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1. Comment - 'P4P' could double P2P transfer speeds

   (Mar 15, 2008 - 11:24 AM)

   This is a great write-up, thanks!
   
   A few responses to comments:
   
   Ingram091: Actually P4P's benefit is greatest in the largest swarms. Current p2p typically connects random peers, which means that for large swarms you're quite unlikely to connect initially to anyone near you. For example, if there are 10,000 peers in a BitTorrent swarm, you connect to a random 50, so you're 99.5% likely not to connect to the "best" peer. So if you find out about another 50 random peers a minute (which is much faster that most Trackers), you'll take 200 minutes to find 50% of the swarm. But with P4P the Tracker has enough information to be able to make guided peering suggestions, so you can start immediately with the closest/best peers, rather than starting slowly and gradually finding better seeds and speeding up over hours. The result is that users get much faster downloads sooner.
   
   Davidlerner: Good question. Comcast and Cox are in the P4P Working Group, so we hope to learn more about how this works for them soon. We also have some wireless carriers involved, which is another interesting scenario.
   
   Scary Guy: P4P is a means for ISP's to provide guidance to P2P networks so that they can make good choices about which peers to connect. It isn't a p2p protocol, and it doesn't change p2p protocols.
   
   sjc001: P4P doesn't change the protocol used by the p2p network, so there's no security implication there.
   
   There is more information at http://www.pandonetworks.com/p4p and at http://www.dcia.info/activities. Participation in the Working Group is free and open to all ISP's, P2P companies and researchers. For more information about participation, contact:
   
   Co-chairs laird@pando.com and doug.pasko@verizon.net, or the head of the DCIA, the host organization, marty@dcia.info.