Peer to Peer Networking: The Carriers Speak Out

I’ve got nine pages of notes from yesterday’s OSA Executive Forum at OFC 2007. Craig Matsumoto from Lightreading captured and blogged my fastball question to the Carrier panel composed of BT Group plc (BT), Comcast Corporation (CMCSA), AT&T (T), and Verizon (VZ).

My question was:

There has been a lot of discussion today about Video and the explosion of bandwidth needed to carry it, but Peer to Peer traffic is now the largest consumer of bandwidth on your networks. Do you view P2P technology as an opportunity or threat and why?

All four took me to task and indicated P2P, let alone P2P video, was not the biggest consumer of traffic, which would be a direct contradiction with several independent studies.

Their responses tell you a lot about the nature of their networks: (Text borrowed from Lightreading).

• “It is probably the portion of our video traffic that is growing at the fastest clip… The pressure on the upstream network is why we are paying a lot of attention to it.” — Ernie Carey, VP advanced network technologies, AT&T (T)

• “We don’t see a huge amount at the moment, but that’s going to be the major growth, and we’ve got to have the network to handle it.” — Dave Payne, manager of broadband architectures and optical networks, British Telecom (BT)

• “Yes, upstream is going up, but downstream is going up as well… [The ratio of 1:4 download:upload amounts] hasn’t significantly changed over the last three years; there is a slope to that curve, but it’s not significant.” — Vik Saxena, senior director of network architecture, Comcast (CMCSA)

• “If you can find enough uplink speed, which is what we’ve done with fiber-to-the-home, then that [question] goes away.” — Glenn Wellbrock, director of backbone network design, Verizon (VZ)

Comments

[spam:]

Legitimate P2P, applied to video traffic, should not be seen as a new threat by carriers on their networks.

P2P video is a new opportunity for companies to reduce their costs, offer more services to users, and for users to enjoy greater dowload speeds, social features and consume services increased in quality, and lowered in costs.

Carriers are contributing to this new P2P services era by dimensionning properly their networks so as to allow users to be both receivers and contributors.

This is my vision.

Sebastien
Project Leader
1-Click Media
www.1-click.com

2007 Mar 30 05:40 AM

[Sr. Pessimist:]

I have a project lined up for this. Several, in fact. Social and business networking is a very powerful market force. If one can harness it, the benefits ultimately are as enormous as the demand. Connecting the right people together overcomes the air of antisocial disorder encouraged by the repressive slave society we live in. There are also people that should be prevented from being connected to others, I might add. I am a strong proponent of preventing certain people from having any benefit from my activities in the future. They have extorted me beyond reason. A lot of people have their own nemeses, and would love to enjoy the benefits of specific boycotts from those that have made their own personal lives hell. I would like to try to offer the personal option of economic and social unison OR economic and social isolation to everybody with regards to everybody else. Separate the good from the evil. I can do it.

2007 Mar 30 05:03 PM