Daily Tech Report

We wrote in the past about Pando’s work with Verizon to test a new technology called P4P, which would enhance traditional peer to peer file sharing by optimizing the network such that users are downloading from a nearby peer, as opposed to downloading equally from nearby and faraway peers. For service providers, this can translate into huge savings in Internet backbone transit costs, while end users can get better performance as well. This technology is primarily for LEGAL peer to peer distribution since Pando and the service providers need to be aware of where each specific file is located in the network. Moreover, service providers want nothing to do with being liable for illegal peer to peer file sharing.

Today, Pando released results on initial tests with P4P across a wide sampling of carriers that included AT&T, Bell Canada, Bezeq International, BT, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, Orange, Sasktel, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Time Warner, Tiscali, and Verizon. Delivery speeds were increased by 235% for U.S. cable operators, while almost 900% across international broadband networks. Most importantly for operators, inter-ISP traffic was reduced by 34% with internally routed data up from 2.2% to 43.4% for all downloads. With an increasing amount of content being delivered over P2P networks, the need is here today for more P2P-acceleration from the carriers. Sounds like a win-win situation for the carriers - ultimately, the carriers (especially Comcast) could do with a lot more creation of customer goodwill, and this could help to some degree.

The biggest takeaway from this announcement is that ISPs are starting to figure out to work with peer to peer file sharing in a more constructive way - will the key DPI vendors (Cisco, Sandvine, Arbor, Allot) need to start investigating these technologies in order to play a more strategic role with the carriers going forward? Clearly, the Net Neutrality debate has been devastating to Sandvine’s market cap, with the recent pause in buying from Sandvine’s customers especially in North America. The follow-on from yesterday’s post - yes, things look cloudy at present, but the first DPI company that can “figure it out” could have a leg up going forward.

And on Rogers’ DPI implementation — a recent blog post on Rogers’ new scheme to alert users about impending quota overruns just baffles me. The current scheme with Rogers Internet service is that over the coming months, they’ll start charging “overages” on a per GB basis over and above relatively high limits. For my service, it’ll be anything in excess of 60 GB. Users have not been reporting that once users hit 75% of their quota, Rogers will be literally changing web pages that are being surfed to insert a message at the top of the page to inform users that they are at that 75% point. Hmm… if that wasn’t enough, this message will reportedly repeat itself periodically, despite users’ wishes. A number of issues here: 1) The web site owners are none too pleased about this, with Rogers messages and marketing material infringing on their real estate; and 2) Rogers modifying web content is very disconcerting - this practice brings up the spectre of Net Neutrality all over again, and raises questions in the consumer’s mind about whether someone is tampering with the content they want to see. A response from Rogers as to why they aren’t just notifying users through e-mail, the response of it being “too slow” is the cherry on the top in this case. Why the carriers are acting in this way is simply beyond me - and in this case, they’re simply asking for trouble.

All in all, another day, more Net Neutrality concerns. The P4P test results do show how carriers can better work with peer to peer technologies to deliver valuable content to its customers, but I think we’re just getting started in the whole Net Neutrality debate - for Sandvine, the light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming train.