Perspective: The P2P mistake at Ohio University

perspective Ohio University recently informed students that the use of peer-to-peer technology has been banned from the campus computer network. The reasons cited range from network congestion to malicious software to piracy.

While the university acknowledges that there are legitimate uses of P2P technologies, the blanket ban on the technology stands.

By instituting this ban, Ohio University has demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of P2P technology's value and role on the Internet. Furthermore, the school has closed its doors to innovation and shirked its responsibilities as an educational institution.

P2P is still a tremendously misunderstood and underestimated technology. It is most commonly associated with file sharing, which is only one application of P2P technology. It has been applied in many compelling ways--as a mechanism to make voice calls over the Internet (think Skype), to legally enjoy popular TV shows when on the go or away from a TV, and to solve problems that enterprises face in their computer networks.

The best way to alleviate the stress on the central backbone of the Internet is to decentralize the onus of distribution to a local level using P2P.

Many artists, along with nonprofit and budget-conscious organizations, depend a great deal on P2P to reduce the costs of publication on the Internet. A blanket ban, then, will cripple the basic Internet experience for the very students and organizations that need it most. P2P technologies like BitTorrent are being used by independent software developers, entities like NASA and PBS, and countless musicians and filmmakers to move large files faster and more efficiently around the Web. On the other end of the publishing spectrum, major Hollywood studios like our partners 20th Century Fox, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, MGM and Warner Bros. have made their content available legally via P2P technology.

A P2P fix for what ails the Internet
What Ohio University and others fail to realize is that within P2P lies a much-needed fix for the Internet itself. The way we use the Internet today--to stream YouTube videos, to make Voice over IP calls, or to download software and video games--is actually taxing the capacity of our networks and servers beyond their design. If applied intelligently, P2P can provide more capacity to congested networks by harnessing abundant and unused computing capacity and bandwidth we have in our own PCs. If other institutions followed in the footsteps of Ohio University--or worse, if P2P technology were banned completely--the traffic jam on the Internet will actually worsen.

Given my position at BitTorrent, I confess I have a vested interest in building a successful and robust future for P2P architectures; however, this vested opinion is shared by many others. According to a recent study by Deloitte, experts state that video traffic alone is stretching the Internet to its limits and that the current growth rate will lead to serious congestion problems.

If P2P is like a hybrid car, BitTorrent is the Toyota Prius.

P2P can help. (One of the original designers of the Internet, Vint Cerf, also agrees with us.) The best way to alleviate the stress on the central backbone of the Internet is to decentralize the onus of distribution to a local level using P2P, and specifically with a BitTorrent-like architecture. BitTorrent does one thing and one thing only: it reduces, not replaces, the dependency on a central Web server by accumulating all of the available bandwidth and computing capacity that lives on the user's PC. As a result, a Web site and the Internet can run more efficiently. If P2P is like a hybrid car, BitTorrent is the Toyota Prius. Although it doesn't eliminate the need for gasoline (that is, central Web servers), BitTorrent can often provide more than 1,000 times the "fuel efficiency" relative to the old-fashioned way of driving the Internet, which has been dependent on a lot of central resources.

The smart money is betting on P2P. Companies that offer traditional, centralized Internet infrastructure are increasingly adopting P2P to tap its efficiency when managing the delivery of large, popular files that strain central servers. For example, BitTorrent technology is a natural addition to the content delivery market--we are currently in trials with beta customers. Industry heavyweights are also getting in on the action: Akamai Technologies last month purchased a P2P company called Red Swoosh, and VeriSign has scooped up an early P2P developer called Kontiki.

Biography
Ashwin Navin is president and co-founder of BitTorrent. He is currently downloading music from The Decemberists legally, and says you should do the same--with administration approval, of course.

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