RSSMicrosoft eyes a meaner, 'greener' P2P for Windows 7
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published March 17, 2008, 2:03 PM
Windows Vista already includes a P2P-enabling technology known as Teredo. But for the forthcoming Windows 7, Microsoft is contemplating adding such features as metered connections, distributed hash tables, and something called 'green P2P.'
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - For the Xbox 360 game Halo 3, P2P technology is "key to the whole experience," said See-Mong Tan, Microsoft's director for P2P networking. Now, Tan tells us, the company is pursuing more options that could bring new legitimacy to a technology that is still berated today for its heritage in anonymous file-sharing.
P2P technologies now being considered for the next edition of Windows include "Green P2P," metered connections, and distributed hash tables, Tan said, in a talk at DCIA's P2P Market Conference on Friday.
Tan told attendees at the conference in New York that many Web sites today offer "P2P experiences" even without relying on P2P technologies. On Wikipedia, for instance, "everyone can either edit or read." On YouTube, "anybody can post or watch videos."
But P2P technology, on the other hand, calls for the use of "computer sharing [across a] whole community grid," he said.
Initially, P2P was used for distributing free music over networks such as Napster, and then for unlicensed sharing of movies over eDonkey. "Now we're going to use it to sell movies," according to Tan. "The next thing goes to trying to sell bandwidth [at a] much cheaper rate than CDNs [content delivery networks]."
Also on the near horizon is the use of P2P networks as an advertising platform, said Tan.
Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 is already "one of the most successful" P2P platforms out there today, according to Microsoft's director for P2P networks. "Halo 3 is actually one of the most compelling (P2P games)," he contended.
In Halo 3, he said, the XBox 360 platform works as a "broker" to match up players in ways intended to ensure high quality of service (QoS). "Players communicate in P2P," said Tan. "P2P is actually key to the whole experience."
Xbox 360 communication between players takes place over the Xbox Live network, which has connections with Windows Live services. Microsoft also "continues to invest" in P2P technologies for Windows, Tan added. Microsoft is "letting protocols in Windows do the heavy lifting" for P2P.
Teredo was designed in 2003, and later implemented in Vista, as a novel approach for moving network traffic where packets use IPv6 protocol and addresses, across a firewall that uses an IPv4 network address translator. NAT is the most common method for any firewall to mask computers within a subnet. Each of those computers is given an IPv4 link-local address, usually beginning with the prefix 192.168.x.x.
But with Windows Server 2008, which premiered late last month, utilizing IPv6 as a default alternative addressing scheme for the first time, Vista had to be ready to support it as well. So rather than tunnel underneath the firewall, Teredo builds a kind of for-the-nonce P2P bridge over it, while still letting the NAT do the job of forwarding packets to their final IPv4 link-local destinations.
Another of the new technologies being considered for Windows 7 is given the timely name "Green P2P." It's a power management system for letting "PCs go to sleep and wake up only when addressed" over a P2P network.
Microsoft is also thinking about adding metered connections so as to reduce network "chattiness" over P2P links.
As another improvement, Microsoft is contemplating distributed hash tables (DHT), both for enterprise data centers and broad Internet use, said Tan. DHTs are aimed at supporting scalability on P2P and CDN networks to very large numbers of nodes.
Since P2P networks are decentralized by design, what appears to any one peer to be a catalog of all the accessible files in those networks are actually piecemeal composites of the pieces of shared directories from all the peers put together. When one peer goes down unexpectedly, the integrity of that entire patchwork can be jeopardized. A DHT can remedy that problem by building hash tables that contain remnant data from the entire catalog, and then broadcast those tables among multiple peers, so in the case of one peer going down, the catalog can more easily be reconstructed.
Other technologies now being contemplated for Windows 7 would help to maintain QoS and reduce network delays in media streaming delivery, according to the Microsoft exec.
No guidance.
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|Probably be one of those promised features, that never appears. I believe Vista had a few of those, that didn't make the "final cut" on the "final product."
