ISPs Say P4P Negates Need for Net Neutrality Regs 123
Donut hole hole writes "AT&T and Comcast are using recent successful P2P trials to argue to the FCC that there's no need for strong traffic management or net neutrality rules. 'Comcast's statement, filed with the FCC on April 9th, hails an announcement by P2P developer Pando Networks that its experiments with P4P technology on a wide variety of U.S. broadband networks have boosted delivery speeds by up to 235 percent. This news, Comcast vice president Kathryn A. Zachem wrote to the Commission, "provides further proof that policymakers have been right to rely on marketplace forces, rather than government regulation, to govern the evolution of Internet services."' Looks like Comcast only likes P2P technology when it can be used to serve its political and regulatory agenda."
Where are our rights? (Score:1)
Re:Where are our rights? (Score:5, Funny)
However, I have heard good things about P3.11P for Workgroups, so I might try that one out.
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p4p means (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:p4p means (Score:5, Insightful)
It's this magical idea that they'll find a way to charge more money for providing the same service without having to lose market share due to raising the prices on their customers' statements. Why not charge EVERYONE is their idea... doesn't matter who you are, or where you are on the 'Net... you can pay Comcast for "premium" service.
Not the worst idea ever, just a contender.
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The question 'can they pull it off?' the answer depends on whether or not new neutrality is in effect.
Re:p4p means (Score:4, Insightful)
The million dollar question is whether they mean all P2P traffic, or just *AA approved content. They're making a new protocol & it's their data so the ball's in their court. I can easily see them using this as an excuse to go after P2P even more.
Re:p4p means (Score:4, Insightful)
If anything this is a way to placate the FCC and congress, while appearing to embrace P2P, but only as a distribution method for their own content.
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It got taken out because nobody was using it!
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Yeah, P4P is a buzzword for "pennies for packets."
It's this magical idea that they'll find a way to charge more money for providing the same service without having to lose market share due to raising the prices on their customers' statements. Why not charge EVERYONE is their idea... doesn't matter who you are, or where you are on the 'Net... you can pay Comcast for "premium" service.
Not the worst idea ever, just a contender.
So uh, hold it.
This is buzzwordspeek for "We don't need Net Neutrality, because breaking Net Neutrality means we don't need Net Neutrality?"
Oh my God, I've gone cross-eyed.
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If they could charge you for this they would.
What?
P4P is about adding code into P2P software that will allow the application to prioritize 'local' connections. It's about minimizing the # of hops your packets have to jump across. This generally translates into cost savings for the ISP.
If they wanted to charge for it, they could code it themselves and license the technology out... and nobody would use it, because the ISPs are the main beneficiaries. What do I care if my bittorrent packets are coming from Germany or from my neighbor? Ping times aren't
Re:p4p means (Score:5, Insightful)
P4P is a major privacy killer. based on what I see at the P4P workgroup page [pandonetworks.com], P4P is not a protocol or code that will be inject into existing P2P apps, it is a network management technique and toolkit that the ISPs can use to control existing and future P2P traffic, presumably without knowledge or consent from any of the peers. In fact here is one of the project objectives:
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Not to mention the privacy implications, the lack of an opt-out, or the fact that this doesn't work if things aren't hosted in your area, right?
You have to know quite a bit to magically route things local.
Given comcast's track record, why would you ever assume they turned over a new leaf? That's like thinking that Microsoft has a real open-source offering because they made a new announcement to be more open-source fri
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That is definitely some magic right there.
Remind me again where an OC96/etc line would have a reason to care whether its intra-network or not.
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The goal of a routing pattern like the one they describe however is to keep traffic local to a users distribution tier network (your neighborhood essentially), so that it traverses the hierarchy only as high as it must. that frees up bandwidth on the trunk lines upstream and the backbone connections, which may be kinda expensive.
the problem with this idea however, is that while the providers
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Using P2P, by definition the total data volume uploaded and downloaded by all users is the same. P4P doesn't increase the amount that users upload or download, so the "edge" network . P4P shortens the distance between the uploader and the downloader, in order to reduce the d
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Yes, I'm the CTO of Pando Networks. Who are you?
To clarify another point, P4P isn't my technology, it's an open standard being worked by by over 50 organizations, including the major P2P companies, many ISP's, universities, and individuals.
In terms of whether your favorite web site supports P4P, well, P4P is an open standa
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not really, take a look at traceroute,
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It's not just a routing problem, it's a political one. Think about it.
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P4P is a major privacy killer. based on what I see at the P4P workgroup page [pandonetworks.com], P4P is not a protocol or code that will be inject into existing P2P apps, it is a network management technique and toolkit that the ISPs can use to control existing and future P2P traffic, presumably without knowledge or consent from any of the peers.
