#Bandwidth crunch meaning software#

This increases the distance over which content is distributed, which has side effects of maximizing the hit to the network infrastructure and driving up ISPs' operating costs. For example, most P2P technologies pay little attention to geographical considerations: The clients connect to peers regardless of how far away they are or how many hops are required to reach them. We want to give guidance to the technology, so it works better in the same environment, rather than in opposition.'Įvidence of that opposition is clear. 'Now it's a full-fledged internet application platform that's operating in an information vacuum. 'Because of where it started, P2P had this absence of input from the carrier world,' says Verizon's Doug Pasko, who co-founded the P4P working group with Popkin.

But while Napster was illicit and underground, peer-to-peer technologies these days are being adopted by corporations and used for legitimate purposes.

#Bandwidth crunch meaning software#

P2P's original killer app was Napster, the software application that introduced millions to file sharing a decade ago. It's an invitation the group hopes will result in a cultural shift, a new era of collaboration between industries long at loggerheads. By better understanding how a network is laid out and who's using it, P2P-technology providers can use that network much more effectively and minimize strain on the ISP infrastructure. In theory, the P4P group's idea is simple: Show us your secrets, and we'll show you ours.