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|"for-the-nonce"
Hahaha. Oh dear. That means something quite, quite different in the UK.
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|Heh maybe they meant p2b ("peter"-2-boy)?
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|this is somewhat worrysome to me personally... I don't like the idea of Microsoft controlling the p2p infrastructure, or for that matter building tools that dare I say Monitor it? Cause god only knows how that may be abused to tamper with personal privacy...
I just hope its handled right. Bridging OK, Monitoring the entire spectrum of the protocol BAD. Quite simply its none of their business what anyone does with their equipment. Allowing MS to spy on activities is just plain unacceptable. And this FEELS like the direction MS wants to go in with this... Taking big brother monitoring to its next level.
If all the sudden you start seeing Teredo blocking unsigned p2p packets to prevent music sharing you can bet it will go even further to prevent other such things we take for granted today. If not turning your machine into a giant Snitch for the RIAA and MPAA. Can you say sony root kit? Expect this to be 5 millions times worse...
IDK. I am prob wrong on this, I just do NOT trust Microsoft anymore. They use to be a company about innovation for customers benifit and garentee profits as a result. Anymore it feels like they are all about big brother over the customers, and quite frankly many of them don't like being told NO all the time by their computer when they specifically try to do something its been designed TO do. MS caring more about their business partners then they do offering a customer a tried and true quality product that JUST WORKS is just bad business. When your consumers do not trust you, they are less likely to do new business with you. even in a monopoly. Case in point the dismile sales and installation rate for Vista. Reason? Major incompatibilities across the board for all but the absolute latest equipment in existence.
And Even if you do go highend you find out that all the sudden features that DID work in XP MCE for instance like DVI out to HD recorders and tuners, is now BLOCKED because of unfair restrictions from MS. Not the equipment. MS Windows is whats doing it. and if you dare bypass that it will cripple your system. (This is actually being removed in SP1 BTW cause of consumer backlash from having so many crippled Vista when just trying to connect up a DVI output to an HD TV.) Point is if the industry does not want to have this equipment work, it should NEVER be made. Not have a big brother OS do the job for them leaving the customer there who spend in some cases $1000s trying to setup something they want to do, only to find that the equipment works fine, but the OS is saying Ah AH AH Thats a bad boy there. You cant do that...
BTW the 3rd party tools that worked in XP MCE, will work in Vista IF the OS does not cripple itself. Till then Stay with the XP MCE with Asus Drivers or better for your DVI and HDMI input/output needs.
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|The DVI to HD recorder being blocked is the MPAA not MS.
Your entire post is unsubstantiated and petty.
Use the one power that you have in a capatilistic society and don't buy it if you don't like it. Since you claim to have these issues yourself you must have spent money on an OS that you tell us the root of all evil.
Many of the complaints of Vista are due to old hardware and more specificly hardware vendors not writing drivers for it. This is not a failure of MS but one of all the hardware vendors who have taken your money 3-5 years ago and decided that they no longer want to spend any money on making it work with anything new.
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|So, "Green" is esentially Wake On Lan. Green, the new marketing term to sell everything old. Enough with the global warming "crisis" (which pushes green everything) no mention that 2007 was the coldest 12 month period in 100 years. Hmm, could it possibly be that the scientists that say surface tempature has more to do with the temp of the sun then greenhouse gasses. Wow, maybe NASA was right.
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|"Teredo was designed in 2003, and later implemented in Vista, as a novel approach for moving network traffic where packets use IPv6 protocol and addresses, across a firewall that uses an IPv4 network address translator."
we could call this "hybrid" technology as well.
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|Now all we need to do is make it twice as expensive and use twice the natural resources that it otherwise would.
Ya know, in keeping with everything else "Green" and "Hybrid".
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|I can tell that you're a very nice person. [rolleyes]
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|No. I am not. But I can be if I choose to be.
Can you choose to not be an idiot?
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