Make the way for P4P .......

Peer to Peer a.k.a. P2P technology is on main stream now a days .... but like all of us know, it has recently raised questions about network neutrality 'coz of ISPs like Comcast which tried to throttle p2p activities of users .... its not case of only one ISP , in USA all major ISPs are worried for their large bandwidth consumption and congested networks because of P2P usages ...

So some smartass guys of "Verizon" have formed a group to develope a new kind of protocol for this kind of file sharing ... they call it P4P ... "Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P" ... that ultimately aims to decrease backbone traffic and bring down network operation costs by enabling service providers to communicate information about network conditions to client applications for the purpose of facilitating improved P2P file transfer performance. Instead of selecting peers at random, the P4P protocol leverages network topology data so that peers can be selected in a manner that increases routing efficiency. Verizon believes that P2P technology is moving into the mainstream and is being legitimized for large-scale commercial content delivery. The company sees P4P as a way to enable broader commercial adoption of P2P tech while unclogging the tubes and relieving network congestion.

In a paper published by the P4P group, "P4P: Explicit Communications for Cooperative Control Between P2P and Network Providers," researchers look at some of the unique advantages of P4P compared to other solutions. The report notes that traffic-shaping technologies that rely on deep packet inspection to throttle P2P are easily thwarted by client applications that encrypt traffic and use dynamic ports to evade identification. Without the cooperation of the actual P2P services, the report says, no solution will succeed. "It remains unclear whether in the long run traffic shaping can effectively control the bandwidth consumption of P2P applications and reduce provider's operational costs," the paper's authors note. "By enabling explicit communication between P2P and the network, P4P can enable applications to use network status information to reduce backbone traffic and lower operation costs."

I think its better option chosen by Verizon , then its competitor AT&T ... who want to spy on their own network users for use of this kind of file sharing which violates copyright infringment !!! ... ( damn .... what the hack ??? ... sounds like a private police ... right ??) ... well its another issue ... we'll talk about it someother day ....

njoy ....