[Nanog] P2P traffic optimization Was: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics [Was: Re: ATT VP: Internet to hit capacity by 2010]

Wed Apr 23 23:47:57 UTC 2008

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:30 PM, Laird Popkin <laird at pando.com> wrote:
> I would certainly view the two strategies (reverse engineering network information and getting ISP-
> provided network information) as being complimentary. As you point out, for any ISP that doesn't
> provide network data, we're better off figuring out what we can to be smarter than 'random'. So while I
> prefer getting better data from ISP's, that's not holding us back from doing what we can without that
> data.

ok, sounds better :) or more reasonable, or not immediately doomed to
blockage :) 'more realistic' even.

>  ISP's have been very clear that they regard their network maps as being proprietary for many good
> reasons. The approach that P4P takes is to have an intermediate server (which we call an iTracker)
> that processes the network maps and provides abstracted guidance (lists of IP prefixes and
> percentages) to the p2p networks that allows them to figure out which peers are near each other. The > iTracker can be run by the ISP or by a trusted third party, as the ISP prefers.

What's to keep the itracker from being the new 'napster megaserver'? I
suppose if it just trades map info or lookup (ala dns lookups) and
nothing about torrent/share content things are less sensitive from a
privacy perspective. and a single point of failure of the network
perspective.

Latency requirements seem to be interesting for this as well... at
least dependent upon the model for sharing of the mapping data. I'd
think that a lookup model served the client base better (instead of
downloading many large files of maps in order to determine the best
peers to use). There's also a sensitivity to the part of the network
graph and which perspective to use for the client -> peer locality
mapping.

It's interesting at least :)

Thanks!
-Chris

(also, as an aside, your mail client seems to be making each paragraph
one long unbroken line... which drives at least pine and gmail a bit
bonkers...and makes quoting messages a much more manual process than
it should be.)

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