Verizon takes a liking to P2P?

Verizon seems to be interested in supporting a new P2P protocol called P4P. It promises to move more data with less strain on the network. I’m betting that V is taking a hard look at using it for their own content distribution. I’m all for that as long as they give non Verizon content equal treatment. As a side benefit, it would add a fun new twist to the Comcast net management debate.

P4P, which stands for Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P, ultimately aims to decrease backbone traffic and bring down network operation costs by enabling service providers to communicate information about network conditions to client applications for the purpose of facilitating improved P2P file transfer performance. Instead of selecting peers at random, the P4P protocol leverages network topology data so that peers can be selected in a manner that increases routing efficiency.

Ars spoke with Verizon senior technologist and P4P workgroup co-chair Doug Pasko, who tells us that Verizon observed download performance improvements of approximately 200 percent during tests conducted with Pando. The performance boost can climb as high as 600 percent in some cases. Verizon believes that P2P technology is moving into the mainstream and is being legitimized for large-scale commercial content delivery. The company sees P4P as a way to enable broader commercial adoption of P2P tech while unclogging the tubes and relieving network congestion.

Since the efficacy of the P4P protocol largely relies on the availability of network topology information, Verizon and the P4P workgroup aim to make the new protocol an industrywide standard and convince other carriers to share their own data and participate. “Quite frankly, any carrier should benefit from this,” Pasko told Ars. The initiative has drawn support from a number of ISPs, including Comcast, which is currently facing scrutiny for impeding peer-to-peer traffic on its own network. (from Ars Technica)