Senator Diane Feinstein Wants to know about the Benefits of P2P

Thu Sep 2 20:54:06 UTC 2004

Erik Parker wrote:

>
> 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.
>
This is an instance of the "good enough" or "best effort" phenomenan. 
When it works 99% or 99.9% of the time, there is hardly any incentive to 
make it work 99.99% of the time because the observed level of service is 
good enough and the next event might never come. Prepareness usually has 
a cost associated and unless other benefits can be realized, it's easy 
to just ride through the rough time.

> 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.

You don't need trust on the protocol level to disseminate information 
which has a verifiable source (hash). This was discussed to death just a 
few days ago.

Pete