I'm not sure where you got this - P4P is a mechanism that allows ISP's to provide network map data to existing P2P networks so that the P2P networks can, if they choose, use that information to make smarter peer connections. P4P is entirely optional; if a P2P network doesn't want to implement it, they can keep doing what they are doing now.
Determine, validate, and encourage the adoption of methods for ISPs and P2P software distributors to work together to enable and support consumer service improvements as P2P adoption and resultant traffic evolves while protecting the intellectual property (IP) of participating entities
Somehow I just knew IP rights would come up. I'll pay more attention when the pirate bay is in the core group. Until then, I'm not interested, logical as the idea may seem.
You're right - this statement is ambiguous, leading to misinterpretation. To clarify, the participating entities in P4P are the ISP's and the P2P networks. Their IP has
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I find this very hard to believe. I do not want my protocol to notify my ISP everytime i connect to a tracker. Do you see how this is a privacy problem?
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AT&T has not required Pando to do anything in return for their participation in the working group. Neither has any other ISP.
To clarify who did what in the test, Pando worked with Yale, Verizon and Telefonica to perform the first field test. AT
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Pando's network is a managed p2p network. This gives us the economic advantages of p2p delivery, but with the control and quality of service of a centrally managed system. That being said, Pando doesn't notify your ISP when you connect to a our trackers.
This all has nothing to do with P4P. P4P doesn't notify your ISP, or anyone else, every time you connect to a tracker.
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I
Re:p4p means (Score:4, Interesting)
Speak for yourself! From where I'm at, microsoft.com resolves to a porn tracker and most
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You mean a patchwork off-net like FidoNet? [wikipedia.org]
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But wouldn't the civilian nets you refer to be just as subject to said law enforcement?
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Faith in the power of the almighty politicians to "save us" from life itself, is running short. After that, if people have learned to be autonomous and not expect handouts stolen from others, life should get much nicer. Of course, I'm banking on people learning to respect property and to live up to their promises.
Heh... yeah, I know, at least I don't believe in the Easter Bunny anymore
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Without government, corporations would revert back to smaller (and more violent) fuedal entities.
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Question I'll pose is... "and government enforcement of policy is done without violence or the threat thereof?" Lets see you not file or pay taxes if you're "liable" and see how long it is before the jack booted storm troopers kick your door in, after shooting your dog and slamming any h
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It's pretty easy to see that governments predominately act in the interests of corporations. The
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I'd like to see some of the mainstream "educated" folks willing to give up the bread and circuses, for even a month of their lives. Yeah right.
I remember this from long ago. (Score:2, Insightful)
Satellite phones. When you made a call it was always long distance and always billed both ways. At hideous rates.
Hey, whatever happened to the ubiquitous satellite phone anyway? That didn't seem to come about. It's like they all died out from competition or something.
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Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
(*) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
That ISPs have found some technological work around does nothing to change the fact that they'd rather screw around with the network than build more infrastructure.
Fundamentally, either Net Neutrality is a good idea or it isn't.
The specific circumstances are only tangently relevant.
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That ISPs have found some technological work around does nothing to change the fact that they'd rather screw around with the network than build more infrastructure.
I sometimes hate living where I do because we get small data allocations each month compared to "unlimited" and we pay a premium for that level of access.
Yet, my ISP is profitable and they continue to roll out new infrastructure. They're one of the foundation customers for a massive pipe into Japan(?) that's being built. They have a huge national network and peer with all of the major telcos and providers so speeds are always good.
Having a limited download allowance each month (pay for more data, use it
OH!!! (Score:1)
here's my impression of comcast:
"We hate p2p! GRARRRR"
*government glares at them*
"Wait... we love p2p look we even use it ourselves!"
*pat on the head* (tax breaks and a blind eye to some future shiftiness)
Can the Gov't regulate? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Can the Gov't regulate? (Score:4, Insightful)
I really don't trust utilities providers. I've seen enough to know that my state's utility regulatory commission does a good job balancing the needs of the providers with the needs of the public.
I really don't want regulation of the internet, but when I think about it, it's the content of the internet that I want unregulated, not the means by which corporate titans mangle my clickstream.
In the long run, I see NN as the only way to keep the telco's and the mafiaa from destroying the internet I love, and sucking money out of my pocket in the process.
Re:Can the Gov't regulate? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Were the broadband internet industry truely an industry that redefined itself regularly, then they would find creative solutions for the issues that "plague" them.
