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Comments on news posted 2008-11-04 09:03:40: The P4P Research Group (pdf), a coalition of most major ISPs, researchers and Pando networks, is working on a more efficient P2P protocol that saves transit time by only serving file parts from local peers to reduce hops. ..

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BabyBear
Keep wise ...with Nite-Owl
join:2007-01-11

BabyBear

Member

I have candy!

Why does this seem like the digital equivalent to a creepy guy in a van offering candy to kids on the street?

NOZIREV
join:2008-07-10
New Bedford, MA

NOZIREV

Member

sounds promising

by the initial findings this sounds like this could be a good thing for p2p users.
axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC

axus

Member

Great idea

Get people to stop using P2P by making them think "I'm not giving up my bandwidth to host someone elses files!"

QuakeFrag
Premium Member
join:2003-06-13
NH

QuakeFrag

Premium Member

Faster...

Currently I can download torrents maxing out my download speed. Why would I care about p4p? I'm not going to be downloading any faster than the speed I pay for. And a potential, additional charge for customers to attain this services of "prioritized p2p"... ridiculous. My speeds are fast enough, let alone paying for some shenanigans just so traffic stays in Comcast's network. Sounds like a win-win for the ISP here, get paid and use less inter-isp data.

Will this take off in the real world? Applied to torrenting? Or is it going to use proprietary software (ads infested too?)? Don't get me wrong, this idea is wonderful. It just has to sell to the public, who are already happy with torrents. #1 reason why it might fail... no 'illegal' content. Majority of p2p is illegal, so there won't be much left for P4P. Can this new technology really stand up and become a player in today's world?

themessiah404
@comcast.net

1 recommendation

themessiah404

Anon

Comcast as the new GOOD ISP? WHAT IS GOING ON?

COMCAST ACTUALLY WORKING FOR P2P? Why just 6 months ago I was having all my torrents crippled. Six months ago Comcast was bad for having caps and nowadays it seems to the be the one with the best caps.

What is going on? Did I go into another dimension where Comcast is actually the second best ISP in the nation? Why just 3 yrs ago it was the worst one. WHAT IS GOING ON? SOMEONE ANSWER ME.

NOZIREV
join:2008-07-10
New Bedford, MA

NOZIREV to QuakeFrag

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to QuakeFrag

Re: Faster...

i wonder if you dont use this new p4p if you will be throttled ???

jlivingood
Premium Member
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA

1 edit

1 recommendation

jlivingood to QuakeFrag

Premium Member

to QuakeFrag
said by QuakeFrag:

Currently I can download torrents maxing out my download speed. Why would I care about p4p? I'm not going to be downloading any faster than the speed I pay for. And a potential, additional charge for customers to attain this services of "prioritized p2p"... ridiculous. My speeds are fast enough, let alone paying for some shenanigans just so traffic stays in Comcast's network. Sounds like a win-win for the ISP here, get paid and use less inter-isp data.

Will this take off in the real world? Applied to torrenting? Or is it going to use proprietary software (ads infested too?)? Don't get me wrong, this idea is wonderful. It just has to sell to the public, who are already happy with torrents. #1 reason why it might fail... no 'illegal' content. Majority of p2p is illegal, so there won't be much left for P4P. Can this new technology really stand up and become a player in today's world?
No one at Comcast has suggested charging for this -- only Karl has done so here.

As this work moves into the IETF, you might expect that a standardized iTracker function was available with a well known name on a well known port, for any application to access on an open basis. As noted in the draft, the more clients making use of it, the better. So ISPs actually have a motivation to maximize use of the tracker rather than to constrain it via pricing mechanisms, proprietary APIs, etc.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

1 recommendation

FFH5

Premium Member

Some comments

»Comcast 'P4P' Tests Boost P2P By 80% [47] comments
you have to imagine that at some point, higher-level management at any major ISP that deployed this would find a way to screw things up.
1 - If by "screw things up" you mean that they will attempt the blocking of illegal content and/or copyrighted content, then yes that will probably happen. And why shouldn't it? They aren't in the business to aid and assist criminals &/or pirates.

