NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Economics of P2P (was Re: Re: Net Neutrality vs. Illegal Acts)
On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com> wrote: > At 09:30 PM 3/21/2008, Bob Frankston wrote: > > >C'mon -- what does P2P's legality matter then? Why do you mention it at all? > > Because it emphasizes the fact that P2P IS NOT NECESSARY. It's not necessary > for free speech. It's not necessary to give users access to ANY service or > content. It is only SOMEWHAT useful to thieves who want to cover their tracks > (and if they knew better, they'd know that they can still be found). In short, > it is not necessary for ANY legal purpose; blocking it or prohibiting it would > only thwart illegal activities. And for that reason, it is not only perfectly > reasonable but a good idea to block and prohibit it. I have to disagree here somewhat. P2P data transfer can be used for legitimate purposes. In this case it is massive cost shifting and far less economically efficient overall, but its still legitimate usage. EG, rather than spending $.18/GB through S3 to deliver a video, the provider spends nothing and the consumer's ISP probably spends an additional $.40+/GB. Scummy? Yes. Legitimate: HELL YES! However, and there is a big however: IF said P2P protocols were "super friendly", that is, friendlier than TCP, really only using unused bandwidth rather than filling the pipe (and resulting in congestion), THEN P2P could be economically efficient for all involved, because it would only transfer on noncongested links. The problem is really that if there is NO congestion on a link, then the extra bandwidth use does cost the ISP $0.00 in many arrangements. Which is the pro P2P bulk transfer argument. But if there IS congestion (and current P2P will happily cause congestion) then it has significant cost because it crowds out other flows. Bittorrent, with its many concurrent TCP streams, is particularly bad. If you as a client says "BitTorrent gets 100 kbps", it WILL takes 100 kbps pretty much no matter how much congestion there is and WHERE the congestion is (local link, provider uplink, whatever), at least until the point where the only thing significant you are fighting with is the other users of BitTorrent. This is also why WoW updates are generally considered "glacially slow" compared to other torrents, dispite popularity. Blizzard must deliberately throttle these heavily to allow customers links to still be usable. Thus bulk P2P transfers resulting in poor performance for everybody else, the need for traffic shaping, and the cost of provisioning more bandwidth. And when most of the people are on, there will be congestion. So a "only free bandwidth" P2P bulk transfer would limit P2P transfers to "at night background" rather than "when you want it". And to get to a model where there is "worse than best effort" flows, where "all drops first" behavior, requires significant rearchitecting of the current infrastructure. Agressive traffic shaping on the part of ISPs can get close. Given that we probably can't clean-slate the Internet, to the "Hands off all P2P", or even just "Hands off not DMCA-ed P2P" crowd here, ask yourself which would you prefer: 1) Per-bit pricing, to make it clear to the users what the cost is, and shift the cost all the way to the users. Which will probably be agressive enough that it limits the P2P business model. Do you want to spend an extra $.50 to get it from a P2P provider instead of server provider? 2) User bandwidth caps, and probably agressive enough that it prevents the P2P business model. (Limit the 5%ers to 15% of the bandwidth rather than 50%). So you can only download 10 hours of 720p HDTV a month before your net cuts you off? 3) Agressive traffic shaping so that identified P2P flows are always lower prority than all other traffic, which will result in P2P flow rates vastly slower than current, which will limit the legitimate P2P business model by degrading performance compared to HTTP for most users/usages. 4) Agressive per-user traffic shaping so you can still hoze yourself with P2P, but the more bandwidth you use, the lower priority your traffic is so that other users don't experience congestion. Which would probably be worse for user experience that 3, because now your web surfing also slows down. Because its got to be one of these, if ISPs are forced to carry P2P bulk transfers and bulk transfers grow beyond just piracy (where the ISP could cooperate with the MPAA and do a DMCA-takedown regigm), but extend to legitimate content in a significant way.