Verizon Says They're Embracing P2P

That's great to hear and would be even better if I lived in Verizon country.

It won't be long before the bittorrent client authors figure out how P4P is accomplishing this and enable the option themselves.

I for one would welcome it because then companies like Comcast don't have a leg to stand on, as this reduces the cost of transit by an order of magnitude.

Imagine if little Johnny is downloading that new movie release from the Pirate Bay, but over 58% of the traffic stays on Comcast backbone, never having to peer. Same with Time Warner and ATDN or the TBone. I always wondered why no one, especially the folks in Japan who have 100Mbps or 1Gbps connections but fairly small pipes to the outside world, never figured out how to implement this in the BT protocol.

While Verizon's probably patented their method (everyone patents everything nowadays), it's not hard to count the hops to a destination, or look up the owner of the peer's netblock, or even guess based only on latency.

Im sure thats patented. Automatic+look up+make determination of efficieny=patent

It's nice to hear an ISP working on a means to make the traffic more efficient to reduce load versus just trying to cut people off....

It sounds like a good way to sidestep network neutrality issues: create an application that people want to use, which favors your network, to replace another application people would want to use, which slows down your network.

The biggest use I could see would be for TV shows; lots of people want to watch them, but the website viewers are kind of slow or low quality.

despite the fact that Verizon DSL is slower than Comcrap, at least Verizon is honest about what they are doing.

I would also imagine they may restrict excessive uploading to other verizon hosts only. That 15mb upload on fios is HUGE. The problem is that with downloading you are limited by hard drive size and actually having to FIND what you want. But with uploading you can just download one torrent and let it seed for a week and max out your 15mb upload the whole time.

local bandwidth is almost never the issue, it's the transit/peering costs which cause the ISPs to hate P2P

if it's all done locally, they wouldn't care if you kept your pipe full 24/7

Maybe they will use Sandvine to make sure you can't peer off the Verizon net.

...has been around for years, handling this exact situation for quite some time. Yet ISPs continue to avoid it, for reasons unknown to mankind.

Well with IPTV on the horizon they will have to embrace multi-cast.

No they dont, they can just throttle and point to "upto" clauses in the TOS.

Multicast IPTV streams would most certainly be separate from the HSI traffic, the same way that MSO VoIP services are segmented off today.

Yes, but only the "partner" IPTV provider of the telco would get the QOS guarentee/tagging. Net Neutrality here we come.

How the heck is this a Net Neutrality issue?!

It's not like there's an exceedingly vast array of companies producing content that garners mass viewership. You'll have companies like NBC/Universal, Viacom, Time Warner, etc all partnering with information services companies to distribute their crap down to end users.

Anything that doesn't reach critical mass for viewership likely won't benefit much from multicast distribution anyway.

How about a torrent with 300 peers?

What about it? Torrents are a non-starter for IPTV because the bandwidth grows linearly with the number of viewers.

Multicast = each packet delivered to many recipients; bandwidth usage remains flat as subscribers are added.

Torrent = each recipient needs their own unique packet; number of packets on the network increases linearly as viewers are added.

Torrents can be streamed, with traditional swarming to make up for lost blocks. Its not rocket science. Only question is, will the power ever allow their holy multicast IPs to land in the hands of consumers?

If they only accept packets from local peers, that effectively makes those packets unavailable for the peers from other networks ...
That is violating network neutrality and stinks of proprietary network technology.

The article says in the lab, their torrent received 58% of the total data from local, on-net clients. They're not refusing anything.

This is a brilliant way to avoid net neutrality issues, increase the performance of bittorrent downloads for their end users, and save the ISP money.

Ok, I'm kind of skeptical of this but I'll withhold further comment till we get more information.
It sounds too good to be true ...

This was exactly my first response.

My second response: as long as users are free to choose, then who cares? If it's better, users will flock to it. If it's not, then they'll ignore it.

So, TEN THUMBS UP TO VERIZON.

What about pirated content? Will this only specific infohases (torrents), or only specific DRMed, proprietary p2p clients controlled by Big Media?

The only thing thats this sounds like it will be used for is WOW updates and other corporations that see p2p as a way to increase their profits by offloading distribution charges (fat internet connections) to others.

Comcast uses sandvine not because of peering issues but due to the bandwidth limitations of DOCSIS 1.0/1.1 on the upstream. They would most definitely care if you still saturated your connection since it could potentially impact other subscribers when you eat up all the upstream bandwidth for your node (the traffic still has to go back to the headend and to the ibone...)

BZZT, sorry Mr. Anonymous, but you know that is not true.

Comcast already provisions the modem, and can control the upload speed dynamically (as evidenced by upload PowerBoost).

