I love the feedback on my position on P2P traffic. The well thought out "You Suck", " Or "the internet isnt that way", or "The ISP is selling me 10mbs, I can use it anyway I want."
Guess what, business models do evolve over time. You may want your ISP to be exactly how you want it to be. You may read into your experience with them anything you want. But it can and will change if the economics don't work for them. No amount of whining about "what the internet is supposed to be" will change any of that.
You can argue about how fiber should make it all the way to your bathroom if you want, that won't create the capital for ISPs or force them to spend it the way you want them to.
Maybe instead we should look at some realities and options.
So I've come up with a better way to get rid of P2P without calling for an outright disabling of the protocol. Maybe ISPs should just treat upstream bandwidth the way cellphone companies treat minutes. Give users an option on how many upstream bits they want to be able to use and during what times of day.
Charge more during prime usage times, less during off hours. For most internet users, like probably 99pct of us, it wouldn't make a bit of difference in our bills or consumption. In fact, many of us could opt for cheaper plans because beyond the family photos or videos we may upload every now and then, or the rare backup of our hard drives, most people don't consume much outbound bandwidth at all.
Of course that probably wouldn't be the case for users and abusers of the P2P protocol and applications. Imagine what would happen when WOW users or the rare bit torrent WAREZ or illegal music or video downloader got their bills and realized that they could either throttle their upstream bandwidth and wait forever for their goodies (if they could get them at all ), or open the throttle and watch free downloads start to cost a lot of money. Think that would be fun ?
How are they going to feel when they get a bill for upstream bandwidth for periods when they werent even downloading anything, but their PCs were busy acting as seeds for other P2P clients ? Think they will enjoy paying that bill ?
So I take it all back. DONT block P2P traffic. Just charge for upstream bandwidth usage like cellphone companies charge for minutes. That way if P2P really is more efficient, it will be a non issue. More people will use P2P and will never have to worry about their upstream bandwidth charges.
Or, if its less efficient, it will survive for applications where the owner of the application is willing to pay for the bandwidth the application consumes at both the host and destinations. It could also survive if off peak pricing for upstream bandwidth is cheap enough that its worth it to the user to pay for the bandwidth and take delivery of files during that low priced time period. A truly market solution. Imagine that.
Let the "you suck" comments begin.
I'm not a Comcast customer. I happen to get service from Verizon, ATT and Time Warner at various locations where I pay for internet service.
If I was a Comcast customer, I would tell them, as I am now telling all the services I am a customer of:
BLOCK P2P TRAFFIC , PLEASE
As a consumer, I want my internet experience to be as fast as possible. The last thing I want slowing my internet service down are P2P freeloaders. Thats right, P2P content distributors are nothing more than freeloaders. The only person/organization that benefits from P2P usage are those that are trying to distribute content and want to distribute it on someone else's bandwidth dime.
Does anyone really think its free ? That all the bandwidth consumed with content being distributed by P2P isn't being paid for by someone ? That bandwidth is being paid for by consumers. Consumers who pay for personal, not commercial applications. When consumers provide their bandwidth to assist commercial applications, they are subsidizing those commercial applications which if it isn't already, should be against an ISPs terms of service.
Thats not to say there isnt a place for P2P. There is. P2P is probably the least efficient means of distributing content in the last mile. Comcast, Time Warner, etc should charge a premium to those users who want to act as a seed and relay for P2P traffic. After all, that is why P2P is used, right ? For content distributors to avoid significant bandwidth and hosting charges. That makes it commercial traffic far more often than not. So make them pay commercial rates.
That will stop P2P dead in its tracks. P2P isnt so good that people will use it when they have to pay for all the bandwidth it consumes. It will die a quick death. That will speed up my internet connection.
thats a good thing.
So hang in there Comcast
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One thing continues to be a certainty in the technology world, NEVER challenge a sacred cow. If you do, the punches start flying. Of course the punches have to fly because the there isn't a real response otherwise.
I'm obviously not a huge P2P fan. Gordon Haff did a far better job than I explaining some reasons why. I think there. are valid applications for P2P on private networks, but nothing on the Internet that I think is worth surviving.
My position has nothing to do with Piracy. I think the MPAA and RIAA efforts towards piracy are a joke. They spend more money and waste more government resources than should be allowed. If they spent that money and time promoting why people should go to the movies and the value of owning music, those industries would benefit far more than anything they lose to piracy.
My position is not "if it uses bandwidth, its a bad thing". Flickr, Google Video, any host that pays for their bandwidth is all right by me. If they want to give it away, go for it. I actually think Google Video is a far better solution for audio and video distribution than any P2P solution. Google is willing to subsidize the worlds bandwidth for multimedia, why doesn't everyone take them up on their offer ? Go for it Google.
My position is not related to the Internet backbone. There is plenty of bandwidth there and will be for the short and as long a term as I can envision.
My position is related to the last mile. P2P is so incredibly inefficient. You send and receive the same bytes , which means for the portion of the file you are a seed for, you are at least 50pct inefficient. The more often you supply the bytes on your PC to others, the more you impose on the network. If there is a failure somewhere in the chain of delivery and assembly on the destination device , the error recovery process makes things far less efficient. All consuming more and more last mile bandwidth. The bandwidth that defines how fast my internet connection is.
I think the position that "you pay for the bandwidth, so you can use it any way you want" isn't reality and very flawed when it comes to P2P.
P2P "works" because those who install the clients are wiling to barter some of their bandwidth in exchange for getting a file that represents something of value to them. The bandwidth obviously has significant value to the person or company asking you to contribute it. That's why torrent clients and almost every P2P client requires you to contribute bandwidth in order to receive the goodies you want.
Bottom line, you are re-selling bandwidth. For those of you who like the buffet analogy, that's like saying you paid for the buffet, so its OK to take as much jello and mac and cheese as you can carry and walk outside the restaurant and sell it or trade it. Bizarre example, but it makes the point. Just because something is not metered and seemingly not suffering from any level of scarcity doesn't mean it isn't limited in availability and costly.
Because if it wasn't costly, we all would already have 1gbs to our home via fiber or free wireless everywhere.
The reality of our bandwidth to the home scenario today is that there isn't enough bandwidth to cure all ills. Last Mile Bandwidth is constrained and expensive to grow in multiples of what we all are ready and happily able to consume with legit applications
I personally don't want to see my connections slow down so P2P users can resell bandwidth to someone who isn't willing to pay for bandwidth in order to distribute their bandwidth consuming files.
but hey, that's me.
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