People are using too much bandwidth, so the first thing the ISPs do? Start covertly breaking connections between P2P users to eliminate bandwidth usage while yelling and screaming that consumers shouldn't be allowed to use the internet for what consumers want to use it for,
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The government organization that does regulation doesn't pass legislation at all.
And, except perhaps from a PR standpoint, there is no industry that "redefines itself every 18 months".
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In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
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They never say what they mean. (Score:1)
NOTHING to do with Peer to Peer (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with any file sharing technology. Nothing. They want the government, and those BASTARD consumers, to believe that "marketplace forces, rather than government regulation" prevailed and solved the problem.
Well the REAL problem was ISP's selling unlimited bandwidth contracts. Right there is the heart of the issue, one they don't want to talk about. They advertise impressive speeds (throughput) and unlimited "internet" which is basically no limitation on the amount of data you could transfer in a given month.
If that is true, which legally they should be held to AT LEAST the unlimited transfers, then P2P is irrelevant isn't it? Sure it has its problems, but none of that is the consumer's fault. They are using their "unlimited" connections in a "unlimited" way.
So now they cannot deliver on those "impressive" speeds since they were overselling their real capacity in the first place.
To put it another way.... It would be like an Airline company saying you could fly as far as you want up to 3 times a month for $99 dollars a month. They screw up getting greedy and all of the sudden they can't actually deliver 3 times a month since all the flights are constantly full.
No, don't buy this fairy tale from Comcast. The consumers are all entitled, BY CONTRACT no less, to do what they are doing.
If P4P ends up vastly increasing the efficiency of the consumer communications going across their network, then that is GREAT for anyone that owns a part of Comcast. More profit margin returning.
It DOES not mean it should be an end to Net Neutrality or government regulation of their sneaky little asses....
Seconded (Score:5, Insightful)
Cable subscribers, forget what it says in the small print. You signed a contract that said "unlimited" in BOLD print. So it should have been unlimited. And if they did not have the money, as they claimed -- even after charging those outrageous rates -- to make them unlimited, they should have stopped advertising the accounts as "unlimited"!!!
This is not genius-level material. They defrauded consumers. Without regulation, they will continue to do the same.
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Re:NOTHING to do with Peer to Peer (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference, though, is that the mortgage creditors got in over their head in bad loans because of people that didn't know what they were doing (jumping into an ARM that they wouldn't be able to handle later). The ISPs got in over their head by people that *knew* what they were doing (internet users making the most of their unlimited connections). Now that more and more people can do the same thing with easily accessible tools, the ISPs are up shit creek.
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dial-up plan.
To some 'Unlimited' means unlimited access 24/7 - not unlimited download/upload.
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Free the internet
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Thank You.
I had never heard that before from anybody, and it only proves my point that much more effectively. "Unlimited" can be interpreted in many different ways and is a vague term. However, when it is used in BOLD and as a major sales point, and not some fine print, the average citizen can only go by the definition in the dictionary:
unlimited
adj.
1. Having no restrictions or controls: an unlimited travel ticket.
2. Having
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Well the REAL problem was ISP's selling unlimited bandwidth contracts. Right there is the heart of the issue, one they don't want to talk about.
Time for the airline analogy. Airlines oversell flights on a regular basis. It makes sense for them to do this, because an unsold seat has no value once the plane takes off, so they have to do whatever they can to fill up as many seats as possible, even if it means inconveniencing passengers. They don't advertise that they overbook, so many victims of overbookin
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There is no such thing as unlimited downloads unless you have unlimited bandwidth. AFAIK, no-one is selling unlimited bandwidth. Here in the UK most ISPs offer "up to 8Mbps" bandwidth allocations, which is dependent on location relative to the exchange. Natural download limits are related to your available bandwidth.
For example, I have an "up to 8Mbps" connection, but due to my location I'm getting a connection of roughly 6Mbps. That equates to r
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As for, "the people that lose are the ones that want more bandwidth than they're willing to pay for", those are the FREELOADERS.
Are They Regulated or Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just make up your mind about being regulated or not. If you want to take tax payer money, then you're going to be regulated. If you don't want to be regulated, you can't have tax payer money.
Minor correction (Score:5, Insightful)
and anything you built with taxpayer money is open to all.
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Comcast nowhere near neutral (Score:2, Informative)
I called Comcast today to find out if they are still non-neutral. I was informed that they still do not support Linux. While Linux and BSD can be made to work on Comcast easily enough today, how do we know that this level of access will continue? They could change things tomorrow and break the ability of Linux and BSD to access the internet.
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Re:Comcast nowhere near neutral (Score:4, Insightful)
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The sky is falling! (Score:2)
Tit for Tat (Score:2)
The only solution.
