P4P Results Improve, Execs Say

Written by Ryan Lawler

Tuesday, August 5. 2008 at 12:50 PM EDT Post a comment

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Joint trials with service providers aimed at driving efficiencies in their networks via peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies are working even better than expected, according to industry executives.

At the first annual Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) Silicon Valley P2P Media Summit in San Jose yesterday, execs said the second round of service provider trials in the P4P Working Group came off even better than the first.

The first trial, held in February with the participation of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF), showed a 50 percent increase in P2P efficiency when the file-sharing protocol was made network-aware and drew from local sources. 

In an interview with the Associated Press in March, Verizon senior technologist Doug Pasko said that with traditional P2P, only 6.3 percent of all data comes from other Verizon customers. In the P4P trial, Pasko said this number improved to 58 percent.

A second trial was held in June, which included the likes of Verizon and Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK). Laird Popkin, CTO of Pando Networks and co-founder of the P4P Working Group, said that without the approval of ISPs, he couldn't give details, but he said the results of the second trial were very good.

"So far, the ISPs love the idea of reducing the cost of P2P on their infrastructure," Popkin says.

According to Popkin, the second trial was also effective in showing improved peer efficiencies in asymmetrical traffic environments, where downstream bandwidth is much higher than upstream bandwidth.

"P4P gave much better performance to customers without having any impact on uplink speed, so we're pretty comfortable with cable, fiber, or DSL," Popkin says.

While the first two rounds focused on the transmission of on-demand content using P2P protocols, the next trial will focus on live, P2P-based streaming, according to Abacast Inc. CEO Mike King. 

Live streaming via P2P provides different challenges, due to the way live streams are downloaded. Unlike on-demand P2P downloads, which can pull bits from peers wherever they are and aren't as constrained by the sequence in which those bits are downloaded and assembled, live P2P technologies depend on peers being close to the end user and bits being assembled in order.

"There's never been a live peer-to-peer technology that randomly selected peers," King says. "We also can't receive bits from the end of the file. It's very much time-sequenced, and timing is very important."

The live test will be important, particularly as CDNs look towards P2P as a way to boost their live-streaming capabilities. Last month, Velocix and CDNetworks Co. Ltd. announced partnerships with P2P technology firms that will allow them to offer live streaming via P2P.