They use Sandvine because it injects forged packets that make it difficult for consumers to notice that Comcast was not delivering the upload bandwidth that they were obligated to provide. Meanwhile, they could still "appear" to compete with FIOS and DSL when clearly, they they have an inferior product.

Yes they can control the upload speed up to what 16QAM currently handles (~10mb). But with cable's toplogy you know that 10mb is split across anywhere from 250-1000 homes.

Since CDV requires available upstream bandwidth as well you start to run into a problem with limited resources and want to make sure you're upstream bandwidth isn't being eaten by P2P connections that can sometimes stay connected for days at a time.

When DOCSIS 2.0/3.0 rolls out I think it will be less of an issue since you'll have 3x as much bandwidth per upstream. Some people will probably disagree but there is no throttling on the downstream at this point and new modulation profiles will make the upstreams bandwidth potential look a lot more like the download bandwidths potential.

Actually, he was absolutely accurate with that statement.Powerboost doesn't adjust the upstream speed in the way you are suggesting. It's a fixed ruleset: Transmit at {x} bits per second for {y} bytes, after which rate-limit to {z} bits per second until traffic falls below {#} bits per second.They used Sandvine to solve a problem with upstream congestion resulting from P2P flows that exceed the carrying capacity of their current DOCSIS network implementation. Outside of P2P applications, traffic demand of that level would not be seen on broadband networks.

Right -- but that ruleset is applied at the headend (it has to be, since PowerBoost is enabled based on node conditions as well as individual conditions).

That's why I said what I said. It's sadly ironic. They didn't need Sandvine's injected RST's at all -- they have everything they need to constrict the upload on a spigot-by-spigot basis right at the headend.

I think you're reading too much logic into how it actually works. In order to avoid collisions on the upstream channel, DOCSIS 1.1+ systems use TDMA to dole out time slices to cable modems who request them so that they can transmit. You basically end up with a "bucket" of timeslots to dole out based on the TDMA configuration. The size of each timeslot is a function of the upstream channel capability (9megabit on DOCSIS 1.x systems) divided by the number of timeslots per second the CMTS is capable of jmanaging.

The timeslots in the bucket get divided equally amongst every device requesting a time slot up to the rate limit they are provisioned for. So for Powerboost you will be allowed to grab 2mbps worth of timeslots as long as there are sufficient timeslots in the bucket, and after {x} number of bytes you will be scaled back to a maximum of 384kbps or 768kbps worth of timeslots from the bucket.

Keep in mind that all this is a highly specific instruction set baked into an ASIC to maintain performance. The more complicated the instruction set, the more expensive the ASICs are to produce so network manufacturers try to keep things as simple as possible. The various conditions you refer to really boil down to the two simple resources: free timeslots in the bucket, and the limit of how many timeslots can be allocated to each modem every second. When enough CPE devices start requesting time slots the division of the bucket of resource across all modems is less than the powerboost rate, and can even be less than the non-boost max limit.Well, sort of. The "dials and knobs" you have to work with are pretty limited overall on hardware-based network routing equipment. They would pretty much be limited to throttling the speed of the entire pipe as the CMTS doesn't have the smarts to perform the same heuristical analysis as the Sandvine appliance, and there is no way for Sandvine to inject information into the control plane to let the CMTS know which packets to throttle. The interaction would basically need to be the same as the provisioning system that handles establishing the parameters of your connection if you upgrade or downgrade service. So basically they could set it up that if you max your upload for more than {t} amount of time, they will reprovision your upstream connection to {x} kbps. Making that many configuration changes can be risky, and would likely present a greater risk to the overall stability of the network than the current Sandvine implementation.

Last item first: invent one.

As for the rest of the quote -- at that particular moment, do we care that it throttles the speed of a customer's connection? Wouldn't it be more neutral (not to mention less surreptitious, less privacy invasive, more in keeping with Internet Standards) to manage upon an account overall rather than to pick on a protocol in use on the account?

It wouldn't do you any good.. not in the near term. In order for that to work you'd need to have a Sandvine-like device that was a blade in the Cisco CMTS chassis so that it could interact directly with the control plane. Also, control plane hooks would need to be written which would require new hardware. You're basically talking about a multi-million dollar forklift upgrade that wouldn't actually create additional capacity -- there would be no gain other than a more "gentle" way of dealing with P2P throttling.You'd still need to do the heuristical discovery of P2P traffic, you'd have to find a way harness that data and interface with the provisioning system to adjust the configuration of the CMTS.

Doable? Sure. More expensive than Sandvine? At least an order of magnitude more expensive.

Absolutely I am -- on purpose. Richard Bennett actually gave me this idea, because he was arguing about the inability for an MSO to dynamically cap or throttle users at the cablemodem end. He totally failed to mention the head-end, which prompted me to ask "what about the head-end?"

