P2P Makes Cents
Robert X. Cringely of “I, Cringely” fame brought up the world of P2P commercial ventures in “Why P2P Is the Future of Media Distribution Even If ISPs Have Yet to Figure That Out”. I am long time fan of P2P with a dash of service-orientation from the stance of JXTA and Jini. The assertions put forth in this article point to our highly substandard bandwidth pipe which will need to be increased for the upcoming Internet media age. It mentions a few companies, two of which, Grid Networks and Peer Impact, base their network client infrastructure around grid technologies much like BitTorrent.
Cringely makes a very good case for the adoption of peer-to-peer client networking for ISPs. This will allow ISPs to maximize their bandwidth usage and resell content directly to their customers for our up and coming Internet media providers. Looks like an interesting cast of vendors out there ready for the opportunity to provide media services to the broadest audience possible. It was not so long ago that I worked for an IPv6 network backbone, Zama Networks, which had aspirations of providing VoIP transport between their data centers around the Pacific Rim. We had a beautiful data center, a rich set of network metrics, and a very advanced IPv6 knowledge base for our customers. If only they had lived long enough to participate in solving the networking issues of today.