2 - This doesn't remove concerns over upstream bandwidth constraints of the network at the local node. So those users using P4P must still consider whether their sharing of content(legal though it may be) will push them thru the caps their provider has implemented.

3 - P4P is designed to minimize the impact of sharing content on the provider's networks and improve user experience while trading legal content from legitimate content providers. It isn't meant to help The Pirate Bay work better.

jlivingood
Premium Member
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA

1 recommendation

jlivingood

Premium Member

Privacy

Karl asked: "Will the system come with anti-piracy provisions and filters?"

Here's what is in the draft, which is quoted in the article above:

Should such a mechanism be standardized, the use of ISP-provided iTrackers should probably be an opt-in feature for P2P users, or at least a feature of which they are explicitly aware of and which has been enabled by default in a particular P2P client. In this way, P2P users could choose to opt-in either explicitly or by their choice of P2P client in order to choose to use the iTracker to improve performance, which benefits both the user and the ISP at the same time. Importantly in terms of privacy, the iTracker makes available only network topology information, and would not in its current form enable an ISP, via the iTracker, to determine what P2P clients were downloading what content.

NOZIREV
join:2008-07-10
New Bedford, MA

NOZIREV to themessiah404

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to themessiah404

Re: Comcast as the new GOOD ISP? WHAT IS GOING ON?

Comcast has always been #1 in my eyes for products and service and this p4p is proving that they are trying to work with there customers and make the customer experience better.

jlivingood
Premium Member
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA

1 recommendation

jlivingood

Premium Member

Source-Code / Openness

Karl asks in the article: "Will the client source code be published?"

The client is a P2P client - but we're talking about a query interface between the P2P client and a tracker in some form.

As this is being pursued now in the IETF, what we'd hope happens is one or more RFCs released on this. That would likely specify in full how such a query interface would work and how the tracker files are configured and stored. As a result, much like SMTP or DNS for example, you may expect many software developers to create compliant software to these open specs. But we'll see - we are a long way from that point and more investigation & technical discussion is still ahead of us.

Jason
jlivingood

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jlivingood to themessiah404

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to themessiah404

Re: Comcast as the new GOOD ISP? WHAT IS GOING ON?

said by themessiah404 :

COMCAST ACTUALLY WORKING FOR P2P? Why just 6 months ago I was having all my torrents crippled. Six months ago Comcast was bad for having caps and nowadays it seems to the be the one with the best caps.

What is going on? Did I go into another dimension where Comcast is actually the second best ISP in the nation? Why just 3 yrs ago it was the worst one. WHAT IS GOING ON? SOMEONE ANSWER ME.
Crazy huh?
nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD

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to NOZIREV

Re: sounds promising

said by NOZIREV:

by the initial findings this sounds like this could be a good thing for p2p users.
based on past history, I'm guessing having incumbent ISPs (basically the incumbent telcos and cablecos) be involved with this means nothing good will come of it for customers.

please remember the incumbents aren't interested in keeping their customers happy, they are just interested in keeping them:

* That means bundles to confuse people and make it harder to compare services and prices

* it means speed tiers that are different from competitors (if there is a competitor), again making it harder to compare prices and services

* it means "P4P" to make customers think they are doing something "good" for them, when in reality it's likely just another scheme to further monetize the connection you're already paying them well for.

I refuse to believe that incumbent involvement in anything like this means anything other than another chance for them to make money by making customers pay more
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

Kearnstd to themessiah404

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to themessiah404

Re: Comcast as the new GOOD ISP? WHAT IS GOING ON?

Altering P2P to try and look inside the ISP cloud first would be a great idea imo. would improve downloads for users and cost pretty much nothing for the ISP since traffic in their cloud is on their network.

dnoyeB
Ferrous Phallus
join:2000-10-09
Southfield, MI

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to QuakeFrag

Re: Faster...

I couldn't agree more. I was under the impression that p2p like bittorrent will already try to use the faster peers over the slower ones. Naturally, this means you will be using in-network peers over out-of-network peers. So its already doing this.

What Comcast proposes is to prioritize in-network peers even if they are not faster. That is the only difference I can see. But I can't see any reason why they would not be faster already!?