In short, his answer was that it could work -- it's just not what happened. Here Comcast (et al) ignored a tremendous opportunity and used Sandvine instead. (I'm still of the thought that Sandvine was some senior-manager's decision and it lacked the consensus of the senior engineers that I know work for Comcast.)

Examples of upload flows of capacities equal to P2P file sharing:

1. Security cameras
2. Remote backups
3. Slingbox (and similar)
4. Any FTP upload, including mirroring
5. Participating in an H.323 or similar videoconferencing
6. Hotspot or hotel security using a personal proxy or VPN server
7.
8.

Blocking is the ISP preventing peers from connecting (a la Comcast). This is a client protocol which seeks out peers which are closest, preferably on the same local network, and is not controlled by ISP packet inspection, spoofing or filtering.

Big difference. Huge in fact. Massive.

It's good to see VZ being proactive to the the whole P2P situation, rather than reactive.

Also in the whole AP story Verizon states quite clearly:
"Verizon does not accept the role of network police agency," the company said.

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.
Happy to see they've starting rolling out fiber for FiOS in my neighborhood.

... getting a Hummer to run at 80mpg.

at other isp's are cheering this decision?

It's a bit like citibank saying that they're now welcoming all the nations bank robbers to their banks instead of the competitions.

They won't have to worry about using Sandvine as the p2p's will just cancel and move to FIOS. No network capacity issues when your customers are cancelling their service.

The p4p concept makes sense if your a verizon fios customer.
(accept data with a good upload rate)

But, why would someone else (say a comcast customer) want to run this ?
(turn down a good 2M verizon pipe for a slow 768k comcast pipe)

So, if it's a new protocol, wouldn't it need to be good for everyone? ie, so everyone would want to use it.

Folks, this is simply competition rhetoric designed to hurt Comcast and follow the public relations campaign around gaining market share of broadband.

Do you really think Verizon likes the idea of their content customers (who pay by the Mbps) to move all their distribution to residential CDN p2p system (under a flat fee).

BUT!!!! Verizon MUST GET FIOS MOVING and gain market share and will do this any way possible.

Once they get it, things will change. Bet on it.

My, my Grandma, what big teeth you have...

Ah yes, competition is a wonderful motivator, isn't it?

That's exactly how it's supposed to work.

As for your "doomsday scenario", I don't Comcast disappearing anytime soon.

I don't think Comcast has needed much help to hurt themselves up to now, so they'll probably continue not needing any from Verizon.

The Sandvine system (PPE 8200) already has this ability.

quote:

---

File-sharing traffic today continues to dominate service provider networks despite earlier suggestions that Peer-to-Peer (P2P) traffic would diminish with emerging online services and ongoing industry pressure. This popular technology has become a mass-market application and remains a key driver for broadband adoption in today’s competitive market. And the application of this technology is now broadening with leading commercial organizations already adopting P2P for legitimate content distribution.

The implication is clear – service providers must use intelligent approaches to manage P2P traffic that preserve the subscriber experience while achieving bandwidth savings. Sandvine’s Intelligent Traffic Management solution meets this important challenge with unique P2P routing technology that:

Reduces transit costs by keeping subscriber P2P traffic within the service provider’s network

Improves the subscriber experience through enhanced P2P performance

---

»www.sandvine.com/product ··· ment.asp

I dont think Comcast has that feature on.

MikeG -- yes, but that feature got little interest for buyers. Truth is, if Comcast used it, they might have avoided getting caught.

It still is a bad deal, though. That's like searching Google.com for something and getting your answer back from Comcast.net.

(The forgery involved, however, is freekin' brilliant!)

And it would work especially well with FIOS.... uncap the upload for Verizon users. That certainly will encourage the traffic to stay local.

I don't understand your train of thought. Can you say more about this?

this is just another way of load balancing the network.. if files are being sent at the same time to different locations, it's much easier to synchronize the transfers to multiple file sharers than send it ONE AT A TIME.. this is done with cached web pages and the like... many download sites also mirror data archives so that their ultimate costs for sending bandwidth aren't skyrocketing... it's just good business practice. it's a little harder to do that with 'non-legit' p2p, because if ISP's were is the business of caching pirated files.. that could put them in hot water..

Sounds like a nice move on Verizon's side for making sure people can torrent faster (legally of course), while saving the company some money. I tend to get all of my data off of normal download servers, but if for some reason I had to use torrent for a reason (like if the download servers that I know can max a T3 out easily are slow for days or are down for days), this would come out useful for when I get FiOS.

So they'll provide this service for the small percentage of "legitimate" P2P traffic. All 10 people that will benefit from this, feel free to clap now.