Back in May Bit Torrent CEO Ashwin Narvin discussed their new upcoming Bit Torrent client. As Cohen and Narvin are eager to profit from their creation, and trying to strike deals with legitimate content developers and the RIAA/MPAA, they're obviously not thrilled that ISPs are throttling all Bit Torrent traffic, legal or otherwise. Cohen and company are trying to convince ISPs there's another option: caching.

"We spent an extraordinary amount of time face to face with the largest ISPs in the world who now see anywhere between a third and up to 70% of all their traffic in the BT protocol. [We’re] trying to convince them there’s a better way to manage the BitTorrent protocol then to limit it and to shape it. We’ve been strong advocates of the caching solution in the next version of the (Main Line) BitTorrent client, what we are calling the Allegra release. There’ll be a protocol which allows ISPs to cache BitTorrent content which is a great thing for users. It improves the user experience for downloading with BitTorrent no matter what client it is as long as it’s implemented the Cache Discovery Protocol and it also offers ISPs a cost effective way to allow BT to exist on their networks."

That new client was released today. The new functionality allows an ISP to host a caching server that retains the most frequently requested traffic and feeds it to a subscriber, saving them external bandwidth costs. There's obviously a plate-full of questions this solution brings up, foremost being whether ISPs will actually use it.

Will ISPs cache illegal content? If not, won't customers just use other clients, leaving ISPs in exactly the same place?