Positivity: The Internet’s New Shortcut
I normally resist putting on-the-horizon tech developments into Positivity, because so many are highly speculative and don’t pan out. I believe this one is far enough along, and it implications far-reaching enough (the e-mail alert for the article says that this “faster way of moving data could end the debate over net neutrality”), that something will surely come of it, even if not in the area described below.
Thus it merits notice now:
08.21.08, 6:00 AM ET
The Internet, it turns out, may have room enough for everyone. Even the most bandwidth-hogging digital pirates.
That, at least, is the hope of two professors from the University of Washington and Yale University. They plan to present research at a conference in Seattle on Thursday describing a new and speedier way to send data across the Internet. Their technique, based on an algorithm they call P4P, could eventually offer a less controversial version of peer-to-peer file sharing, a practice that has flooded the Internet with pirated music and movies and ignited debate over what online content broadband providers should regulate.
Peer-to-peer file-sharing, online pirates’ favorite channel for transferring copyrighted movies and music, now accounts for 40% to 60% of all Internet traffic. That bandwidth overload has meant massive losses for Internet service providers (ISPs) who charge flat rates to users regardless of how much data they send over a network.
….. Now, professors Arvind Krishnamurthy of the University of Washington and Richard Yang of Yale say they have a better way to solve broadband providers’ woes. Their algorithm, which they call P4P or “local file-sharing,” tracks users’ locations to find the shortest path across the Internet. The result, they say, should please both sides of the peer-to-peer debate: Users can download files about 20% faster than conventional file-sharing, while cutting the bandwidth requirements by more than a factor of five.
“We think we’ve come up with a way to end this catfight between Internet service providers and peer-to-peer users,” Krishnamurthy says.
The barrier until now, Krishnamurthy says, has been privacy. Users, often sending files illegally, haven’t been willing to reveal their location to their broadband providers. Broadband providers haven’t wanted to give users access to the geography of their network–a move that could reveal elements of their business to competitors. P4P, Krishnamurthy asserts, takes advantage of data about users’ location and a provider’s network map without revealing details to either side.
If users and broadband providers buy in, the results look promising. Since April, Verizon has been testing a version of the researchers’ P4P system implemented by the New York-based file-sharing start-up, Pando. In a test with around 600,000 users, Krishnamurthy says, data sent using P4P had to travel between an average of just two networks to reach its destination, as opposed to around seven with normal file-sharing, vastly cutting the cost of moving the data.
Go here for the rest of the story.
