The P4P Working Group

Pando is working with ISP’s to improve P2P performance and efficiency

Pando Networks co-founded and co-chairs the P4P Working Group, whose mission is to work jointly and cooperatively with leading Internet service providers (ISPs), peer-to-peer (P2P) software distributors, and technology researchers to ascertain appropriate and voluntary best practices for the use of “P4P*” mechanisms to accelerate distribution of content and optimize utilization of ISP network resources in order to provide the best possible performance to end-user customers.

Objectives

1. Provide ISPs with the ability to optimize utilization of network resources while enhancing service levels for P2P traffic
2. Provide P2P software distributors with the ability to accelerate content delivery while enhancing efficient usage of ISP bandwidth
3. Provide researchers who are developing P4P mechanisms with the support to advance and the ability to publish their work
4. Determine, validate, and encourage the adoption of methods for ISPs and P2P software distributors to work together to enable and support consumer service improvements as P2P adoption and resultant traffic evolves while protecting the intellectual property (IP) of participating entities
5. Establish appropriate and voluntary best practices for the deployment of P4P mechanisms to meet the above identified objectives in a way that can be sustained by all of the necessary participants

The Bandwidth Challenge

P2P traffic is growing dramatically. Estimates [CacheLogic, 2006] are that up to 70% of ISP traffic is P2P.

 
Aside from the sheer volume of p2p traffic, which is swamping the infrastructure of many ISP’s, the pattern of traffic poses a problem. Traditional CDN traffic is also high volume, so it is expensive, but it is at least predictable, flowing from the CDN through the ISP infrastructure, down to consumers. Traditional P2P traffic, on the other hand, connects random peers, so while some p2p connections may be formed within an ISP, most P2P connections will be from the rest of the internet, at a high cost to the ISP. This results in reduced resources available to the ISP’s other customers.

In response to this, ISP’s have options of building out their infrastructure (expensive), or deploying various tactics to manage their bandwidth, in response to which the P2P networks take steps to conceal their networks from management tools, leading to an unproductive back-and-forth between the P2P networks and the ISP’s.

Pando believes that it’s more effective to focus on cooperative approaches to address this challenge.

What does P4P do?

P4P allows the P2P networks to optimize traffic within each ISP, which not only reduces the volume of data traversing the ISP’s infrastructure, it creates a more manageable flow of data.

In our initial analysis, based on actual network maps provided by Telefonica and Verizon, the results have been quite promising, with clear benefits both to ISP’s and P2P networks.

ISP Benefits

ISP’s want to see a common Industry Solution that Creates a cooperative win-win solutions to an industry issue, and Solves the problem before they have to cope with the problem. The availability of Carrier Grade P2P creates the Opportunity for new services. Or, as one ISP puts it “What if the fastest path from A to B is P2P?”

To illustrate the benefits, this analysis shows that P4P yields a dramatic drop in data delivery average “hop count”, which equates to lower cost to ISP’s.

P2P Network and User Benefits

P2P Applications benefit from faster downloads for users, and decreased incentives for ISP’s to manage P2P traffic. P4P is easy to implement and its an open standard, so one solution works for all ISP’s.

Analysis shows that end users benefit from a dramatic improvement in data delivery speed, which results in faster downloads for users.

P4P Working Group Members