The Coming P2P Battle

Written by R. Scott Raynovich - Light Reading

Wednesday, June 20. 2007 at 12:55 PM EDT Post a comment

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There's a huge battle about to be fought on the P2P front. It won't be fought with sticks, guns, or money. It will be fought with technology and lawyers.

You see, the larger incumbent telcos know where their bread is buttered -- or rather they know where people take butter off their bread. And P2P is one of those areas where their butter is being stolen.

It's commonly known that P2P traffic -- and now Web video -- makes up the bulk of broadband traffic. For a while now, incumbents have threatened to do something about this, either by slowing it down or creating "toll roads" for those who want to download a video at a reasonable clip. This is the kind of talk that gets the Net Neutrality activists all worked up into a lather.

I'm hearing here on the floor at NXTComm (Chicago), that the incumbent telcos are now getting more serious, circulating some Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology that would allow them to exert more control over P2P and video traffic on their broadband networks.

With DPI technology they can route P2P and video that doesn't generate revenue for them onto the slow lane. Look for folks such as Verizon to be investing in DPI technology in the near future. And deploying in a way that may de-prioritize things like Skype and Joost. Then we'll see what happens next, I'm sure there will be a response from the Net Neutrality comrades.