North American Network Operators Group
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Regional differences in P2P

  • From: k claffy
  • Date: Sat Jul 17 22:01:00 2004 
On Thu, Jul 15 05:27:32 2004 From: Mikael Abrahamsson

	Ethernet:

	Peak almost twice upload as download.
	Average is 2.5-3 times more upload than download.

	ADSL 8M/800k:

	Peak twice the amount download as upload
	Average is 1.3-1.5 more download than upload
	Upload bw usage is almost flat over time
	Download bw peak is approx double the average level.

	My interpretation of this is that p2p networks are quite intelligent
	in using the available bandwidth, and that Copyright holders
	only solution is a "content crunch" due to providers limiting
	their users upload potential due to heavy usage, such as capping
	the amount of bandwidth allowed per month or alike.

mikael

thanks for the hard data.  YAY!

but that strikes me as a generous interpretation of it.
your data is also consistent with the fact that
ethernet-attached universities and other campuses
tend to have more lenient AUPs, as well as higher bandwidth,
than do DSL/cable networks.
it might be the humans that are intelligent,
not the p2p networks.  (forgive me for having more faith 
in system administrators than p2p software engineers :) )

also our grad student thomas studying p2p traffic tells me
that there is no sense of localization in most (if not all)
p2p networks; so i am more likely to download a movie from an
(advertised as) ethernet user in Asia than from downloading
from an (advertised as) DSL user next door.  and my understanding
it that's all based on how the user configures their p2p
servent, it's not like the network figures out the available
bandwidth to potential remote clients.  that's a pretty loose
definition of intelligence, believing everything you hear from
an end host :)

[i'd be happy to be wrong about the above, btw...]

wrt capping the amount of bandwidth per month,
that strikes me as a [yet another] stall not a solution.
it may be a traffic engineering solution.  it doesn't 
even approach being a copyright holder solution.
but i reckon copyright solutions belong on another list.

per seandonelan's reference, yes caida will have 2 papers
on p2p traffic analysis by the end of the year, titles 
'is p2p traffic dying or just hiding?' [take a guess]
and 'transport layer identification of p2p traffic'.
check caida web site in october.

but neither study touches on the regional differences, i 
suspect it's a function of the relative popularity, ease-of-use,
and type-of-content-served of certain applications in each place.
i lend less weight to the differences than the similarities.
killer app, indeed.

k