P2P-2-ISP

Faced with a surge in network usage, internet service providers are grumbling about rising traffic levels. The increase is driven so far mostly by internet video from YouTube and similar services, which don’t actually employ P2P technologies.
But ISPs say the looming growth of true peer-to-peer applications threatens to overwhelm them. Some ISPs have even started sniffing out P2P traffic on their networks and curbing it, either slowing file sharing to a trickle or bringing it to a halt.
Responding to this adversarial relationship, some P2P companies are adopting a posture of engagement with ISPs, and have formed a new industry working group to help broker relationships that, they say, will enable ISPs to better manage and distribute traffic loads on their networks.
The P4P working group consists of content-distribution-technology providers like BitTorrent, Pando Networks, LimeWire and VeriSign’s Kontiki, as well as broadband companies like Verizon and AT&T, and hardware makers like Cisco Systems. There are close to a dozen members so far. The P4P operates under the guidance of the Distributed Computing Industry Association, a group that wants to foster legal peer-to-peer content distribution.
P4P’s plan: Get ISPs and P2P-technology providers working together, to ensure that P2P traffic continues to flow and that users of P2P technologies don’t overload ISPs’ networks with too much sharing.
P2P companies’ fears are justified. Last week, users suspected that Comcast, the second-largest U.S. ISP, was limiting subscribers’ use of BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing application, and was penalizing heavy downloaders by suspending their internet service. Comcast declined to comment on its download-capping or traffic-shaping practices. However, the websites Broadband Reports and TorrentFreak have uncovered evidence of the practices.

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