Muddying clear water is what this is. (Score:2)
What is needed is to lay down lots of fiber where none exists. PERIOD! How complicated is that? We need more and more throughput and lower and lower latencies. The only goal is for every home to have fiber.
Not Wimax, not powerlines, not 812.n or any other unreliable, slow crap. Those are only temporary bandaids and should only be used as such or to complement fiber. All data that can travel through fiber should do so.
Fucking cocksuckers and
Waves hand... (Score:2)
Waves hand...
These aren't the P-number-P's you're looking for. We can go about our business.
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I have a shovel you can borrow. Call me when you're done.
Oh, you're not going to do it yourself? Then who is going to install and maintain all that fiber? Surely you don't want the government to do it? The government (local, state, or federal) can't pave fucking roads without massive waste and lots of outright fraud, and you want them to run a high-tech infrastructure?
Maybe we can have convicted hackers and meth dealers build and maintain it as part of their community service.
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Don't be an idiot. It doesn't matter who does it as long as it's done. Companies, government, as long as joe schmoe gets his cheap fast fiber.
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First, that's not how they did it. Do some research on the subject and you'll understand why those schemes could never work in the USA (our population is far less urban, and we actually value individual property rights). Sweden only has 30% broadband penetration [europa.eu], so I cannot figure out why it is held up as some sort of shining example by the Slashdot crowd.
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$1500 per household for deployment x 100 million US residences = ~150 BILLION DOLLARS in captial expenditure.
Pre-emtive "insightful" comment from pinko college kid living of Daddy's money: "That's way less than we've spent in Iraq..."
...which only illustrates this: If we ask the governement to build out this network, it will cost about $1 Trillion with all the overage, delays, and waste. I'd rather take over another oil-rich country for that sort of investment.
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Erm, why? The iraq war has crucified the US's standing in the world, helped to breed a new generation of anti-US terrorists, and resulted in the deaths of thousands of US troops. What possible reason could you have for wanting this over anything??
Corporates fear regulation (Score:2)
So to head off this, they agree to voluntarily submit to equality.
I suggest that IF a corporate says there is no need for regulation and agrees to voluntarily do something, then it MUST be regulated in law with severe penalties.
After all, as corporates themselves claim, if there is way they will do something that is disliked, then what harm is there in having a law that puts penalties if the corporate violates it.
Comcast was a
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If I'm a greedy "fucking cocksucker" I unfortunately am not going to give a damn about anyone's profit but my own.
and why shouldn't I? If I go altruistic, I'm going to get fucked royally by my competitors, who would take advantage of my niceness so quickly my head would spin.
anyone who has seen the TV show "friend or foe" will know quite well what I'm talking about.
Self interest is what is wrecking things.
One company that is out for blood forces e
What they really mean is.... (Score:2)
400% - someone explain the math to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I read this,
"According to the study, redoing the P2P into what they call P4P can reduce the number of 'hops' by an average of 400%."
and am confused. Surely reducing a number by 100% brings it to zero. What does reducing a number by 400% mean?
10 becomes -30?
FYI (Score:1, Informative)
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To me, it depends on the word following 'reduced' - in this case 'by', which is always additive/subtractive.
If they had used 'reduced to' then that would be clear too.
The '%' is always multiplicative.
So, acceptable alternative might be
1) reduced by 75% of the original value
2) reduced to 25% of the original value
3) reduced to a quarter of the original value
I can't see an
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"According to the study, redoing the P2P into what they call P4P can reduce the number of 'hops' by an average of 400%."
and am confused. Surely reducing a number by 100% brings it to zero. What does reducing a number by 400% mean?
10 becomes -30?
Yeah, I can't say where that number came from. So I'll explain what I do know.
Without P4P the data delivered within the ISP travelled across an average of 5.5 long distance links, and with P4P the data travelled across an average of 0.89 long distance links. The average is so low because a whopping 58% of the data was delivered within the same metro area, and the rest came largely from adjacent metro areas.
The result of this was that for delivering a given volume of data, P4P reduced internal link utilizat
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Pay for Play (Score:2)
Seems entirely appropriate that Comcast would claim that the hookers they sent to congress and the FCC are enough to take are of any problems.
Doesn't pass the sniff test (Score:2)
It's not working. It should be entertaining to see what kind of BS they come up with next...
Market forces my foot (Score:2)
Ok, lets pretend that p4p is benign...
Even if that is true, It was not market forces that brought it about.
Comcast could clearly see they were about to be regulated... It was the fear of legislation, not market forces that made them adapt.
if you think Comcast BW is a problem now (Score:2)