On the legality front I have to disagree with you. There is plenty of legal content on p2p. I p2p 1 illegal song years ago when it[p2p] first came out because the song is not available due to disputes. Since then I have p2p 1000s of gigabytes of legal content.
Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO

Skippy25

Member

Cache Servers

I think they would be better served using Cache servers on the head end.

You can do this with virtually no liability as to what resides on the cache server and thus they do not need to be concerned with the files that get cached.

JasonOD
@comcast.net

JasonOD to jlivingood

Anon

to jlivingood

Re: Source-Code / Openness

Jason- I'm all for adding value to the product line and even sharing it with the greater community, but unless this P4P thing translates into marketshare or cash, stockholders (like me) aren't going to be real happy about it.

jlivingood
Premium Member
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA

jlivingood

Premium Member

said by JasonOD :

Jason- I'm all for adding value to the product line and even sharing it with the greater community, but unless this P4P thing translates into marketshare or cash, stockholders (like me) aren't going to be real happy about it.
Great question. While I am not a marketing person -- maybe this is another part of the broadband marketing in some way ("P2P downloads 50% faster than XYZ ISP"). But also there is the possibility of some cost reductions, when you see stats like this in the draft: "In terms of downstream utilization, we observed that P4P reduced incoming Internet traffic by an average of 80% at peering points."
jlivingood

jlivingood to Skippy25

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to Skippy25

Re: Cache Servers

said by Skippy25:

I think they would be better served using Cache servers on the head end.

You can do this with virtually no liability as to what resides on the cache server and thus they do not need to be concerned with the files that get cached.
One of the challenges with a cache is that you'd expect that an ISP would get DMCA take down notices (related to 'safe harbor' provisions).

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

1 recommendation

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MVM

to jlivingood

Re: Faster...

said by jlivingood:

No one at Comcast has suggested charging for this -- only Karl has done some here.
Karl got it right, he merely failed to recognize that Pando already paid for this by providing Comcast with political cover during the FCC investigation. Thanks to Pando, Comcast was able to cast the impression that it was working with the P2P community. Pando wanted something, too. Trying to woo the NBC Direct deal, Pando's CEO hoped that their P4P deal with Comcast would ensure success.

Said Saul Hansell in the New York Times, "Robert Levitan, the chief executive of Pando, had told me that he hoped Comcast might program its network to give preference to applications like the one his company makes."

It was a pretty bogus deal at the time, but it did lead to some actual outreach and eventually I hope it will yield fruit down the road. I don't know the quote, something like "it has to get bad before it gets good." I think that's true and maybe that's what we were seeing back then.
funchords

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Re: Some comments

said by FFH5:

1 - If by "screw things up" you mean that they will attempt the blocking of illegal content and/or copyrighted content, then yes that will probably happen. And why shouldn't it? They aren't in the business to aid and assist criminals &/or pirates.
TK,

All traffic is copyrighted. Therefore, it's a question of permissions and rights and exclusions. We don't want a network that tries to navigate that mess or that trades our wire-line privacy in order to do it.

That said, the Internet is a public square as well. In so much as users reveal themselves through their public activities, the ISPs should not be an anonymization service. If I'm a rights-holder and I see 123.234.234.123 exercising one of my exclusive rights, I ought to be able to find out who that is.

jlivingood
Premium Member
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA

jlivingood

Premium Member

Related Report

FWIW, this part of activities flowing from the IETF's Peer to Peer Infrastructure (P2Pi) Workshop that occurred on May 22, 2008, at MIT. For folks interested in learning more, Alissa Cooper from the CDT just reminded one of the IETF lists that this is out there:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-p2pi-cooper-workshop-report-00.txt

funchords
Hello
MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA

funchords to dnoyeB

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to dnoyeB

Re: Faster...

said by dnoyeB:

I couldn't agree more. I was under the impression that p2p like bittorrent will already try to use the faster peers over the slower ones. Naturally, this means you will be using in-network peers over out-of-network peers. So its already doing this.
Right, and the P4P guys at Pando and Verizon recognize this. However, finding those faster peers takes about 15-20 minutes. The difference that P4P might make is ultimately going to be in those first 15-20 minutes.
funchords

funchords to jlivingood

MVM

to jlivingood

Re: Cache Servers

said by jlivingood:

One of the challenges with a cache is that you'd expect that an ISP would get DMCA take down notices (related to 'safe harbor' provisions).
They come either way.

