more on P2P Fuels Global Bandwidth Binge

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

------- Original message -------
From: Patrick W Gilmore  <patrick () ianai net>
Sent: 15/4/'05,  10:44

On Apr 15, 2005, at 10:43 AM, Dave Farber wrote:

> Lots of folks here will remember that it was only a decade ago that 
> Marty Rimm's "study" of Internet pornography "proved" that the great 
> majority of Internet us
> age, as measured by some metric or other, had to do with downloading 
> porn.  Rimm's phony statistics (there does not seem to actually have 
> been any "study" as su
> ch) were reproduced uncritically in the press and elsewhere online.  
> One lesson to be drawn from that experience is that we all should be 
> skeptical about CacheL
> ogic's claims at least until both (a) their measuring technology is 
> made available for public inspection and use and (b)  their 
> statistical claims are presented
>  in a way that makes them independently testable.

Absolutely correct.

However, on a less-than-global scale, lots of ISPs (especially 
broadband ISPs in western countries) have data showing 50% or more of 
the bits on their pipes are using the protocols commonly associated 
with P2P applications.

Does this prove the claim?  Not even close.  Not every ISP shows 50% 
P2P, but some show WELL over 50%, and some do not report at all.  Some 
ISPs filter or rate-limit P2P (e.g. some university networks), and many 
P2P apps can "hide", using, for instance, port 80 (HTTP) in hopes of 
avoiding filtering.  Even if you had the data, you would not know which 
data you had!

So what is the answer?  No one knows, nor am I certain it can be known. 
  But I am certain that P2P traffic is a very large percentage of total 
Internet traffic.  And so is every other professional who runs large 
Internet networks.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

P.S. Most people are certain the same was true of pornography before 
the P2P craze hit.  And it is still likely porn is a large fraction of 
the Internet traffic - including porn transmitted via P2P apps.  Try to 
sort out those statistics. :-)


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