Inventor of the Internet takes aim at BitTorrent
In the 1960s, Lawrence Roberts invented computer networking via data packets, which led directly to the development of ARPANet and the Internet . And now Roberts is trying to fix one of the Internet's biggest problems: network overload caused by peer-to-peer file transfers.
Not Al Gore.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)At Structure 08, he laid out the problem: 5 percent of the Net's users are running P2P transfers taking up 80 percent of its capacity, which is dramatically limiting the available bandwidth available to everyone else. Roberts' company, Anagran, is able to detect which "flows" are P2P traffic, and reduce the bandwidth available to these communications when other users' systems want it. Roberts says that Anagran's technology even functions when P2P transfers are encrypted. I'm not going to pretend I understand exactly how this works, but it has something to do with keeping information about the flow of data between all computers connected through an ISP in memory in the Anagram appliance, and then leveling off traffic of P2P communications as needed--and throughput only, not latency. Judging by the reaction of the audience of infrastructure geeks sitting around me, Roberts is on to something. "He's the real deal right there," the guy next to me said at one point, pretty much gazing up at the stage in awe.
Roberts claims that the Anagran devices also ensure that high-priority traffic, like VOIP and video streams, can be guaranteed better performance.
Roberts was clear that he has no desire to punish P2P users, but rather he wants to make sure that they--and everyone else--get their fair share of bandwidth. That share, he believes, cannot be 80 percent of the Net's capacity, especially if the other 20 percent has to be allocated to the 95 percent of the Net's users who aren't using P2P.
You'll find Anagran bandwidth fairness boxes (also called FR-1000s) in university settings now, where the P2P file transfer problem is most acute. Anagran doesn't currently have any commercial ISP customers, but I'll bet that they're all looking at them.
Roberts has no position on the legality of content being transferred over P2P links. "Illegal or legal is not the issue at all." It's about fairness, he says: equal capacity for equal pay. What do you think?
See also: Baggage and bits: Overage fees have unintended consequences.
Anagran FR-1000: The shape of bandwidth to come.
(Credit: Anagran)
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
Fairness would be giving priority to what users want, not what Mr. Roberts or any telecom company consider most important. VoIP and such may be their focus, but it's obviously not the users, since 80% of traffic is P2P.
This shows laissez faire doesn't always lead to best outcome in the view of society - market forces dislike consumer control. Users want P2P but the companies will do all they can to stop it.
A P2P user cannot use more bandwidth than the ISP allocates to the user. If the ISP can't give you the bandwidth they promise, that is their fault, and everyone's problem.
So I think Lawrence is very much like Al Gore. The debate is over !!
Just because the oil price increase??? cable compay don't use oil to provide the cable service. Fine if you called someone to take look your wires or something, but how often an average custom do that.
For an example, who will play Xbox LIVE? if you have to buy the game, memship, OH and you played one too many hour, your internet provider give you fine or something.
Online gaming will cost way too much, no more youtube, flickr, download show from iTune? At some of the TV channel or radio website, they are live from the website itself(easily over the limit). The online community as we know will change.
People have to think, if I do this, is this going over the limit?
Anyway none of the activities you describe use anywhere near many GB as some loony Bit-Torrent freak who has decided to illegally collect every single Star Trek TNG episode.
From the article:
"is able to detect which "flows" are P2P traffic, and reduce the bandwidth available to these communications when other users' systems want it"
If you want to hog the subnet then be prepared for "mitigation" by your ISP, it is only fair.
Now who is going to pay for it, maybe there is money in it if 5 % of users use it, but the trouble is they don't want to pay, as that is why they use p2p in the first place. The biggest downfall is I hardly think the 5% of current P2P users would have enough money to do it anyway and the thing would go belly up in weeks.. Maybe Bill Gates can gift / sponsor this network, as he was one of the first in IT to burrow someone else's idea and use it to his advantage.....Come on Bill how about it?
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by pbrunnen
July 3, 2008 7:16 AM PDT
- It is apparent that many of you posting are living in your parent's basement still.
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Reply to this comment
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See all 26 Comments >>Oil prices DO affect cable companies... So does the high price of copper. Oil and copper and glass are critical components of coax and fiber optic cable. Oh, yea? how about energy to produce the cable. Or have we forgotten that?
I totally agree with the fact that ISPs are selling consumers more bandwidth than they can deliver. But these are the same ISPs who whine about paying to build out upgrades to the Internet core. I don?t yet have answers to how fairness of bandwidth will look, but something must be done. I am really tiered of seeing packet floods from P2P or other hogs drowning DNS traffic and essentially causing a DoS situation for others.
I also agree that legal content or not is irrelevant to the situation as the original article states. Just as tractor-trailers pay higher tolls on toll roads often by weight not content.
To amijs, you also can?t benchmark against other countries. You don?t know how much government subsidies are supporting those plans. China I know is very heavily subsidized so you can?t count based on their prices.
-Cheers, Peter.