> It's a nice idea to collect popularity data at the ISP level, because
> the decision on what to load into the local torrent servers could be
> automated.
Note that collecting popularity data could be done at the edges without
forcing all tracker requests through a transparent proxy.
Yes. This is my point. It's a good thing to do, but centralising it is an ungood thing to do, because...
> Once torrent X reaches a certain trigger level of popularity, the
> local
> server grabs it and begins serving, and the local-pref function on the
> clients finds it. Meanwhile, we drink coffee. However, it's a
> potential
> DOS magnet - after all, P2P is really a botnet with a badge.
I don't see how. If you detect that N customers are downloading a
torrent, then having the ISP's peer download that torrent and serve it
to the customers means you consume 1/N upstream bandwidth. That's an
anti-DOS :)
All true. My point is that forcing all tracker requests through a proxy makes that machine an obvious DDOS target. It's got to have an open interface to all hosts on your network on one side, and to $world on the other, and if it goes down, then everyone on your network loses service. And you're expecting traffic distributed over a large number of IP addresses because it's a P2P application, so distinguishing normal traffic from a botnet attack will be hard.
> And the point of a topology-aware P2P client is that it seeks the
> nearest host, so if you constrain it to the ISP local server only,
> you're
> losing part of the point of P2P for no great saving in
> peering/transit.
That's why I don't like the idea of transparent proxies for P2P; you can
get 90% of the effect with 10% of the evilness by setting up sane
rate-limits.
OK.
> As long as they don't interfere with the user's right to choose
> someone
> else's content, fine.
If you're getting it from an STB, well, there may not be a way for users
to add 3rd party torrents; how many users will be able to figure out how
to add the torrent URLs (or know where to find said URLs) even if there
is an option? Remember, we're talking about Joe Sixpack here, not
techies.
You would, however, be able to pick whatever STB you wanted (unless ISPs
deliberately blocked competitors' services).
Please. Joe has a right to know these things. How long before Joe finds out anyway?