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

dadkins to jlivingood

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Re: Source-Code / Openness

Hey Jason!

Hook me up! I'll take it for a spin!
Just like the other new things at Comcast, I'll run 'em!

You have my email... pretty sure, right?
33358088 (banned)
join:2008-09-23

2 edits

33358088 (banned)

Member

Why THIS WILL FAIL

Why this will fail, once they got you hooked on it, all they have to do is cap you more, and throttle you more.

Think about it. It places control of the p2p network into the local isp who then gets harassed by Hollywood or is already opened by Hollywood and then poof your all done.

as too speed ya really think 500 people with 25Kbytes/sec will server another 100 local people faster then say 5 100MB lines? They are dreaming up and wasting money on tech that is foolish, unless they increase local upload speeds NONE OF THIS TECH IMPROVES.

in fact there's your solution right there, increase capacity 20% and give that to bandwidth up speeds, OMG suddenly everyone gets stuff faster and the network isn't having undue load on it for ten hours a dvdr at 80Kbytes or 100Kbytes up speed. a 100MB line has more then 100TIMES that up speed
so in effect ONE so called seedbox could seed up 20- 5 megabit people. and if you have the box and are seeding what you get via ftp, then you get to serve back at 100 times the speed you get at home, htus increasing what you can get via say a localized ftp client to the 100MB seedbox.

I know there is a bit a money to be made doing this sort a thing, and guess what neither the USA nor Canada you can do it because of idiot Hollywood. We are missing on economics of it all.

Too bad Hollywood now wants us all so poor we can't afford computers so they can survive and give us vinyl again.
pewey

beerbum
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join:2000-05-06
behind you..
Motorola MB8600
ARRIS TG862
Asus RT-AC5300

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Re: Comcast as the new GOOD ISP? WHAT IS GOING ON?

said by Kearnstd:

Altering P2P to try and look inside the ISP cloud first would be a great idea imo. would improve downloads for users and cost pretty much nothing for the ISP since traffic in their cloud is on their network.
I wonder if Comcast and the others would change their traffic management to _not count_ traffic entirely inside their network against whatever monthly caps they set..

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

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Re: I have candy!

said by BabyBear:

Why does this seem like the digital equivalent to a creepy guy in a van offering candy to kids on the street?
Hmmm.....technology to speed up transfers, spearheaded by the same company that spearheaded the transition to metered billing for your bandwidth. Yeah, I'd have to agree with the creepy guy with candy analogy.
watice
join:2008-11-01
New York, NY

watice to jlivingood

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Re: Privacy

I understand that you have to be very broad when you make statements about something that hasn't happened yet, but does this mean that you're not tracking who is downloading what, but still keeping a list of "what" is? Speed gains alone isn't enough of an incentive to switch to p4p if it's limited to "approved content only".

RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY

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Re: Faster...

said by funchords:

said by dnoyeB:

I couldn't agree more. I was under the impression that p2p like bittorrent will already try to use the faster peers over the slower ones. Naturally, this means you will be using in-network peers over out-of-network peers. So its already doing this.
Right, and the P4P guys at Pando and Verizon recognize this. However, finding those faster peers takes about 15-20 minutes.
WRONG. It takes only a few seconds. You look up YOUR IPN (at whois.arin.net) and that tells you all the others who are serviced by your IPN Block. You then look up what other IPN Blocks your ISP has. In my case, I am in block NETBLK-OOL-4BLK and altering that 4 to 1-9 shows the other blocks (only blocks 3-6 exist).

At that point, you can prefer those peers who are being serviced by your ISP without any need for any special P4P server. All that is needed is to update the BitTorrent software to acquire this NETBLOCK info and use it. As the clients are updated, their efficiency goes up. Also this information allows the client who is looking for peers to connect with to first try the "local" peers before needing to go through a backbone to connect to the peer.
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