Can P2P applications learn to play fair on networks?

Mon Oct 22 15:54:20 UTC 2007

Sean

I don't think this is an issue of "fairness." There are two issues at play
here:

1) Legal Liability due to the content being swapped. This is not a technical
matter IMHO.

2) The breakdown of network engineering assumptions that are made when
network operators are designing networks.

I think network operators that are using boxes like the Sandvine box are
doing this due to (2). This is because P2P traffic hits them where it hurts,
aka the pocketbook. I am sure there are some altruistic network operators
out there, but I would be sincerely surprised if anyone else was concerned
about "fairness"

Regards

Bora