal" P2P traffic?
•What do non-coalition P2P video delivery members have to do in order to play with the major ISPs, and doesn't that make ISPs the P2P content delivery gatekeepers?
•Do ISPs intend on forcing users who want to use P2P to use their P4P network?
•Will the ISPs' new P4P project track what content is being shared and penalize users for sharing that copyrighted Air Supply album? Does part of the design involve making tracking easier on the MPAA & RIAA?
I hope to talk with ISPs, P2P companies and Pando Networks over the next few months in order to get a more complete picture of what's clearly a major shift in the industry.