What Comcast/Bittorrent Actually Means: Bittorrent Selling Hardware

from the less-or-more-than-you-expected? dept

Comcast's decision to collaborate with Bittorrent, Inc. attracted a predictably huge amount of attention and analysis. But surprisingly little of it has actually speculated as to what Bittorrent, Inc. is actually going to do for Comcast. When guesses have been ventured, they've frequently suggested that the company will throw its weight around in order to alter the protocol and make it more friendly to Comcast's network. But this is unlikely for exactly the reasons Prof. Felten discusses at that link (though Felten actually argues that altering the protocol is the goal). Instead, I think there are reasons to believe that Bram Cohen's startup will be selling network appliances to Comcast.

There are two problems facing Comcast. (1) the expense that Bittorrent incurs in infrastructure demands and bandwidth bills and (2) the public outcry and potential FCC action invited by its initial artless solution to that problem. Announcing the partnership with Bittorrent, Inc.; pledging to increase upload capacity (as it no doubt planned to anyway); and ceasing to forge RST packets all go a long way toward solving the second problem.

But the first problem -- the expense -- remains, and it may prove to be the area where the new partnership has the most to offer. Have a look at the quote that Torrentfreak got from Bittorrent, Inc.'s Ashwin Navin:

We decided to collaborate with Comcast because they agreed to stop using RSTs, increase upload capacity, and evaluate network hardware that accelerates media delivery and file transfers.

Bittorrent, Inc. has primarily been known for acquiring uTorrent and for working to pitch BT as a content distribution system. But it's also announced partnerships with various hardware manufacturers. And while some of these vendors are probably looking for little more than to be able to slap "Bittorrent approved!" stickers on their consumer-grade routers, others clearly have the expertise to make network appliances. This is what Bittorrent, Inc. may be selling to Comcast.

What will these theoretical boxes do? Despite Comcast's announced intention to be protocol-agnostic, it seems most likely that the devices would serve as P2P repeaters, keeping more of a given swarm inside Comcast's systems and thereby minimizing expensive trips across the network boundary. Contrary to all of the online wailing about bandwidth hogs degrading its neighbors' internet service, this expense was always the real issue: it's telling that forged RST packets were only ever sent for Bittorrent connections that extended beyond Comcast's network. Establishing a repeater product would also add nicely to the company's Bittorrent DNA offering.

Whatever the specifics, minimizing network expenses is a reasonable goal that Comcast is certain to continue to pursue. Hopefully Bittorrent Inc. will help them find a way to do so without antagonizing their customers.

Tom Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tom Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Comcast Realizes Blocking By Protocol Is A Problem; Asks BitTorrent For Some Help

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Well, well, well. After stubborn silence, non-denial denials, and (finally) a "but we have to!" defense, combined lawsuits and FCC threats, it appears Comcast has realized that its traffic shaping efforts have turned into something of a "rootkit moment." In an announcement this morning, the company has teamed up with BitTorrent Inc. (the company, not the wider protocol itself) in order to come up with "protocol agnostic" ways to manage its traffic. It's not giving up on traffic shaping -- but it will be based on overall bandwidth use, rather than what applications you're using. Lotus Notes users rejoice.

Of course, announcements, by themselves, mean nothing. Let's wait and see what sort of systems Comcast actually puts in place before we judge whether the end result is better or not. Though, it does confirm what we noted recently: this really is a problem that can be solved by technology -- which Comcast just didn't want to implement. Comcast's unwillingness to come up with a more reasonable technology solution earlier (while Verizon and others have been exploring them) is its own fault. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if this has any impact on the lawsuits and the FCC investigation. Other than that, let's see what Comcast actually does (and how upfront they are about it) before saying this is a full win. In the meantime, just getting Comcast to budge a little has to be seen as a short-term victory.

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BitTorrent Entering The CDN Space?

from the there's-money-in-boring-tech dept

BitTorrent has often received a bad reputation for being associated with "piracy," when it's simply a system for more efficiently distributing online content. If you blame BitTorrent for piracy, it's like blaming FTP or Usenet for piracy. They're certainly tools used by people sharing unauthorized content, but they're hardly limited just to that sector. That's why it's a little silly for the folks at Internet News to suddenly declare that "BitTorrent Goes Legit with Content Delivery Service." BitTorrent, itself, has always been "legit." What's really interesting here is that the folks behind BitTorrent are actually looking to expand the usefulness of the basic BitTorrent concept by using it to enter the content delivery space.

As we noted over the summer, there's growing competition in the Content Delivery Network (CDN) space, once dominated by Akamai. The idea is to help larger content providers handle large amounts of bandwidth efficiently, traditionally by placing copies of the content at various servers around the world. This does two things: offload the bandwidth from a single source and also bring the content physically closer to different areas, thus decreasing some of the latency issues. Of course, BitTorrent can do both of those things in potentially a much more efficient manner, by using the excess of bandwidth of all different people to simply handle small parts of the transfer. While BitTorrent tries to position its offering as something that can work with the CDN's of the world, if it really works well, it could effectively obliterate the need for a traditional CDN. If you thought that the traditional competition in the space was obliterating profits, having something like BitTorrent's Delivery Network Accelerator could completely upend the market. While the press may go for the sensationalistic "piracy" angle (which this has nothing to do with), if this works, it could change the basic economics for large publishers in distributing content online -- and that's quite a big deal.

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Turns Out The MPAA Did Get Access To TorrentSpy Execs' Email

from the ethically-challenged dept

The MPAA has been pushing the courts to force TorrentSpy to spy on its users -- something TorrentSpy refuses to do, noting that it would break their own privacy policy and is simply ethically questionable. It should come as no surprise, of course, that the MPAA has no such qualms. In fact, it came out today that the MPAA had, in fact, been snooping through TorrentSpy's executives' emails. So, which organization looks more ethically challenged? This stems from a case TorrentSpy filed last year, after finding out that a former co-worker gave the MPAA access to TorrentSpy emails. While a court has found that the MPAA's actions did not violate wiretap laws, it's still pretty questionable. What appears to have happened, is that a former TorrentSpy employee who had access to the company's email system set it up so all executives' emails also forwarded to a gmail account he owned. He then sold access to that gmail account to people at the MPAA. Clearly, the MPAA knew that the TorrentSpy execs thought these emails were private, and yet they still eagerly paid up for access to them, which is really sleazy. TorrentSpy is appealing the case, but they'd probably have a much stronger case against the former employee who set up the email forwarding system in the first place.

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