On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Randy Bush wrote:
the heavy hitters are long known. get over it.
i won't bother to cite cho et al. and similar actual measurement studies, as doing so seems not to cause people to read them, only to say they already did or say how unlike japan north america is. the phenomonon is part protocol and part social.
the question to me is whether isps and end user borders (universities, large enterprises, ...) will learn to embrace this as opposed to fighting it; i.e. find a business model that embraces delivering what the customer wants as opposed to winging and warring against it.
if we do, then the authors of the 2p2 protocols will feel safe in improving their customers' experience by taking advantage of localization and proximity, as opposed to focusing on subverting perceived fierce opposition by isps and end user border fascists. and then, guess what; the traffic will distribute more reasonably and not all sum up on the longer glass.
randy
It has been a long time since I bowed before Mr. Bush's wisdom, but indeed, I bow now in a very humble fashion. Thing is though, it is quivalent to one or all of the following: -. EFF-like thinking (moral high-ground or impractical at times, yet correct and to live by). -. (very) Forward thinking (yet not possible for people to get behind - by people I mean those who do this daily), likely to encounter much resistence until it becomes mainstream a few years down the road. -. Not connected with what can currently happen to affect change, but rather how things really are which people can not yet accept. As Randy is obviously not much affected when people disagree with him, nor should he, I am sure he will preach this until it becomes real. With that in mind, if many of us believe this is a philosophical as well as a technological truth -- what can be done today to affect this change? Some examples may be: -. Working with network gear vendors to create better equipment built to handle this and lighten the load. -. Working on establishing new standards and topologies to enable both vendors and providers to adopt them. -. Presenting case studies after putting our money where our mouth is, and showing how we made it work in a live network. Staying in the philosophical realm is more than respectable, but waiting for FUSSP-like wide-addoption or for sheep to fly is not going to change the world, much. For now, the P2P folks who are not in most cases eveel "Internet Pirates" are mostly allied, whether in name or in practice with illegal activities. The technology isn't illegal and can be quite good for all of us to save quite a bit of bandwidth rather than waste it (quite a bit of redudndancy there!). So, instead of fighting it and seeing it left in the hands of the "pirates" and the privacy folks trying to bypass the Firewall of [insert evil regime here], why not utilize it? How can service providers make use of all this redudndancy among their top talkers and remove the privacy advocates and warez freaks from the picture, leaving that front with less technology and legitimacy while helping themselves? This is a pure example of a problem from the operational front which can be floated to research and the industry, with smarter solutions than port blocking and QoS. Gadi.