Senator Diane Feinstein Wants to know about the Benefits of P2P

Mon Aug 30 22:42:38 UTC 2004

> A method like P2P (and BT's swarming in particular) allowed this file to 
> spread without overtaxing the bandwidth of the person or organization 
> distributing it.
>
> Frankly, in a day when news organizations are forced to think about any 
> negative impacts of their reporting on their parent corp's agenda, this is a 
> must have tech.

Speaking of which..  I wish P2P had been a little bit more organized when 9/11 
happened.. Trying to watch the news online, download clips, or images for 
those few days following.. was nearly impossible. CNN/TimeWarner should recall 
that their entire cluster was destroyed and they had to move back to a 
simplified text only page that had nothing on it.. Likewise with Foxnews, but 
a little bit to a lesser extent.

In the way Bittorrent works, that day would have been nothing to the normal 
people wanting access to the information.. In fact, to some degree, it would 
have been even better with the increased load to a point.

If P2p was built upon a little bit, putting in protocols of trust (ala 
certificates/signed files, etc.) it could give F5 a run for its money and 
lower the cost drastically of certain network designs.

</dream world>